Salzburg - Monday October 1st — Salzburg, Austria
We had originally planned on a day trip to the much-recommended Hallstatt today...the most beautiful place in the world. It was the first place I had decided we'd go outside of our planned cities in Austria. We were looking forward to it for months. BUT, since I couldn't get online because the dang modem was screwing up, I couldn't find out stuff I needed to find out both for the day trip, and for the next leg of our journey. I can't assume the train will have wi-fi. Not all trains do yet. The train to Salzburg didn't. After the uncomfortable moments of the previous days, I am motivated to be more prepared for the rest of the trip (for example: where is the lodging in relation to the train station, etc.). So we decided to check out this brewery (I know, a shocker, right?). I thought it might take about an hour and would probably be a little lame (we like hoppy beer...I don't think you can get that in Europe). Boy was I wrong (about it being lame, not about hoppy beer).! This place was impressive on every level. It's the Spiegl Brewery. The largest in Austria, it's been in existence since 1492. Free admission with our Salzburg card included a tour of the brewery & museum, beer crackers, a tasting, and a gift. The place is HUGE. They left no detail ignored. Even the bathrooms are beautiful - the Stiegl logo was on every tile. The museum is housed in the old part of the brewery. Some of the floors are left as they were over a hundred years ago (they moved from their original location). There was all sorts of old equipment still in place. Lots of history and timelines on how and where things used to be done and where things are happening now. The place even has its own railroad track right to the brewery for grain deliveries. There was a beautiful, huge, glass walled room that held the wort tuns.??? You could look into them and see them boiling, stirring and foaming. That room smelled so good we thought we were in the beer heaven. I wished we could take a picture of the smell! The tour lasted about two hours. We had to visit the museum before and after the tour to finish seeing everything. Turns out Mozart visited the brewery as well. Then we went to the tasting. Now, in America, the beer samples are tiny and that's what we expected here. We each got three samples. What we got were 1/2 pint glasses. Three of those each, of beers of our choice. They had probably about ten kinds of beer. They also had these big fat huge salted fresh-baked pretzels. Even if the old building had been empty, the visit would have been worth it. The craftsmanship that went into it is impressive. The individual beams had Roman numerals carved into them - the same number on all the beams at each joint - in order, going across the building. John says this means they must have started it on the ground and raised the trusses up. It reminded us of the Burke Bike Barn in East Burke VT, except way more massive. The efficiency of the place was striking, amazing. We have never toured a huge brewery. We can't imagine it being done any better. The bottling room alone was huge. It was really cool to see the entire process of bottle washing, delabeling, sorting (the bad ones got trashed; the not-clean-enough ones got sent back to reform school), filling, labeling, and crated for shipping. We're thinking of applying for jobs there... We were there from before 11:00 until about 4:00. We left impressed, happy, and with an expanded beer palate. And a loaf of rustic beer bread that is very hard and very heavy! Oh, and a pair of cute little beer glasses (the gift). Next we walked around to see various sights: the Horse Pond - a large statue in the middle of a ramped, man-made pond, surrounded by a square with beautiful equine frescoes; Getreidegasse - a pretty shopping street and also the place of Mozart's Geburtshaus (his birthplace); and Mozartplatz with a statue of the composer. We stopped at our favorite wine place to enjoy a glass of pinot (yes, from Burgenland!) while we did our online business - like, how do we get from the Innsbruck train station to the hotel? Where are the vegetarian restaurants? One is just a couple blocks from the hotel - yay! Where are we going to eat dinner tonight? Turns out, we walked right by a veg restaurant yesterday morning. It was good and I was able to post the last blog from there.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario