The Ninth Day Of Our Vacation: Innsbruck And Munich

Most of Saturday was devoted to an exploration of Innsbruck.

The day did not get off to a good—or an early—start.

The previous night, we had given my parents the best of the three hotel rooms assigned to us. My parents’ room, on the second floor of the hotel, was the most spacious and most luxurious of the three rooms. It was also the room nearest the hotel’s central amenities.

In contrast, the room shared by Andrew and me and the room shared by my sister and my brother were situated at the top of the hotel. Our rooms were very small. They featured low ceilings with alcoves and dormer windows. The beds were placed only twelve inches off the floor. The televisions were tiny, the free floor space non-existent, the baths cramped.

We did not think that my parents would be happy in either of the rooms at the top of the hotel, and we had insisted that they occupy what we thought was the best of the three available rooms.

As it turned out, however, my parents were not happy with the room on the second floor. The room had faced a major thoroughfare, and my parents had been subjected to the constant sound of passing traffic through the night. They had been unable to get to sleep until 3:00 a.m.

In consequence, my parents were delayed in getting up on Saturday morning. They were not ready for breakfast until 9:30 a.m. and, when we all gathered, my parents were irritable and prepared to find fault with everything.

The hotel’s breakfast was satisfactory but not lavish. There were no cereals, no sausages, no bacon, and no eggs cooked to order. There were, however, breads and rolls, cold meats and cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, juices and coffee.

Coffee was what my parents needed most, and they had coffee for breakfast and nothing else, announcing that they never wanted to see hard rolls again and insisting that they were going to scream if they ever again were presented with cold meats, cheeses and hard-boiled eggs before 12:00 Noon.

It was not a joyous meal.

Not having enjoyed a good night’s rest, my parents were out of sorts. They had decided that our Innsbruck hotel was the most disappointing hotel of the entire trip and they vowed never to return (not that they will be in Innsbruck again anytime soon).

The hotel experience had put my parents in a very bad frame of mind and made it difficult if not impossible for them (and everyone else) to enjoy our day in Innsbruck.

In these situations, the standard practice in my family is for my sister to hang around my mother while my brother hangs around my father, with no one talking unless a fresh reason for griping asserts itself.

And this was precisely what happened for the rest of the morning: my parents were sullen (and silent) and my brother and sister kept quiet, while Andrew and I had the unpleasant job of steering this cheery group through the major attractions of Innsbruck, trying to generate some interest in (if not enthusiasm for) the sights the city presented.

Innsbruck is a very beautiful city, but our morning was gruesome.

My parents found nothing we saw interesting or amusing. It was not until early afternoon—after an American lunch at a McDonald’s franchise in the center of town—that my parents were able to put their hotel experience behind them and begin to enjoy Innsbruck.

It was 10:00 a.m. when we departed the hotel. We headed straight for the ancient center of Innsbruck. It took us twenty minutes to walk to our destination, and no one said a word en route.

Innsbruck’s Altstadt is filled with Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo buildings, many of them very fine. Since the nearby mountains are always within sight, Innsbruck is an extravagantly beautiful city.

Our first stop was the typical first stop in Innsbruck, The Golden Roof, the three-story balcony built in the early 16th Century for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, so that he might sit in comfort while he watched jousting tournaments in the town square.


From The Golden Roof, we walked the town’s primary streets, admiring the buildings and monuments.

We explored the exterior of Innsbruck’s Hofburg, the primary Habsburg palace in Eastern Austria. We examined the exteriors of the Landeshaus, a series of buildings housing several museums. We viewed the city’s municipal buildings. We saw Landestheater, the city’s opera house. We noted the many stately ancient residences of the minor nobility, which had continued to flourish in the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of World War I. Many of the homes of the minor nobility were particularly fine, with unique and distinguished exteriors.

Innsbruck has been very fortunate in the quality of its architecture over the last 800 years. Further, the city was lucky in that most of its important architecture survived World War II (Innsbruck was bombed only twenty-one times).

However, our morning in Innsbruck was anything but lucky.

All morning, my parents complained that our exploration of Innsbruck seemed to be “aimless” and “directionless”, and that we were, too often, retracing our steps in attempting to locate important buildings on our list of the city’s most significant attractions.

It was all I could do to keep from snapping at them, but I managed to maintain self-control, since snapping would have made a bad situation even worse (and we had a long car ride ahead of us in late afternoon, and I did not want the forthcoming drive to Munich to be unendurable).

During the morning, we visited the interior of only one building. We visited the interior of Innsbruck Cathedral, a large Baroque structure dedicated to Saint James.

Innsbruck Cathedral is remarkably similar to Salzburg Cathedral. Both structures were built at the same time and are much the same, inside and out.

Innsbruck Cathedral is a beautiful building. However, by this point in our trip, we had seen our quotient of Baroque churches for the summer and no one but Andrew was genuinely interested. (My Dad: “Once you’ve seen five or six of these, you’ve seen them all.” My Mom: “This one is the least interesting of all.” My sister: “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we’ve already seen this one.” My brother: “I think I’ll go wait outside.”)


It was after our brief and listless visit to Innsbruck Cathedral, where we had apparently looked bored beyond description, that Andrew took me aside and asked whether an early lunch at a McDonald’s might brighten everyone’s day and serve to dispel the gloom.

I told him it was worth a try, and I asked my Dad what he thought about having lunch at a McDonald’s.

His eyes lighted up, and so did the eyes of my mother and brother. Not even my sister objected to eating lunch at a McDonald’s, so we proceeded to a McDonald’s outlet we had passed earlier in the morning and ordered a lunch of Big Macs, French Fries, Coca-Cola and coffee.

The lunch hit the spot. It provided everyone with a much-needed jolt of energy and brightened the day considerably.

Lunch at McDonald’s turned the day around. It allowed everyone to settle down and prepare to enjoy the afternoon.

This was fortunate, because immediately after lunch we visited something truly extraordinary—and, happily, everyone was in a mood to enjoy and appreciate it.

The attraction was Innsbruck’s Hofkirche.

Hofkirche is home of Europe’s most amazing cenotaph, the cenotaph of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (the same Maximilian I for whom The Golden Roof had been created).

Hofkirche was built as a memorial to Maximilian many years after his death. Maximilian’s cenotaph is Hofkirche’s most important feature (it is a cenotaph, and not a tomb, because Maximilian was buried not in Innsbruck but in Vienna).


The huge ornate monument, created from black marble, occupies the very center of the nave. At its base is an extensive series of bronze reliefs, above which is a double-row of marble reliefs. The twenty-four marble reliefs depict events from Maximilian’s life. The cenotaph itself is enclosed within a fine wrought-iron grill, now gilded.

Surrounding the cenotaph are 28 larger-than-life bronze statues of Maximilian’s ancestors and relatives, all rulers in their own rights.

The cenotaph is amazingly complicated, and very impressive.

Construction of the cenotaph required almost a century. Artists from all over Europe—Rome, Florence, Venice, Nuremberg, Vienna, Prague—contributed drawings for the cenotaph and its many reliefs and sculptures. Among the artists contributing drawings were Albrecht Durer and Christoph Amberger. The end result is one of the most imposing and unique memorials to be seen anywhere.

All of us appreciated Hofkirche. We were glad we had made the effort.

After Hofkirche, we had a decision to make: whether to continue our exploration of central Innsbruck, as planned, or find something else to do. We had two more buildings on our list of prospective attractions to visit, but both of the attractions were churches—and, given what had happened during our morning visit to Innsbruck Cathedral, Andrew and I were fearful of pressing ahead with our plans.

My mother stepped in and made our decision for us. She said that, if the churches were the most important remaining buildings in Innsbruck, we should visit them.

So we did.

Happily, the churches were only a few yards apart, but we had to walk almost half an hour to get to the churches, both located in Wilten, formerly an independent town immediately south of Innsbruck’s Altstadt but now incorporated into Innsbruck itself.

We first visited Wilten Basilica, a sacred building in the Rococo style from the mid-18th Century.


Wilten Basilica is at least the fourth church building on the site, a place of pilgrimage since The Late Roman Era. A famous Madonna painting, no longer extant, used to be on display in an ancient 5th-Century Christian chapel in Wilten.

Wilten Basilica has served as a Basilica Minor only for the last half-century. During the previous 300 years, the current structure had been The Wilten Parish Church.

The interior of Wilten Basilica, known throughout Europe for the brilliance of its pastel colors, is a riot of Rococo excess. Wilten Basilica is considered to be one of the most important Rococo churches on the continent.


Only a few yards away from Wilten Basilica is Wilten Collegiate Church (“Stiftskirche”), a Baroque building that is part of ancient Wilten Abbey.

Wilten has hosted a monastery for 800 years, but a Christian house of worship was situated in Wilten for centuries before the monastery was founded. There is some evidence that a house of Christian worship has continuously occupied the present site of Wilten Collegiate Church for at least 1500 years.

Wilten Collegiate Church, from the mid-17th Century, pre-dates Wilten Basilica by 100 years. The previous church building, at least the fourth on the site, had suffered partial collapse.

Wilten Collegiate Church is at least as beautiful as the more celebrated Wilten Basilica.


The interior of Wilten Collegiate Church is a riot of Baroque excess. Its colors are the deep hues of the Baroque, and not the pastel colors of the Rococo. Wilten Collegiate Church is not as renowned as Wilten Basilica but, in my opinion, the interior of Wilten Collegiate Church was at least of equal interest and beauty.


Both Wilten sacred buildings are prime examples of the influence—and excesses—of The Counter-Reformation. Such over-decorated houses of worship would be unthinkable in Protestant lands.

Andrew says that The Counter-Reformation churches of Austria and South Germany, regions caught between the sensuality of Roman Catholic Italy and the severity of Lutheran North Germany, display an over-the-top quality that exceeds even the most flamboyant Counter-Reformation churches to be found in Italy, Spain or France.

This may be because Austrians and South Germans, living in close proximity to the Protestant North, took The Counter-Reformation much more seriously than Italy, France or Spain, none of which was genuinely threatened by The Reformation. Austria and South Germany, in contrast, very clearly WERE threatened by The Reformation, which may account for the elaborately-florid Austrian and South German churches of the period.

My parents and my sister and my brother actually enjoyed the two Wilten churches, which was a relief after their indifferent—if not hostile—reactions to Innsbruck Cathedral that same morning.

After our visits to the Wilten churches were complete, we took cabs back to our hotel, where we retrieved the car and set out for Munich.

For the first time on the trip, my Dad allowed someone else to do the driving.

Andrew drove, and I sat in the front seat. My mother and my sister sat in the middle seat, which they had occupied throughout the trip, and my father and my brother sat in the rear seat.

It took us two hours and thirty minutes to drive to Munich, and we enjoyed the drive. The sour atmosphere of the morning had long since dissipated, and my parents were able to laugh about the motorcycles revving their engines at all hours of the night as they passed the Innsbruck hotel.

Our Munich hotel for the final two nights of our vacation was the same Munich hotel as the first three nights of our vacation. Returning to the Munich hotel was almost like returning home.

Andrew and I dropped everyone (and our luggage) at the hotel, after which Andrew and I went to turn in the rental car. We returned to the hotel in short order.

We remained at the hotel for only a short time, because we were soon to head out for dinner.

We chose a seafood restaurant, where we ordered stuffed pollock and boiled potatoes (our waitress had informed us that the night’s pollock was exceptional and the best thing on the menu, so we took her word for it—especially after seeing an order delivered to a nearby table).

The pollock was excellent. It was a combination of pollock filets, stuffed with mushrooms and baked, and minced, seasoned pollock, fashioned into balls and fried. We were very pleased with our dinner.

My parents turned in immediately after dinner.

While they slept, my sister and my brother and Andrew and I walked around Munich for an hour, experiencing the city at dusk.

It was a beautiful walk.

The Eighth Day Of Our Vacation: Klagenfurt, The Grossglockner Pass, Zell Am See, Kitzbuhel And Innsbruck

We rose very early Friday morning—we rose at 5:30 a.m.—because we had a very big day planned.

We rose at such an early hour in order that we might gather for breakfast the very minute the hotel dining room opened at 6:30 a.m. We intended to be packed, breakfasted, checked out of our hotel and on our way to Klagenfurt no later than 7:30 a.m.

Our hotel in Graz was the newest hotel of our entire trip. It was an ultra-modern hotel, with ultra-modern architecture and ultra-modern conveniences. We liked it.

However, during breakfast we overheard other guests complain incessantly about the hotel. The guests complained about hotel personnel, the décor, the size of the rooms and the size of the baths, the room furnishings, the bath fixtures, the towels, and Internet connectivity.

The guests making the complaints, we were able to ascertain, were from Belgium and Denmark.

We could not understand the source of the complaints. The hotel was perfectly satisfactory and featured many amenities not often encountered in European hotels.

Further, the dissatisfied Belgians and Danes were bitter because they had had to pay for their breakfasts (we did not—our breakfasts had been included in the price of our rooms). They also complained about the breakfast foods on offer, which they believed to have been inadequate.

We could not understand the complaints about the food, either. The breakfast foods included fruits and fruit juices, cereals, breads and rolls, cold cuts and cheeses, bacon and sausages, eggs cooked to order, and a bewildering variety of pastries. What did the Belgians and Danes expect would be served for breakfast?

After overhearing thirty minutes of non-stop moaning, we concluded that the guests in question were simply complainers by nature and would, no doubt, benefit from some serious counseling. We arrived at this conclusion after listening to them express their dismay about the city of Graz itself, a city these Belgians and Danes had found to be totally boring (“with nothing to do”) and not worth a visit.

We were on our way out of Graz not long after 7:30 a.m. We rolled into Klagenfurt just after 9:00 a.m.

We spent almost two hours leisurely walking around the old part of the town.

We found Klagenfurt, an 800-year-old city surrounded by mountains, to be completely charming.


We did not visit the interiors of any buildings, but we did explore the exteriors of the Landhaus (the regional government center), Neues Rathaus (the new city hall), Altes Rathaus (the old city hall), Klagenfurt Cathedral (a splendid Baroque structure erected as a Protestant Cathedral but converted to Roman Catholic worship during The Counter-Reformation) and Stadtpfarrkirche (Town Parish Church, another splendid Baroque structure).

The old part of Klagenfurt is filled with stately squares, courtyards and churches. The architecture is a pleasing mixture of Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque.


The city boasts a proliferation of towers—towers rise from sacred buildings and towers rise from secular buildings—and the assortment of towers made a stroll through the city a particular pleasure.


We loved our time in Klagenfurt. Klagenfurt is one of the great, undiscovered cities of Europe. One day we shall have to return for a longer visit.

From Klagenfurt, we drove past Lake Worth toward Heiligenblut, the village (with its famous church) that marks the southern entrance to the world’s most remarkable and most famous roadway, Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse (The Grossglockner Alpine Highway).

Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse is the road built upon The Grossglockner Pass, the highest of all passes through The Alps.

From Heiligenblut, one may see the forbidding mountains ahead, mountains through which the roadway proceeds.


We traveled on The Grossglockner Alpine Highway all the way to Zell Am See. Although only 48 kilometers in length, The Grossglockner Alpine Highway passes through several vegetation zones, from temperate to Arctic, and is renowned for its 36 sharp bends that allow the roadway to climb some of the steepest mountains of The Alps.

The road was planned in the 1920’s and constructed in the 1930’s. Having fallen into disrepair through neglect during World War II, the road was repaired and modernized in the 1950’s.

The Grossglockner Alpine Highway is perhaps the most remarkable road in the world, providing drivers with some of the most beautiful views to be had anywhere.

The road is closed for much of the year. The Grossglockner Alpine Highway opened this year on May 9, and is due to close for the year in another few days. Even during the few months each year the road is in use, it is open only during daylight hours (from sunrise to one hour prior to sundown), and is often closed at short notice due to weather conditions.

This year, a one-day ticket for a standard passenger vehicle was 28 Euros. We found the scenery to be well worth 28 Euros.

From the peak of The Grossglockner Alpine Highway, we could see our destination, Zell Am See, in the valley below.


We loved The Grossglockner Alpine Highway. Traveling The Grossglockner Alpine Highway was one of the highlights of our trip.

Zell Am See is a resort town on a lake surrounded by mountains on all sides. The town attracts visitors in the summer for the beauty of its lake and mountains. The town attracts visitors in the winter for its winter sports. Although Zell Am See has fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, the town has 14,000 hotel rooms—and the rooms, all of a very high standard, are filled year-round.

We did not intend to spend much time in Zell Am See, but we did intend to walk around the town a bit and have lunch at an outdoor café, enjoying the breathtaking views to be had in any direction.

We ate lunch at a café that offered nothing but Austrian cuisine.

We ordered Kasnocken, an Austrian dish comprised of noodles, butter and cheese. Kasnocken is baked in an oven and served in the very skillet in which it is baked. The contrast between the creamy parts and the crispy parts is one of the joys of Kasnocken.

For dessert, we ordered Mandelecken, a light almond cake served floating in blueberry sauce. Genuine Mandelecken bears little resemblance to packaged Mandelecken, an almond wafer cookie. Genuine Mandelecken is a delicacy, a light cake with the subtle flavor of almonds. The Mandelecken we were served was Weis (White) Mandelecken, although Mandelecken is sometimes coated in a chocolate glaze.

It was an excellent lunch, filling but not heavy.

From Zell Am See, we drove to Kitzbuhel, taking a scenic route instead of the main roadway. Once again, the views were awe-inspiring.

My father had been to Kitzbuhel before—he had undertaken a skiing holiday in Kitzbuhel several years before I was born—and he had wanted to return to visit the town a second time.

In the 1970’s, Kitzbuhel had been a very fashionable summer and winter resort, but today’s Kitzbuhel is no longer fashionable—today’s Kitzbuhel is down-market, with a reputation as a tourist trap. At present, Zell Am See enjoys the up-market reputation (and desirability) that Kitzbuhel enjoyed thirty years ago.

Kitzbuhel is undeniably beautiful, nestled in a valley below a range of mountains. We did not object to the town, although it certainly did seem to be swarming with British tourists.

In many ways, Kitzbuhel is a town created for the fantasies of travelers. Since the town’s “discovery” by the British in the 1920’s, Kitzbuhel has played up its reputation as a “typical” Alpine village to such an extent that Kitzbuhel is now the least typical village in Austria. The town’s buildings, painted insanely bright colors, feature gabled roofs with overhangs, gussied up to resemble Alpine chalets. The town presents an artificial, “music-box” face to the world.


There was a lot of kitsch in Kitzbuhel—including the local tourist pamphlet titled “Kitz Mix”—and a lot of trashy trinkets for sale.

Nevertheless, Kitzbuhel has a few buildings of interest, first among which are the town’s churches. There are several churches in Kitzbuhel, but the two largest and most important churches—one Gothic, one Baroque—are only steps apart.


We spent an hour walking around the town, and we spent thirty minutes at an outdoor café, drinking coffee and watching tourists.

We were happy we had stopped in Kitzbuhel—and, once there, we were happy to leave.

From Kitzbuhel, we drove to Innsbruck, where we were to spend the night. The scenery from Kitzbuhel to Innsbruck was as wondrous as the scenery we had been experiencing all day.

It took us more than an hour to get to Innsbruck. Once we arrived in Innsbruck, it took us another half hour to locate our hotel.

Our hotel was a very old, family-run establishment—the origins of the hotel date back 500 years—situated in the very center of Innsbruck. From the outside, it looked like an old Mississippi River riverboat hotel catering to steamboat passengers, but the hotel’s interiors had been completely refurbished and were entirely modern. It was a perfectly acceptable hotel.

It was past 6:30 p.m. when we checked in, and the couple checking us in—who appeared to be the hotel’s owners—asked us what our plans were for the evening.

We said we had no plans, other than finding a place for dinner—and we very quickly realized that we had committed a strategic blunder.

The couple running the hotel pounced instantly. They told us that there was a wonderful place nearby that served dinner and provided Tyrolean entertainment during the meal, and that they would be happy to make a telephone call to see whether there were openings for us at that night’s show.

A quick, “No thanks—we don’t want to put you out”, from my Dad had no effect whatsoever. A quick call was placed, and our hotel’s proprietors—quite adept at this little drama, no doubt—assured us that they had been able to secure for us seats for that night’s Tyrolean evening.

We weren’t quite sure what to do: blow the whole thing off, and simply not show up; tell the hotel proprietors that we had changed our minds and beseech them to call back the Tyrolean people and cancel on our behalf; or go to the silly Tyrolean thing after all.

We talked about it up in our rooms, and we decided: well, what the heck, let’s go see what these people of the Tyrol are up to.

And so, against our better judgment, we ended up at The Gundolf Family Tyrolean Evening.

The food was about what we’d expected under the circumstances (all patrons were served the same things): Tyrolean cream of herb soup; an American-style garden salad; escalope with potatoes; and apple strudel with whipped cream.

The entertainment was also about what we’d expected: Tyrolean brass music and Alpenhorn music; singing, accompanied by zither, guitar, harp and cowbells; yodeling; a guy playing a saw; comedy skits (and very low comedy it was, indeed—men looking up women’s dresses and the like); and dancing, including shoe-slapping dances.


The best part of the show was three men dancing while chopping and sawing a log. The dance was mildly amusing and concluded the first half of the show (there was an intermission, which amazed us no end).


The show was, as my mother described it, “very, very Branson, Missouri”.

Nevertheless, we got through the evening—at a tariff of 43 Euros per person, not including beverages—and we did not begrudge giving these people a few of our dollars and two hours of our time for a mediocre meal and some pretty lame entertainment.

At least they had worked hard and honestly for their money.

However, we did not buy a Gundolf Family CD or DVD on our way out the door.

I wish we COULD have bought a DVD of a program we caught on television after we returned to our rooms. It was perhaps the funniest thing I have ever seen.

The program’s narration was in Tyrolean German, which we had trouble understanding, but the thrust of the program was the presentation of real-life videos of lowlife people caught in embarrassing situations.

The segment or partial segment we caught concerned a real-life family of lowlifes from the United States: an obese middle-age woman of appalling ugliness; her equally-obese middle-age husband; their squalid, slatternly adult daughters; their goofy adult son, who appeared to suffer from some sort of mental disability; and a bastard grandchild.

The videos, taken over a period of years, were hysterical. Andrew and I were laughing so hard we were literally crying.

Like any white-trash outfit, the family owned too many cars to count, including the requisite broken-down van. From the videos, we could see that the many cars bore license plates from several different states: Connecticut, Kentucky, New York and Virginia. The old jalopies were parked all over their neighborhood, turning an entire residential district into a used-car lot. One of the outfit’s cars was apparently repossessed, or so Andrew and I gathered from a video scene in which a truck arrived and towed away the newest of the cars.

