The Rain in Admont

Sometimes, rain and road-weariness conspire to keep us in a place that might, otherwise, have only taken up an afternoon or a morning. Strange places get found and embraced or remain inscrutable, seen only from behind bleary windows. Admont was one of those places where we’ve marooned ourselves. On a day that brought downpours interspersed with periods of clarity, a dry bed in town and a hot meal seemed too appealing to turn our backs on. So, instead of fleeing this little village after we took in the monastery, we checked into a gasthof on the main street and stayed the night. Dinner was a bleak affair, but the clouds in the late evening were rewarding.

Admont is known for its monastery, which is famous for its library. It’s a fantastic sight, and was surprisingly quiet on a Saturday afternoon. Photographs are forbidden, but you can get the gist of the room and the collection from their website. The monks have collected over two hundred thousand volumes, some seventy thousand of which are displayed. There is also a somewhat disquieting assemblage of taxidermy and one of the largest collections of winged insects in the world. The insects, of course, are pinned in cases, not flying around. Monastic vintages of Admont wine tempt visitors in the giftshop and on-site bar. There are pretty gardens, both of the floral and apothecary types, and some nice lawns.
The monastery is great, and probably deserved more energy on our part. In the drizzle, though, the town and collection came to be overwhelming and our mood was more dazed than interested. Having grown accustomed to the rain, a flash of blue sky seemed blinding and made us want to sit down. In a café, we worked and ate “apfelstrudel,” with rhubarb, which was the town’s culinary highlight. The mountains were almost surprising when we noticed them. Sometimes, they can feel more distant than they really are – a different world beyond the confines of the livable valleys we travel in.
Dinner was overfried and watery, served in a dark room where we sat segregated from the congenial villagers because we chose “non-smoking.” After, though, our moods were surprisingly buoyant. The sky was a pretty latticework of clouds and stars, lit up by a moon that’s almost full. We walked around the dark streets and were greeted by other Saturday strollers as we went. A handful of older couples were out enjoying the suddenly pleasant air, and every person who passed said hello in the peculiar, formal, Austrian way.
In the morning, it was raining again and the breakfast room was empty. In a strange way, the night before felt like a providential reprieve. Travel like this can seem interminable when the weather isn’t cooperative. Admont felt like a surrender to the elements, though it also seemed to be a moment of reward.

Rock Me, Amadeus

Salzburg is filled with performers. It's the city of Mozart and The Sound of Music, the latter eclipsing the former on a few postcards aimed at a very specifically browed crowd. We were only there for a few hours, but we found a different act in every corner of the large central square. Unfortunately, the figure on the top of the giant gold ball is a statue and not a man pretending to be a statue. There's at least one of those in every city in the world, I'm convinced, and this one would have been really impressive.
This quartet played Ed Sullivan era Beatles type music fairly well. We're pretty sure they were American. While we've definitely been surrounded by our share of tourists, the number of American accents here startled us. The campsite crowd has been mostly Dutch, Deutsch and British. Anyway, these guys were pretty good. Across the way a crosslegged, scruffy faced man about the same age played a didgeridoo. He seemed like more of a Sgt. Pepper and the Lonely Hearts club sort of guy.
Anywhere we didn't hear music, we saw instruments. I always have extra respect for cello and upright bass players. Trudging those things around takes true dedication. I bet they all get together and make fun of ukulele players. We saw one man setting up a box of cds with a bodiless violin in a case on the floor. It had a hollowed out frame an arm and strings. We can't be sure if it was just for show or not.
Not every Salzburger was a performer. These women either love or hate The Sound of Music - could go either way, really. Every hostel we looked into played the movie musical each night at 8pm. One blasted the soundtrack in the morning so that people would rise and shine. More than one dinner theatre performed the show over a meal of schnitzel with noodles and crisp apple strudel. Wolfgang Amadeus was still the city's prince, though. I think it's pretty safe to say his musical impact was a little greater.
It was in Salzburg that we finally figured out that Austrians really and truly wear dirndls and lederhosen. We'd seen them in shops, town after town and thought that maybe they just supplied the entire world's beer garden waitresses with uniforms. Not so. I, for one, love it. But more on that in "Things Austrian People Like."

