postcard 11: greetings from austria
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 🎄
As has become our road trip ritual, we listen to true crime podcasts as we make our way out of Croatia, through Slovenia and into Austria. The trees go from yellows and oranges to late autumn browns and winter flocked whites as we make our way north. The Alps are picture perfect, covered in snow with a brilliant blue sky.
As soon as we reach Salzburg we bundle up in the parking garage and make our way to the main Christmas market in search of a late lunch. Through the streets and across the river, deep into the old town we go. Google Maps leads us astray (predictable) and by the time we see the telltale Christmas trees we’re starving and wondering if we brought warm enough clothes. The mild Croatian weather has made us weak.
At the first stand we see, a man has half a wheel of cheese on a metal contraption with a flame hovering over it. Once the top layer of cheese gets gooey and brown, he scrapes it onto a piece of toasted bread. It’s raclette, a dish my stepmom put into my dreams from her time as a ski bum in Switzerland. I don’t need to browse, I’m sold. Topher finds a sausage and we round out our feast with mugs of gluhwein. We pay the four euro mug deposit and they fill our cups with hot, mulled wine.
The market, which dates back to the 15th century, is a Christmas fever dream come true. Wooden stalls selling ornaments and gingerbread, real green Christmas trees everywhere, covered in white lights, garland and string lights hung over the market. The stalls are set under the watchful eye of the cathedral. When we can’t feel our fingers, we head back across the river to check into our hotel. We schlep our bags half a mile across cobblestones and turn the heat up to defrost our frozen limbs.
We head back out in the evening while Hazelnut stays curled up in the car, sleeping off the overstimulation of the afternoon. Horns start playing above our heads on the cathedral walkway and they’re answered by a chorus of bells from the tower across the square. It’s the first night of advent so it’s not quite perfect, but we watch enrapt as the music floods the square. And then, the huge, living tree in the center of it all alights. It’s magical. We celebrate with hot punch and bauernkrapfen, a yeasty donut covered in a thick, garlicky cheese sauce. Well, I do. Topher has a sausage quota to meet.
We wake the next morning to gray skies and a gentle drizzle. I’m unapologetically missing Starbucks and Topher hasn’t gone more than a week without pining for Hot Cheetos aloud since we landed in Europe. The night before we’d spotted both things on Salzburg’s main shopping street so we journey back across the river in intensifying rain and order overly sweet, American sized coffees while we wait for the foreign snacks store to open. We buy the last bag of Hot Cheetos, from Japan it turns out and not the States, and are thoroughly soaked by the time we get back to the hotel. Topher tries to go get the car, but 45 minutes later he’s back, the car parked exactly where we left it, after having tried to battle Salzburg’s maze of one-way streets and construction. We schlep our bags, and Hazelnut, back to the car in the downpour and decide we need some proper Chinese food before we continue our trip. Bowls of hot and sour soup and General Tso’s chicken warm us in a little spot along the street where the guy behind the wok unloads the day’s order at the next table. Huge, whole fish come out of the styrofoam coolers, destined for the sushi mats.
The rain gives way to snow as we cross briefly into Germany on our way to Innsbruck. We’ll end up having driven through five countries on a quick weekend trip and I’m still enchanted that this is just how Europe works. Late in the afternoon we pull up to the Swarovski Crystal Museum. Pictures of a grassy hill transformed into a gentle giant with a waterfall mouth had lured me in, and on little else we paid for two tickets and ducked under the waterfall into a sparkly wonderland.
When I was a kid my mom collected Swarovski figurines. The little hedgehogs and cats made of leaded glass sat in a display cabinet in the dining room, throwing rainbows across the room when the sun hit just right. I was always mesmerized by them and while crystal feels perhaps a bit gaudy for 2023, especially to my personal style, the moment we enter the museum I’m enrapt.
Like Meow Wolf without the stimulus overload, the museum is an interactive art exhibit. We wander through rooms filled with infinite mirrors, a freezing snow chamber, silly over the top sparkles and pieces that make us feel, deeply. When we finally emerge into the cold, we’re surprised to find that several hours have passed.