Like any white-trash outfit, the family had mountains of discarded furniture—tables, dressers, a pool table—filling their entire backyard. To allow passage out of the house, there was a narrow pathway through the junkyard of furniture that began at the back door and proceeded all the way to the outer gate. The backyard full of discarded furniture was shown in all four seasons of the year: in the rains of spring; in the heat waves of summer; in the dead leaves of fall; and in the snows of winter.

Apparently neighbors shunned this white-trash outfit, because the videos showed, over and over, neighbors, including children, rushing into their houses the very minute this white-trash outfit pulled up in front of its house.

The funniest portions of the videos were scenes involving the obese mother, whose piggy face broke into a sweat whenever she walked DOWN her front steps. Among other things, the videos showed her tossing dog waste from her own yard across the fence into a neighbor’s yard, deliberately breaking someone’s yard light, and digging the family cars out from a snowstorm by dumping the snow into the already-plowed street. Aptly, the German narration referred to her, in English, as “White Trash Fat Lady”.

At the end of the program, the father of the white-trash outfit was shown in full profile, revealing his severely-extended stomach, while the narrator intoned, “Is he pregnant, too? Just like his slut daughters? Will there soon be more babies in America’s number one passel of hillbillies? For the answer, tune in next time.”

The man looked like he was ready to drop triplets any second, I swear.

Update Of 1 February 2010: Please see the following.

The Seventh Day Of Our Vacation: The Semmering Pass And Graz

We left Vienna at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday morning and headed south and west on the autobahn en route to Graz.

We remained on the autobahn until we reached the exit for the Semmering Highway, where we departed the autobahn and drove the Semmering Highway most of the way to Graz.

The Semmering Highway traverses The Semmering Pass, the easternmost and lowest of all the great passes across The Alps—but also one of the most scenic.

We were pleased that the highway was completely modern (and wide), as we had feared that the drive might make us queasy.

Except when we were in one of the numerous tunnels, our drive was spectacular. The views were unutterably beautiful.


The Semmering Highway gave us the best scenery of the first seven days of our trip (although Friday’s scenery was to prove to be more spectacular still). For us, natives of Oklahoma and Minnesota, where the land is conspicuous for being flat, the drive was a marvel and almost surreal: an ultra-modern highway high in the mountains, with cars and trucks passing like nothing in the least was out of the ordinary, surrounded by some of the world’s most extravagantly-beautiful scenery in all directions.

The Alps are entirely different from The Rocky Mountains in the American West. The Rocky Mountains are not beautiful like The Alps are beautiful. For one thing, The Rocky Mountains are dry and arid, and lack the greenery of The Alps. Of more importance, The Alps are characterized by a beautiful, diffuse light that lends them a sense of mystery and drama. There are no mountains more beautiful than The Alps. They have been the world’s ultimate tourist attraction for hundreds of years.

We remained on the Semmering Highway until we had to exit in order to take another highway that would take us through the Mur Valley and into the city of Graz. The forests, farms and meadowlands of the Mur Valley were almost as beautiful as the scenery along the Semmering Highway.

It was very early afternoon when we arrived in Graz. We located our hotel first thing, parked the car, checked into our hotel, and headed for Hauptplatz, the main square. At Hauptplatz, we were to meet Leopold, a friend of Andrew from Andrew’s school year in Vienna. Leopold, a native of Vienna, now lives and works in Graz (he is a professor at one of Graz’s many universities), and he was to devote the afternoon and evening to escorting us around Graz and showing us the town’s principal sights.

Leopold (his nickname was “Poldie”) was very, very charming. He was very short—he was only 5’6”, I would guess, if even that—and he had the dark hair and dark, flashing eyes of a Gypsy (a very common “type” in Austria) and the urbane, polished, excessively-polite manner of a professional diplomat. He spoke beautiful but heavily-accented English, he gesticulated constantly (but elegantly) with his hands, and he had a winning, even irresistible, smile. We were all captivated by him.

Leopold showed us around the Medieval Quarter of Graz, one of the best-preserved city centers in Europe. The Medieval Quarter is noted for its narrow lanes, ancient buildings, numerous market squares, and many intriguing monuments.


We saw the Rathaus (city hall) and the Landhaus (regional government offices). We saw Landeszeughaus (the ancient provincial arsenal) and Herrengasse, an ancient neighborhood filled with fine residential properties, all built centuries ago.

We saw the exteriors of several museums, a couple of which featured modern architecture. One museum was the Landesmuseum, which houses a group of museums that includes a history museum, a natural history museum and a collection of Old Master paintings. Another museum was the Stadtmuseum, the municipal museum. Another was Neue Gallerie, a museum that displays 19th and 20th Century art. Yet another was the Kunsthaus, Graz’s newest landmark and perhaps the world’s most famous building planned and erected in the 21st Century. The Kunsthaus houses contemporary art.

We visited two ancient churches, Franziskanerkirche (Franciscan Church), an ancient Gothic church, and Stadtpfarrkirche (Town Parish Church), a Gothic church with a Baroque overlay.

From the Medieval Quarter, we took a funicular to The Castle And Cathedral Quarter, which lies on a fortress-like hill high above the city.

My parents and my brother had never experienced a funicular before, and they were fascinated by the technology used in a funicular.


In The Castle And Cathedral Quarter, we observed the remains of the ancient castle, once home of the Habsburg Monarchy until the capital was moved to Vienna. We saw the elaborate Mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II (the last of the Habsburg rulers to be buried in Graz), which is a chapel in all but name, and we visited Graz Cathedral, another Gothic edifice with a Baroque overlay.

From The Castle And Cathedral Quarter, we had an exceptional view of the town below, especially the Kunsthaus. In fact, the Kunsthaus building may best be appreciated by looking down on it from the old castle ramparts.


Once we had seen everything Leopold wanted to show us in The Castle And Cathedral Quarter, we took the funicular back to Graz’s Medieval Quarter.

There we had coffee and cake at an old, graceful café. We had Austrian Coffee, loaded with whipped cream, and Punschkrapfen, a very heavy Austrian cake stuffed with apricot jam and nougat chocolate, then soaked in rum, and finally covered with a thick, pink sugar glaze.

Leopold had selected the café because, he said, it offered the best Punschkrapfen in Graz—and, he told us, he knew how much Andrew loved Punschkrapfen.

The cake was incredibly moist and sweet, with a very strong flavor. I believe it may be addictive. We all decided that we, too, liked Punschkrapfen very much.

After our Austrian Coffee and Punschkrapfen, we spent another couple of hours simply strolling the streets of Graz, a magnificent city for walking and gazing. Leopold served as a veritable fount of information, pointing out interesting buildings with interesting histories, and showing us the former residences of notable persons.

Leopold kept pointing out buildings with musical associations, and he did this for Andrew’s sake. For instance, he pointed out to Andrew a building in which conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who was born in Berlin but grew up in Graz, once lived, and he pointed out a building in which conductor Philippe Jordan lived not long ago.

I had had no idea, until we actually set foot in the city, that Graz was such a beautiful and intriguing place, steeped in history and art, with a wealth of museums, churches and historic places of interest. Someday Andrew and I shall have to return to Graz, and spend two weeks exploring the city at leisure.

It was well past 8:00 p.m. when we decided that it was time to have dinner. We continued to allow Leopold to be our guide, and he selected a very fine restaurant situated near the Rathaus (which looked remarkable in the approaching twilight).


The restaurant served nothing but Styrian food. Styrian cuisine, according to Leopold, has been far the best in Austria for hundreds of years and is highly-prized throughout Europe.