Liechtensteinklamm

The liechtensteinklamm, in St. Johann im Pongau, is a nine-hundred-foot deep cleft in the Austrian Alps. Intensely blue water cuts through the layers of limestone and slate, hollowing out a twisting, undulating path. There's a walkway, and a lot of tourists, and the whole thing is very much worth an hour of your time.
The tunnels and bridges were constructed in 1875 by the Alpine Association, with the help of Johann II, prince of Liechtenstein. The prince had a hunting cottage nearby and supposedly became quite excited about the project. A gift of six hundred guilders made the walkways possible, and got the chasm named after Johann.
It takes, maybe, twenty minutes to walk the length of the boardwalk - it's very easy and secure, with gentle uphill grades and handy railings. In reality, nobody does the walk that quickly. It's a stroll, really, with lots of places to stop and look up at the distant sliver of sky, down at the rushing water and around you at the hollows and layers of rock. The air is cool and misty, which was refreshing on a hot, May day.
As the path heads upstream, the water noises get louder and deeper. The current quickens and the passageway narrows. Finally, the walls fall away and the gorge opens up into a round, green bowl. A waterfall spills from somewhere above, joining the stream with a crash. There are some picnic tables here, and a nice platform to sit on.

Austrian Garden Party

It seems like forever since we've been in a city and had a true night out on the town. Being in the mountains will do that to you. As will camping - and we've had a truly wonderful combination of both. Even still, it felt good to put on some impractical shoes and go out to a true Austrian beer garden: Augustiner Bräustübl in Salzburg.
The garden is attached to a brewery run by monks and the large building tucked away up a steep, cobbled side street ("steep" being relative in aforementioned impractical shoes) definitely had a monastic feel. The high ceilings, wide marble staircases and echo-inducing cloth-free decor reminded me of going into my Catholic high school after hours for rehearsals. Squeaking sneakers and a basketball dribbling in the distance wouldn't have seemed out of place. As we made our way through the long hallways, we noticed food stalls lining the way.
I've never been to a beer garden like this, so Merlin helped me navigate the routine. Pay for the size beer you'd like (1/2 liter, full, 1 and 1/2 or two) and grab the corresponding stein from the wall. Then, while you wait online to hand your cup over to get it filled, take advantage of the ice cold fountain. At first, we thought it was there for cup-rinsing, but after a few goes, we noticed the real professionals keeping their mug filled with the icy water for as long as possible. It definitely made for a colder beer.
Outside, the food stalls got even more serious. A couple next to us unwrapped a whole chicken from a greasy piece of grey paper and then a whole trout. Since we'd already eaten, we opted to go back inside to the long hallway and pick up a brēzel. Right across the from bakery counter was an older woman selling hard-boiled eggs and working a turnip on a rotating shaver, making plate after plate of thin, white spirals. Our plate of it was topped with some salt and made a wonderful snack. How can you not buy something from an egg and turnip stand?
Back to that whole trout. Neither of us have ever seen anything like this before. We couldn't tell if heat was coming from the grate at the end of the skewers or if the fishies had been cooked first and then set out for the taking. Either way, it gave a whole new meaning to the term 'fish kebab.'
The night was still and pleasant. A few children ran around in the playground set up in the corner. We drank and people-watched under the chestnut trees, hearing a few songs and a few shouts ring out now and then from a mostly well-behaved crowd. Sixteen year old girls walked to a table carrying mugs that looked bigger than their heads. A table of men took photos of their ancient mother downing a 1/2 liter in one, long gulp.

Castle Hunting: Burg Hohenwerfen

It is amazing, in this part of the world, what a little digging around will produce. We came to Werfen, Austria, for the ice caves. We never made it underground, partly because we became fascinated by Burg Hohenwerfen, and by its nine hundred years of history. The fortress was built between 1075 and 1078 by Archbishop Gerhard of Salzburg, an ally of pope Gregory VII and of the antiking in a conflict I knew nothing about. The "Investiture Controversy" raged wild through this area - though it sounds like a town hall nepotism scandal, the controversy was one of the defining moments of the catholic church's medieval history.

When the young king Henry IV refused to allow pope Gregory to strip him of his right to appoint clergy, the church attempted to divest the Roman emperor (at that time, the emperor ruled Germany and Italy) of all of his religiously mandated powers. A series of moves created a schism between the bishops, and the territory they believed them, and those secular lords who remained loyal to the king. Eventually, it also produced an "antiking," Rudolf of Rheinfelden. King Henry was forced to give in to the papacy and beg forgiveness, barefoot in the snow. A few years later, however, Henry killed Rudolf, marched against Rome and caused pope Gregory to call upon the Normans for aid. The Normans ended up sacking Rome, which made the pope unpopular and forced him to flee. Henry restored imperial supremacy and then became entangled in other problems. It's a highly interesting conflict, and even more complicated than I've made it seem.