It’s raining when we pull into Innsbruck and we’re a little grumpy to find that we have to park in a garage and walk across town again, but as soon as we climb the stairs into the night we’re met by the familiar smell of weed and the pulsing bass of techno music. Stadium lights set a makeshift snowboard hill in the city center aglow and it seems like we've stumbled upon a Redbull event. It’s silly, but it makes me grin because it feels like home.
Peering out onto Innsbruck’s main Christmas market through a stained glass window, I decide that the walk was worth it. We’re staying in the oldest hotel in the city, dating back to the 1300s, and we’re right in the thick of things. We immediately head out into the drizzle, filling fresh mugs with gluhwein and finding plates of rosti–potato pancakes topped with sour cream and lox. Hazelnut sits in the mucky street, waiting patiently for a bite and of course we oblige. Our rule in Europe is simple: if it’s not chocolate, raisins or too spicy, she gets to try it. This dog is living large.
The world is coated in a soft blanket of snow the next morning when we open our eyes and we wander through the streets before the rest of the tourists wake up. Our only companions are early season skiers, clomping through town in their boots.
Innsbruck has almost a dozen Christmas markets and we’re determined to hit as many of them as we can. We’re delighted to find our favorite Alsatian dish, tarte flambee, under the German name Flammekueche at a market in the square: a thin pizza topped with cream, cheese, bacon and caramelized onions. We’ve bought a muzzle specifically so Hazelnut can ride Austrian public transportation, but she has other ideas and pulls us across the street at the station to romp through park in the most magical combination of fallen leaves and fresh snow.
Up, up, up the funicular moves, a strange cross between cable car and train. Hazelnut is very brave as we climb up the mountain, disembarking in blowing snow. The tiny market at the top has four stalls and it’s freezing. We debate for a few minutes and then hop right back on the funicular to get back down to the city to eat more carbs instead. Bauernkrapfen, the yeasty fried bread, topped with sweet sauerkraut this time. I promised Hazelnut whatever she wanted from the market for being such a good girl and she beelines for the cured meat stall. I buy her a small summer sausage and we leave her in the hotel room to enjoy it later that evening while we hit up the more crowded evening markets. I don’t think she realizes she’s staying in the same hotel Mozart once did, but she’s over the moon just the same.
I’d commented just moments before that there seemed to be a lack of music at the markets, when Mariah Carey starts playing over the speakers. All of a sudden everyone in the market square starts pressing towards the crystal Swarovski tree in the center. It’s been lit up all night, but every phone in a three block radius is suddenly pointed at the sparkly cone as we’re crushed into a sea of people. We can’t understand the Austrian excitement around us, but I imagine they’re all shouting, “It’s Mariah Carey!” It’s Hallelujah, mind you, not even All I Want For Christmas. We squeeze our way out of the mass and order spaetzle and laugh.
Big, fat flakes spiral down around us, catching the Christmas lights and making us feel like we’re in a snowglobe. Musicians play from the golden gate in the square and the gluhwein flows freely. We pick up Hazelnut and romp through the streets, finding an empty square to let her do snowy zooms before an old woman looks disapprovingly at us from a window above. It’s a perfect, magical winter wonderland. We’re soaked through, from the soggy streets or the thick snow or spilled gluhwein it's hard to tell, but we go to bed smiling from ear to ear.
Topher turns 29 on a Tuesday and while he insists that our Austria trip was celebration enough, I make him French toast and we walk along the coast and get lattes from the hipster coffee shop across town. In a velvet booth-lined bar with baby blue walls downtown, we order burgers and fries and Aperol spritzes. Cigarette smoke curls towards the ceiling from a pair of older men at the next table over and we have to wash our hair before bed, but it still feels touched with magic.
–Mikaela
P.S. it’s not all rose colored glasses over here. Work deadlines and stressing about where to live have been all consuming the last few days, hence the late send, but I can’t wait to share about the apartment we just signed a lease on in next week’s postcard!