The restaurant was excellent, and the food was excellent.

We had five courses.

Our first course was a large wooden platter of meats, cheeses, and garnishes (the garnishes were fresh fruits and vegetables). According to Leopold, such a platter is the traditional Styrian way of starting a meal associated with an important occasion—and, he made clear, our visit to Graz certainly qualified as a special occasion.

Our second course was the salad course: smoked trout mousse accompanied by a goat cheese-apple-cucumber salad and Pumpernickel Bread. This was the only course for which bread accompanied the food.

Our third course was the soup course: pumpkin-cream-corn soup, which was very good (although my father and my brother ordered beef soup with pancake strips).

Between the seven of us, we ordered five different main courses: stewed pork cutlets in a sour cream-mushroom sauce served with fried potatoes; roasted pork served with dumplings and white cabbage salad; butter-fried perch served with parsley potatoes and mixed vegetables; oxen steak cooked in onions served with green beans wrapped in bacon; and venison stew served with red cabbage and dumplings.

For our dessert course, we all accepted Leopold’s recommendation and ordered apple-apricot-nut strudel served with walnut ice cream.

It was quite a dinner!

(There was no gluttony involved on our part—we had, after all, skipped lunch . . .)

After dinner, Leopold escorted us back to our hotel. He had been a delightful and generous guide—Graz would not have been the same without him—and we were sorry to have to part company.

We were immensely pleased to have made not only the acquaintance of Graz but the acquaintance of Leopold as well.

The Sixth Day Of Our Vacation: Vienna

One of the best things about our stay in Vienna was our hotel. Even though we stayed in Vienna only two nights, we loved the hotel and we were very happy there. It was the most interesting hotel of our trip, and it provided us with our most pleasing hotel experience.

Andrew, who knows Vienna well, had selected our Vienna hotel. He had selected the hotel based upon its location, its value and its charm.

The hotel opened in 1873 and is very much of its era. It featured grand public rooms and grand public spaces, and maintained more than a whiff of Imperial Vienna.

The grandeur was carried over to the rooms: the rooms were very large, with very large windows and very high ceilings.

The hotel definitely has seen better days—the hotel has not been renovated since 1983—and it cannot be said that the room furnishings and appointments were up to American standards. Nonetheless, the hotel had a certain faded charm—and it had air conditioning, which turned out to be essential, since Vienna was suffering a heat wave during our stay—and we very much enjoyed its frayed grandeur.

The hotel’s public areas were well-maintained, even if the guest rooms might have benefited from fresh décor and furnishings. I loved the spacious Old-World lobbies and elaborate staircases and coffered ceilings.

The hotel’s breakfast was served in the main dining room. The hotel’s dining room was very beautiful, very dignified and very grand. Even at breakfast, each table in the dining room sported full linen service, very unusual for the breakfast hour in my experience.

The hotel’s breakfast was perfectly satisfactory. There were fruits and fruit juices, cereals, breads and rolls and pastries, jams, meats, cheeses—and bacon and sausages and eggs, which we like to eat while we are on vacation.

The food was fine. It was precisely what one might expect of breakfast food in a hotel dining room.

Nevertheless, on both mornings, every guest around us complained, bitterly and nonstop, about the food. The complaints focused on what the guests perceived to be an inadequate selection of foods and an exorbitant price.

For us, breakfast had been included in the cost of our rooms, and we initially had assumed that such was the case for other guests, too.

Our assumption had been wrong.

Breakfasts were included for travelers who had booked the hotel through American travel websites such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, but breakfasts were not included for travelers who had booked the hotel through European websites such as Venere. Persons who had booked the hotel through European websites had to pay fifteen Euros for their breakfasts.

This galled our fellow diners no end, all Europeans or South Americans (we did not encounter any American guests at the hotel during our stay). These persons complained about the cost, and the selection, and the outrageousness of it all. French guests seemed to be particularly irked, as did a few travelers from Spain.

The moaning was more than we could bear—and one member of our party was unable to keep his mouth shut.

“There’s a supermarket across the street, and a McDonald’s in the next block, and a Starbuck’s another block over, and about a zillion local cafes up and down the block” my brother, in exasperation, told a French woman who could not complain loudly enough about the “robbery” to which she was being—quite voluntarily—subjected.

“For fifteen Euros, I expect strawberries and cream, and crepes, and chocolate” was her reply. “And good French cheese.”

“Well, hard cheese” said my Dad, knowing the French woman would not understand the colloquialism (while the rest of us tried to hide our laughter).

It was all we could do to keep from falling on the floor.

Ourselves, we enjoyed the breakfasts—and we enjoyed the beauty and elegance of the hotel dining room even more.

Our plan for Wednesday was to explore the very center of Vienna in the morning, hitting all the highlights, and to select a site for in-depth exploration in the afternoon.

However, oppressive heat and humidity were to govern our day.

We took a tram to The Ring, and from there we explored the exteriors of The Rathaus, The Kunsthistorisches Museum, The Natural History Museum, Burgtheater and The Austrian Parliament, all the time walking around in gruesome heat.

Our next stop was The Hofburg. We explored the various exteriors and courtyards of this main palace complex of the Habsburg dynasty, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible.

From The Hofburg, we walked to the Vienna State Opera and explored the exterior of the famed opera house while the sun beat down upon us.

Our final morning stop was Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, situated in the very center of the city. The construction of Saint Stephen’s had occupied much of the 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries; the church is filled with treasures and relics from eight centuries.

We explored both the exterior and interior of Saint Stephen’s, but we did not explore the crypt nor did we attempt to climb the towers. I thought Saint Stephen’s was less interesting than several churches in Munich, but I acknowledge that Munich may have more than satisfied my quotient of historic churches for the trip.

Once we had completed our visit to Saint Stephen’s, we had a decision to make: what to do with our afternoon in Vienna.

On our list of prospective places to visit were Schonbrunn Palace, The Belvedere Palace and The Kunsthistorisches Museum.

For different reasons, we abandoned all three items on our list.

We abandoned Schonbrunn Palace because we had already visited Herrenchiemsee and because we planned to visit The Residenz once we returned to Munich—and we were, frankly, not confident that we wanted to explore a third massive palace.

My Dad: Is Schonbrunn better than Herrenchiemsee or The Residenz?

Andrew: Well, Schonbrunn is completely different from Herrenchiemsee or The Residenz—but getting there will be a bit of a journey. It will take some time on the subway, and then there will be a bit of a walk to the palace. The gardens are one of the best reasons to visit Schonbrunn. The gardens are enormous—but I’m not sure we would enjoy the gardens in this hot weather.

My Dad: Schonbrunn’s out.

We abandoned The Belvedere Palace because we had most wanted to visit The Belvedere Gardens, but the oppressive weather—it was as hot and humid as a brutal Oklahoma summer afternoon—made a visit to the gardens unattractive for us.

My Dad: Other than the gardens, what’s at The Belvedere? What’s inside?

Andrew: Well, The Belvedere houses Austrian art, much of it from the late-19th Century and early-20th Century.

My Dad: Will we like it? Is it worth a visit to The Belvedere if it’s too hot to enjoy the gardens?

Andrew: Are you intent on seeing Klimt paintings? If you MUST see Klimt paintings before leaving Vienna, you will not want to miss The Belvedere. If Klimt is not a priority, and it’s too hot to enjoy The Belvedere Gardens, I would skip it.

My Dad: Belvedere’s out.

We abandoned The Kunsthistorisches Museum because we had already visited The Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and we did not want to press our luck with my Dad or my brother by visiting more art museums.

My Dad: Is The Kunsthistorisches better than The Alte Pinakothek?