Burg Hohenwerfen sits on a 450 foot high outcropping of rock, deep in the folds of the Berchtesgaden Alps, built in preparation for an attack on the Salzburg bishops that never came. The central keep is built right around a pillar-like knob that extends up out of the trees. Earlier in its history the area around the walls would have been kept open as well, so that approaching forces could be seen more easily. The high tower - with the copper roof - is the centerpiece of the fortifications, and has the thickest walls. Lower crenelations spiral outward from this point, creating layers of defense; it would be almost impossible to attack the keep directly.
Lower walls became gradually less protective as the centuries passed and the castle's function became increasingly residential as opposed to warlike. After a fifteenth century sack by revolters during the German Peasant's War, which saw much of the building burned, the upper walls were opened up as well, reflecting a more peaceful period in the region's history.
Today, there's a restaurant and two gift shops, as well as several museum exhibits. A funicular climbs most of the way up to the castle, so overweight tourists don't get out of breath on the ten minute walk from the parking lot. It was a hot, sunny day when we visited and there was a falconry show going on in the lower forecourt. Some visitors were there for the castle itself, but I'm certain some were there because it was shown during a musical number in The Sound of Music.
The vistas, of course, are beautiful. The forecourt's been made into a nice, steep garden area, with pleasant places to sit and look out over the mountains.
Though we didn't really watch it, this was our second falconry show on the trip. From what we could see, it looked a lot like the first. More interesting (only slightly) was the museum of falconry in one of the outer towers. These are assorted hoods, used to keep the birds calm.
It took quite a bit of scampering around to get good shots of the walls - the valley's sides are steep and thickly forested. We ended up high on one slope in a cow pasture, where we decided it would be nice to have lunch. There was a handy spring and - surprisingly - a picnic table, where we could sit and enjoy the view.

Things Swiss People Like

Let's just get all the obvious things out of the way: dairy products, chocolate, yodeling, hiking.

A quick note about dairy products, though. As you can see by the photo snapped conspicuously on a grocery checkout line, cheese is definitely the favored milk product. The variety for sale, even at a gas station, was impressive. We hope the man above was having a dinner party, but with Swiss people you can't be too sure. Another favored lactose indulgence was cream dolloped onto meringues. That one sort of surprised us.

The Swiss flag. Almost every home hangs the red and white banner of patriotism in their front lawn. Cars place them in their windows. People wearing white-crossed baseball caps or shirts aren't necessarily tourists. It's the only square flag in the world, aside from Vatican City's. So, maybe the extra affection comes from its uniqueness.

Swiss people really like their national flag as well as the flags of the cantons and municipalities. Most often, all three are displayed together - along with any other one that signified the town or the family or the body of water. There were a lot of flags.

Large Chess Boards. At first we thought this was a one-off sighting in Bern. I'm used to couples dueling under the shade of park trees, but never standing up like this. It reminded me more of Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I than Washington Square Park.
But then we saw it again outside Luzern. Leave it to the Swiss to take one of the ultimate low-impact hobbies and make it a bit more physical. Now, if it were an enormous checkers board, it would have deserved its own post.
.5 Liter Bottles of Wine. It was rarer to find a full bottle of wine (750ml) than a 500ml one in Switzerland. In cafeterias, they were thrown into ice alongside beer. At highway rest stops, they were next to the Red Bulls in the fridge. It was nice to be able to buy two and try out the different types - also, one bottle is never really enough for two people (like us), but two is a little too much. So, these allowed us to strike the perfect balance. The downside: not necessarily wanting to have more than a glass at lunch and lugging the rest back down a mountain in your backpack. Waste not, want not.
Rare cars. The Swiss franc is doing very well and its pretty darn evident in a line up of parked cars. Most of the times, the rare cars we saw were classic BMWs, Bugattis and Maseratis. Sometimes, though, we saw something like the vehicle above. We had absolutely no idea what it was or where it came from, but there it was in Switzerland.
Paragliding. This is the thing that Swiss people liked which we got the most joy out of observing. On a Saturday or Sunday morning in the mountains, there were so many in the sky that I was half-expecting David Attenborough to begin a tale of great human migration.