Andrew: It is not even one-half as good.

My Dad: Then I say we skip it. What are your thoughts?

My Mom: I would be happy to skip it. However, we must do something. We are in Vienna. We may not be in Vienna again for years and years and years. There has to be something we can do. We are NOT going back to the hotel and throwing away an afternoon in Vienna.

My Dad: Where can we go where it’s air-conditioned, and there is something all of us might enjoy? You must be able to suggest something.

Andrew: Well, there’s a military history museum. It’s in a beautiful building and I’m sure it’s air-conditioned. It presents a history of Austria from the 16th Century through World War II.

My Dad: What’s the best thing in the museum?

Andrew: The exhibitions on the World Wars are interesting.

My Dad: Will Shelby and her mother enjoy the museum?

Andrew: It’s not just a military museum. It’s a history museum as much as a military museum.

My Dad: Name something Shelby and her mother might want to see.

Andrew: The museum has the car in which Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. You may still see the bullet holes.

My Mom: Well, that’s all we need to know! Sign us up!

And we DID visit The Museum Of Military History.

We had to take the subway to get there, followed by a stroll, but it was not a long walk to the museum from the subway stop.

The museum was very interesting, much more interesting than we had expected. It was a perfect afternoon project for us because the building was splendid—and air-conditioned—and because the displays were first-class in every way. We found The Museum Of Military History to be 100 times more interesting than Munich’s Stadtmuseum.

The Museum Of Military History occupies a purpose-built edifice erected in the 1850’s. Originally named The Imperial War Museum, the museum was intended to be a living tribute to the glories of the Habsburg monarchy, then at its zenith of power, influence and wealth.

The museum is situated in the very center of what used to be the city’s garrison and arsenal.

One must pass through a very impressive gateway to enter the compound.


The museum itself is not far into the compound. The museum building was built in a mishmash of architectural styles, with prominent Byzantine and Moorish features.


The building is enormous, as may be seen in this watercolor from the 1850’s.


The interior spaces are very large, very imposing and very grand. The interiors reminded us of a palace more than a museum.

The ground-floor central entranceway pays tribute to prominent Austrian military leaders and is called The Hall Of Strategists.


The second-floor central space is even more impressive. It is named The Hall Of Fame and depicts mythic events from Austrian history.


There were four enormous exhibition galleries on the first floor and four enormous exhibition galleries on the second floor, each devoted to a particular theme. The galleries were sumptuously designed, decorated and lighted. Historic paintings were splendidly placed to enhance the appeal of the exhibition galleries.

The eight galleries were devoted to: The Thirty Years’ War; Empress Maria Therese and her long reign; The Napoleonic Era and The Age Of Revolution; the years 1848 to 1866, at the beginning of which Austria won a war against Italy and at the end of which Austria lost a war against Prussia, in the process losing permanently its status as a major European power; the events at Sarajevo in 1914; World War I; the aftermath of World War I, when Austria remained in a virtual state of civil war from 1919 to 1938; the Anschluss and World War II, during which Austria was part of The German Reich; and Austria’s role as a sea power (which had been ended with World War I).

We enjoyed our visit to the museum immensely. We visited every room, and we were not bored for a minute. The Museum Of Military History is one of the finest museums I have ever visited.

It was late afternoon by the time we had completed our visit to the museum, and we decided to return to our hotel and clean up.

We spent a couple of hours back at the hotel, relaxing, before we ventured out again for dinner.

We chose a very fine restaurant, perhaps the finest restaurant of our entire trip.

We started with pumpkin soup, and we continued with hot bacon-cabbage salad.

Our next course was a tiny plate of seasoned meat dumplings.

We each ordered a different entrée (but sneaked small samples of each other’s food). My Dad ordered roast rack of venison fillet cooked in red wine. My Mom ordered crispy pike with cream beet sauce. My sister ordered perch in red pepper cream sauce. My brother ordered beef and onion roast (a Viennese specialty). Andrew ordered boiled beef with apple-horseradish-chive sauce (another Viennese specialty). I ordered Hungarian goulash.

For dessert, we had white chocolate-raspberry mousse.

The food was spectacular.

For the third night in a row, we had enjoyed a magnificent dinner of genuine Austrian cuisine—and we had loved it.

After dinner, we returned to our hotel.

We were almost sorry to have to leave Vienna the following morning—we had barely scratched the surface of one of Europe’s most historic and most important cities—but we were not sorry to leave Vienna’s heat and humidity behind us.

Weather reports had informed us that Styria, our next destination, was not suffering from the heat wave that was stifling Vienna.

We found that to be welcome news.

The Fifth Day Of Our Vacation: Salzburg, Melk And Vienna

Tuesday, the fifth day of our vacation, was to see us begin the day in Salzburg in Western Austria and end the day in Vienna in Eastern Austria.

We rose at 6:30 a.m., and met for breakfast at 7:30 a.m.

Our Salzburg hotel’s breakfast was nothing on the order of the elaborate breakfasts we had enjoyed at our hotel in Munich. There were not even fruit juices or cereals on offer at the Salzburg hotel. The only foods served for breakfast were breads and rolls, cheeses, cold cuts, soft-boiled eggs and coffee. It was a pure German/Austrian breakfast.

We made do with the foods available—in any case, we had not expected lavish breakfasts every day during our trip—and after our morning coffee and rolls we left the hotel and walked to Salzburg Cathedral, arriving not long after the Cathedral had opened for the day.

The present Salzburg Cathedral is a Baroque building erected early in the 17th Century.


The present Cathedral building is at least the third Cathedral structure on the site.

A Christian church had occupied the spot for several centuries before Salzburg became a Bishopric, signifying that a house of worship has continuously occupied the site of Salzburg Cathedral for well over 1200 years.

I did not find Salzburg Cathedral to be particularly fascinating or particularly beautiful. It is a garden-variety Baroque Cathedral, without unusual or extraordinary features, and it is more-or-less instantly forgettable. It was the least interesting church we visited on the entire trip.

However, for us to have missed Salzburg Cathedral would have been unforgivable on our part, since the Cathedral was only a short walk from our hotel. In any case, we devoted only forty-five minutes to examining the Cathedral’s exterior and interior.

After our visit to Salzburg Cathedral, we walked back to our hotel. On the way, we stopped at a café and ordered orange juice, coffee and poppy-seed cake, an Austrian specialty. This second breakfast was much better than the breakfast offered at our hotel.

When we returned to the hotel, we checked out, retrieved our vehicle and headed for Vienna.

By design, we had shortchanged Salzburg. We had wanted to see Salzburg, but we had not wanted to devote a couple of days to an exploration of Salzburg in depth.

And we DID see Salzburg. Over the course of one late afternoon, one evening and one early morning, we had spent over four hours exploring the center of the city. That was enough time for us to get a taste of Salzburg. Salzburg’s Castle, Residenz, Mirabell Gardens and numerous important churches shall have to wait for some future visit.

The drive to Vienna was very beautiful. The scenery was so spectacular that the time passed in an instant.

Two-thirds of the way to Vienna, we stopped at Melk for a visit to famed Melk Abbey.


Our first order of business at Melk Abbey was to buy tickets for the afternoon English-language guided tour.

That accomplished, we ate lunch in the Abbey restaurant, which was genuinely excellent. The food far exceeded our expectations. We ordered a full lunch—soup with herb pancakes (another Austrian specialty), braised beef tips in cream sauce with noodles, and Sacher Torte with whipped cream—and we had a wonderful meal.

After lunch, we explored the gardens of Melk Abbey, pleasant and peaceful but not particularly remarkable.

From the gardens, we visited Melk Abbey Museum. The museum was very peculiar, and not in keeping with the character of Melk Abbey.

Melk Abbey Museum is a creation of the late 1990’s, with a ridiculous ultra-modernistic interior design that is already gruesomely outdated. Its exhibits are more intent on displaying modern technologies circa 1997 (such as interactive videos) than presenting a detailed history of the Abbey.

It is a very, very bad museum.

I suspect that Melk Abbey Museum is geared toward school groups, designed to appeal to fifth-graders fascinated by technological gizmos. It offers little of interest to adults.

The guided tour of Melk Abbey was our main event. In summer months (but only in summer months), Melk Abbey may be visited independently, but we believed that we might benefit from the daily guided tour in English, offered at the unusual starting time of 2:55 p.m.

I think we made the right decision.

The guided tour was a good one. It escorted us through the most interesting parts of the Abbey, including the renowned Abbey library and the main Abbey church. The tour included a visit to the primary terrace, which provided a magnificent overlook of the town of Melk and Wachau Valley.

Melk Abbey and the surrounding area are very, very beautiful.

We were right to devote an entire afternoon to Melk Abbey. It was the highlight of our day.

From Melk, we drove to Vienna.

We checked into our hotel first thing, but we did not remain long in our accommodations because we had plans for the evening.

We were somewhat pressed for time—we had to head to Theater An Der Wien for a performance of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, and we had to find something to eat along the way—and we had no time to settle in and relax. There was to be no dawdling.

On our way to the theater, we stopped at a small family restaurant that offered two, and only two, fixed dinner menus, with no other food items available. Andrew said that, given our time limitations, a small, fixed-menu restaurant was our only option for dinner unless we wanted only a sandwich.

As soon as we entered the restaurant, Andrew informed the waiter that we had tickets for “Don Giovanni” and inquired whether the restaurant could accommodate our needs. The waiter assured us that we would make the “Don Giovanni” performance, and we took a table.

Of the two fixed menu choices, we all ordered the same option (which was menu number one): tomato-zucchini-cream soup; pork sauerbraten with cooked fresh cabbage and potato dumplings; and cake that was Black Forest Cake in all but name (except the cake featured more cherries than the typical Black Forest Cake).

The food was excellent, and the service was fast and efficient. Andrew told us that the only reason the service was fast and efficient was because we had told the waiter in advance—prior to taking a table—that we had tickets to “Don Giovanni” at Theater An Der Wien. According to Andrew, if we had not asked, upfront, prior to taking a table, whether the restaurant could accommodate our theater performance, the service would have been as slow as molasses.

And, indeed, we were attended and served much more quickly than other diners in the restaurant. We enjoyed the waiter’s highest priority—and apparently the kitchen staff’s, too—and yet none of the other diners appeared to be in the least put out by the clear preference our table was given.

Andrew says that the Viennese understand the seriousness of making the curtain of an opera performance!

The restaurant got us through our meal with ease, and we were able to arrive at Theater An Der Wien with time to spare.

In hindsight, there had been no point in rushing—the “Don Giovanni” performance was disastrous. The production was vulgar, lewd and offensive. The Theater An Der Wien “Don Giovanni” may have been the worst performance of anything I have ever attended anywhere.

At the intermission, the first words out of my Dad’s mouth were, “Until tonight, I thought burlesque was dead. I thought it died out in the 1930’s. I was wrong. Burlesque lives on—in Vienna.”

“Do you think we should leave?” I asked him and my mother.

“And miss the strippers in the second act?” was my Dad’s very sarcastic rejoinder.

And we had a very long discussion about whether we should remain for the rest of the performance. Not only was no one enjoying the performance, we were also dumbfounded how trashy was the presentation.

We left the decision in the hands of my brother and sister, who were, I think, more bored than offended by the cheesy goings-on onstage.

We decided to stay for the second act—after all, what else was there for us to do for the rest of the evening?—and my Dad told my brother and sister, as we re-entered the theater, “Think of this as history. Think of this as a visit back in time, back to the 1960’s, back to Jack Ruby’s sleazy Dallas nightclub before the authorities closed it down. This is how the underworld used to live back then—and now you can see it recreated, live and onstage, here in Vienna.”

And, although the second act was just as bad as the first, we somehow made it through the remainder of the performance.

Walking back to our hotel after the performance, my Dad said, “You know, maybe we should have tried that atonal thing in Salzburg after all. It couldn’t have been any worse than this.”

He was referring to a Luigi Nono opera presented at this year’s Salzburg Festival.

(Before our trip, Andrew and I had teased my parents about taking everybody to hear an atonal opera while we were in Salzburg.)

My Dad was right.

The Luigi Nono opera could not have been more insufferable than Theater An Der Wien’s lousy “Don Giovanni”.

The Fourth Day Of Our Vacation: Lake Chiemsee And Salzburg

On Monday, Andrew and I were able to sleep until 6:00 a.m.

We did not wake until our 6:00 a.m. wake-up call, and this signified to us that we were finally operating on Central European Time.

Andrew and I had to get up immediately. On this morning, there was to be no lounging around for us, allowing us to ease into our day.

Our plan for Monday was to meet for breakfast in the hotel dining room at 7:15 a.m. We planned an early breakfast because we needed to eat, pack our things, and check out of our hotel no later than 8:30 a.m., when our vehicle was due to be delivered.

We had ordered a KIA Carnival, designed to hold seven passengers in a 2-3-2 seating configuration, with ample space for luggage.

None of us had ever been in a KIA vehicle, whether car or minivan, and we did not know what to expect. However, the KIA appeared to be perfectly adequate for our needs for seven days (although none of us would want to own one), and we signed the papers and climbed in.

Our first destination was Lake Chiemsee, halfway between Munich and Salzburg. We planned to arrive at Lake Chiemsee around 10:00 a.m., and spend a few hours at Bavaria’s largest body of water before proceeding to Salzburg.

My father drove, with my brother sitting in the front seat beside him. My mother and my sister sat in the middle seats, and Andrew and I sat in the rear seats, exposed, praying that no large trucks would crash into us. (There were a lot of trucks on the roadway between Munich and Salzburg. They traveled at speeds not permitted in the U.S., and the drivers changed lanes like lunatics. It was scary.)

It took us little more than an hour to drive to Lake Chiemsee.

We parked the minivan in the town of Prien Am Chiemsee and walked to the boat pier and bought our tickets for the ferry to Herreninsel, one of three islands in Lake Chiemsee. Herreninsel is home to Schloss Herrenchiemsee, one of Ludwig II’s unfinished palaces, as well as an Augustinian Monastery, parts of which are over 1200 years old.

The boat ride to the island took twenty minutes.

As soon as we got off the boat, we bought our tickets for the attractions on the island (which are sold only at the boat landing).

We bought combination tickets, which allowed us to visit anything and everything on the island. Since combination tickets cost only seven Euros each, and since we were not entirely certain how much of the island we would chose to visit, combination tickets seemed most sensible for us.

First thing, we walked to Schloss Herrenchiemsee, twenty minutes from the boat landing, and waited for the next English-language tour.

The only way to visit Schloss Herrenchiemsee is to take one of the guided tours. There are German-language and English-language guided tours every thirty minutes (but speakers of French, Italian, Spanish or Russian, among other European languages, are out of luck unless they have made advance arrangements for group tours).

Modeled after Versailles, Schloss Herrenchiemsee was begun in 1878. The palace was never completed. Work on Schloss Herrenchiemsee was halted in 1886 upon the death (or murder) of Ludwig II.

Three wings of Schloss Herrenchiemsee were mostly completed at the time of Ludwig II’s demise. Those three wings are the only parts of Herrenchiemsee that stand today.