We parked right next to a paragliding school and watched them land one after another, completely mesmerized. The landscape is just begging for the activity and Merlin coined it "a truly Swiss sport." I think he's right: it enjoys the natural splendor of things in a completely incomparable way. It's risky, but gentle. It involves gear, but not competitiveness. On Mother's Day, we saw at least one mom land with her husband and grown-up children cheering her on.

Honorable Mentions

Rösti aka fried, shredded potato aka Hash Browns. Sometimes they were served alongside a main course. Sometimes, with melted cheese or an egg on top, they were the main course. It was on every menu, ordered often and in great abundance in vacuum packs at the grocery stores.

Swiss products. Again, their economy is doing pretty well these days. Chain stores like COOP and Migros sold groceries that were almost exclusively Swiss. If it wasn't from Switzerland, it was labeled as such. Even menus would specify if meat was from any other country. For example, the horse meat in Gruyeres was from Canada - oddly enough.

Swiss Army Knives. Some of the window displays were absolutely comical. There's simply no way some of the combinations for sale could ever fit in someone's pocket. Of course, each had the much-loved Swiss flag on it.

Unholy Swiss Cheese: Appenzeller

From outside the town of Appenzell in a region lovingly called Appenzellerland comes a stinky, wonderful cheese called Appenzeller. This was the one we've been waiting for - the cheese that kept our consumption in Gruyères nominally restrained. Had to save room for the really good stuff. Appenzellerland isn't teeming with cows the way Gruyère was, nor is it with tourists. We found the demonstration dairy in the quaint little town of Stein - marked by three wedges on its front lawn.
The cheese is less well known, produced by about 70 dairies in the region. When we last lived in Manhattan, Rolf Beeler Appenzeller was all the rage with turophiles. My hopes of seeing a Beeler farm were dashed when I discovered that he only ages wheels. Not saying that isn't very important, but the cheese itself is made by artisans. I'm sure his wheels come from a dairy much smaller than the one we visited.
Appenzeller is made like any other large wheel of cheese, but then washed with a secret brine to create the rind. People say that the use of wine gives the more delicate varieties their flavor, but no one really knows the recipe for sure. Since its not as big of an industry, affineurs are free to brine the wheel with almost anything they like during the aging process. I'm sure there are some key elements that they all include in their recipe, but - like they kept pointing out in the official Appenzellerland literature - that's all a secret.
About twenty people, almost all men, stood at a balcony looking down on the operation inside. It must be strange to go about your work and have people staring down at you. This stage of cheese making always seems so unappetizingly processed to me, conjuring imaged of plastic wrapped blocks at the Shop Rite. Then I think of the cheesemakers coming in to pick up their wheels and then bringing them back to their own caves on their own farms to prepare in their own special way, using a family recipe passed down for generations.
The cheese dates back at least 700 years and the Stein dairy attempted to illustrate this point by placing a golden wheel of Appenzeller on a stand inside a traditional farm room recreation. It was a little bizarre and I think their lawn art was better. What made this dairy more fun than the one in Gruyères, to me, was the smell. It's really pungent and just makes our hearts go pitter patter. In fact, at dinner just the night before, a group of four dined on Appenzeller fondue and we almost caved and ordered our own. "One fondue is enough," we reasoned - the ones in Gruyères all those days ago will have to suffice.
Instead, we bought a sliver, knowing full well that a wedge will be served with our breakfast tomorrow, just as it was this morning. We chose "Extra," as opposed to "Classic" or "Surchoix." We also tried a super aged one that crumbled like an old roomano and had an incredibly sharp, sour taste. Grated on top of a soup, it probably would be delicious, but its spicyness was pretty overwhelming on its own. Sadly, the heat ruined our little cheese portion and we were forced - simply forced - to order an Appenzeller fondue for dinner. It was much more flavorful than the Gruyère variety and we enjoyed it a lot more. Fondue was our first Swiss meal and our last. A proper bookend, we think.

The Berggasthaus Experience

A "berggasthaus" is a Swiss mountain inn, a place to stay on the hiking trail, a restaurant and rooming-house for the muddy-footed. We recently took a two-night, three day hike in the Appenzell mountains in the far eastern reaches of Switzerland, staying and eating at two of these establishments and loving every minute of it.
It's easy to do these kind of trips because there's so little to bring. Although many of them - including these two - are reachable only on foot, they are real havens in the wilderness. One can expect to find towels, clean sheets on the beds, water and a hot, home cooked meal. This means that it's not necessary to bring big, heavy rucksacks. We got by with light day packs, and still probably overpacked.

Above is the first place we stayed, the Berghaus Seealpsee, on lake Seealpsee (translation: "Lake-alp-lake"), high up a narrow, cliff-sided valley. It sits at a fairly easy point to reach, about one hour by foot from the lower parking lot. We took a more difficult route, but were still at the door in about an hour and a half.
It's a pleasant place, with a nice patio on which to take in the afternoon sun and drink Appenzell hard cider, called "Apfelsaft." I would probably call the water a pond, rather than a lake, but it's still extraordinary that it's here at all. The waters were crowded with duckweed and less clear than might be expected, but reflected the mountains in the glancing light and seemed full of trout. A lot of people come up here just to fish, and dinner at the inn featured a number of "forelle" preparations.
Breakfast was ample but simple - a big pot of coffee for every table, lots of bread and müsli and a general clomping of hiking shoes as people began to get ready for the trails ahead.
Our next stop was something of a mystery for us before we reached it. From the valley below, Meglisalp didn't seem possible. The map showed a berggasthaus in a spot that looked, from the lower vantage point, to be nothing but cliff. A trail marker led us onward, though, and up a tiny cleft in the rock. We scrambled up a narrow ledge and through a series of dizzying switchbacks, clutching at a cable that was anchored to the sheer mountainside and offered little comfort. At last, after climbing up nearly three hundred feet, we emerged onto a hidden plateau, bordered on three sides by steep ridges and by an unscalable drop on the fourth. Here, hidden completely in the folds of the mountains, was the hamlet of Meglisalp, the entirety of which is shown in the above picture.
Despite its remote location, the gasthaus was almost completely booked for the night. We got the last room, though there were still beds in the dormitory. Most of these inns have places in a separate building for hikers who are looking only for a bunk and a blanket. Our room was outfitted with a few washbasins and pitchers of water, and a bucket for the wastewater. The whole inn was being renovated, and our room had the gleam and smell of new softwood.
Berggasthaus Meglisalp was built in the 1890's from material carried up on the backs of the men who founded it. The current proprietors are the fifth generation of innkeepers here, and the place feels like it's been forgotten about for a century. The buildings around it are farmhouses, where herdspeople come later in the summer with their livestock.

This picture was taken from the crest of one ridge, where we hiked in the afternoon. There is still a good amount of snow in the higher pockets of these mountains, and we walked across blindingly-white snowfields in our shirtsleeves.
Back at the inn, we drank beer, Apfelsaft and Appenzellbitter - a sweet, herbaceous, local liquor - on the back lawn, surrounded by other hikers waiting for the sun to go down. It went behind the peaks quickly, but, as has been the case in Switzerland, it stayed light for hours after the sun was gone.

It doesn't stay warm, though, and the minute the sun set everyone decamped for the dining room. We ate beef and rösti (a hashbrown-like, Swiss national dish) at communal tables, while around us people told stories of wobbling legs and summits conquered.

Milchautomat

Since we can't possibly carry 50 countries worth of reference books around with us (and we do not, will not, cannot own kindles, ipads or iphones), we have developed a habit of having book after book shipped home during one block of travel to be picked up before the next. Last time we were in America, a stack awaited us in Vermont, where Merlin's father had flipped through Swiss Mountain Inns. "You have to let me know if you come across a self-service milk machine" he told us (paraphrased). Well, when we saw the sign above on the side of the road, we knew we had to make a U-Turn and check it out.
A few feet further was the next signpost, reading "LUST AUF MILCH?" It's amazing how readable German seems sometimes. We parked across the way and began to walk along the edge of the road. I brought my Klean Kanteen, so that we could maybe fill it up with milk just to see how it all works. Being as it was about 70degrees, neither of us were terribly in the mood (cue scene from Anchorman), but we also needed to be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that arose.
After poking around someone's property, we found the milchautomat. Its design wasn't particularly subtle and we ran around to check out its innards.
Sadly, the marker board alerted us that milk was only available about five. Kudos to them for keeping things fresh - and for providing some paper towel to keep things clean as well. The machine itself was smaller than I was expecting, with a small spout that hung from the bottom. It had a start button as well as a stop button. Prices were only by the liter, so it seems smart that they'd give someone the option of paying that minimum, but ending things sooner. Also, I imagine that some people fill multiple small bottles. The machine was a Brunimat, the Swiss brand that first introduced milk vending machines to Europe in 1994. Apparently, they also have milkshake machines- a much more welcome concept on a warm pre-summer day.