The front façade of Herrenchiemsee, seen in the photograph below, has two wings extending from the main building at the rear. The front façade is longer—almost 25 per cent longer—than an American football field.


Other portions of the palace, in various stages of construction at the time of Ludwig’s death, were never completed. To the contrary, they were demolished over the next few years. The Bavarian government saw no need to continue to pay for Ludwig’s preposterous fantasies after his death.

Ludwig had already bankrupted the Bavarian treasury by creating Linderhof, Schachen and Neuschwanstein, all of whose constructions had begun before plans for Herrenchiemsee—the largest and costliest of Ludwig’s palaces—were even put into place. The Bavarian government, understandably, wanted the royal drain on the treasury to end.

Some persons believe that the Bavarian government was responsible for Ludwig’s death. Whatever the cause of the monarch’s death (the official cause of death was drowning), the Bavarian government was delighted to be free of its spendthrift head of state.

The portions of Herrenchiemsee that were completed are stupendous—if grossly over-decorated. We found Herrenchiemsee to be well worth a visit.

Despite the fact that the exteriors and interiors were designed in the final quarter of the 19th Century, Herrenchiemsee is a pure Rococo conceit, a 19th-Century recreation of an 18th-Century make-believe world that never existed. No matter where the eye turns, the eye is overburdened with a riot of color, design, texture—and opulence, even excess.

The guided tour escorted visitors through a significant portion of the palace: three rooms on the ground floor and sixteen rooms on the second floor. Grand public rooms and grand private rooms were included in the tour.

Perhaps the most impressive interior at Herrenchiemsee was the central staircase, officially named “The State Staircase”.


The most famous room at Herrenchiemsee is the Hall Of Mirrors, patterned after the Hall Of Mirrors at Versailles—except that the Herrenchiemsee Hall Of Mirrors is substantially larger than the Versailles Hall Of Mirrors.


The Hall Of Mirrors runs the length of the upper front façade of Herrenchiemsee and affords excellent views of the ornamental gardens. It was undeniably impressive, if undeniably over-the-top.

Even more beautiful than Herrenchiemsee’s Hall Of Mirrors, the largest gallery in the palace, was “The Small Gallery”, very impressive in its own right and itself built to a palatial standard of luxury.


The Royal Bodyguard Antechamber was not too shabby, either, even though it was the simplest among an extensive series of antechambers through which visitors passed en route to The Hall Of Mirrors.


The Hall Of Mirrors is flanked by The Hall Of Peace . . .


And The Hall Of War.


A Council Chamber was incorporated into the palace, a room in which State business could be conducted. Since Ludwig intended to live at Herrenchiemsee on a more-or-less permanent basis once the palace was completed, he needed a suitable room in which to discuss Affairs Of State with ministers summoned from Munich.


One of the most fascinating rooms at Herrenchiemsee was a salon whose walls were encased in highest-quality porcelain. It was, fittingly, known as The Porcelain Room.


The three present wings of Herrenchiemsee, mostly finished at the time of Ludwig’s death, were never to be entirely completed. They remain mostly as they were on the day Ludwig died.

One unfinished portion of Herrenchiemsee, The North Staircase, was part of the guided tour. The North Staircase, constructed but not decorated at the time of Ludwig’s death, is almost as impressive as The State Staircase, even though The North Staircase is completely unadorned.


Herrenchiemsee was enormously impressive, even if the whole palace was excessive and overwrought.

It is fortunate that the Bavarian government has always preserved Ludwig’s palaces—and it is equally fortunate that the palaces were untouched by war. They are among the most authentic palaces in Europe, maintained as they were in 1886, when their constructions were halted (only Linderhof was complete at the time of Ludwig’s death).

Of course, the palaces are prime magnets for tourism. Over fifty million persons have visited Ludwig’s various palaces since the monarch’s death, allowing the Bavarian government to recoup, into perpetuity, some of the original costs. An entire department of the Bavarian government is dedicated solely to the upkeep and administration of Ludwig’s palaces, and it is one of the largest departments of the government.

The guided tour of Herrenchiemsee lasted only 45 minutes. We felt rushed as we were escorted through the rooms. We wished that the tour had allowed us more time to examine the fascinating interiors. We were breathless at the end of our whirlwind sashay through the palace. In fact, we wanted to take the tour a second time, but that would have involved returning to the boat landing and buying a second round of tickets.

At the end of the tour, we walked to a different part of the palace that now houses a museum dedicated to Ludwig II. The museum presents the story of Ludwig’s life, and is filled with items owned by or associated with Ludwig.

We enjoyed visiting the twelve rooms of the museum. On display were portraits, busts and photographs of Ludwig, as well as state robes and state ceremonials owned and used by Ludwig. Ludwig’s furniture, paintings and memorabilia were part of the museum, too, as were model stage sets (Ludwig was fascinated by theater). One entire portion of the museum was devoted to Ludwig’s association with composer Richard Wagner.

Once we had visited the museum, we had lunch at the palace café, one of only two places for the public to eat on the island of Herreninsel (the other is at an hotel near the boat landing).

After lunch, we walked through the gardens attached to the palace.

The gardens, too, had been modeled after the gardens at Versailles, but only a very small portion of the planned gardens at Herrenchiemsee had been completed before Ludwig died. Since 1886, no further extension of the gardens has been attempted, or even contemplated.

Complicated, even ornate, garden plans, designed by one of Europe’s greatest landscape architects, had been drawn up before construction of Herrenchiemsee commenced. The comprehensive plans never have been and never will be realized.

From the Herrenchiemsee gardens, we walked to the Augustinian Monastery.

The Augustinian Monastery is comprised of four large buildings erected around a central courtyard. Three of the buildings are open to the public.

One of the four buildings had been erected early in the 18th Century as a palace for the Bavarian ruling family. One-hundred-and-fifty years later, Ludwig II had refurbished the building according to his own lavish tastes, a project that inspired him to embark upon the construction of a brand-new palace one mile away.

The royal building at the Augustinian Monastery was much the most interesting.

Its interiors greatly resembled the interiors at Herrenchiemsee. Most impressive was The Imperial Hall, highly-ornamented pursuant to Ludwig’s personal standard of excess.

The other two Augustinian Monastery buildings open to the public contained a number of exhibits. One exhibit was devoted to the history of the 1200-year-old Monastery, and the Monastery’s conversion to royal purposes. Another exhibit was devoted to Germany’s post-war constitution, drafted at the Monastery in 1948. Another exhibit was devoted to painters at Lake Chiemsee, and yet another was devoted to one particular painter, Julius Exter, an artist unknown to us. The paintings in both exhibits were very good.

Alas, the sacred buildings at the Augustinian Monastery are not open to the public. The historic sacred buildings are the oldest part of the Monastery, and contain what is supposed to be a miraculous Cathedral as well as a notable Chapter House. We very much regretted that they are closed to the public.

It was 4:00 p.m. by the time we had completed our visit to the island of Herreninsel. We were all very pleased that we had decided to devote a few hours to Herreninsel and its attractions. Herreninsel gave us one of the best days of our vacation.

From Herreninsel, we took the ferry back to Prien Am Chiemsee, retrieved the minivan, and continued on our way to Salzburg.

We found our hotel in Salzburg without too much trouble. We spent thirty minutes settling into the hotel, after which we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking around the center of Salzburg.

I did not find Salzburg to be especially interesting, or even especially charming. The town was somewhat crowded, probably because The Salzburg Festival was in progress, and the town struck me as a bit too touristy. Images of Mozart were everywhere. Salzburg Festival banners and placards were everywhere. Everything was too commercial for my tastes.

Our most interesting encounter in Salzburg was the small graveyard of an unremarkable church in the very center of town. There we found numerous graves of very young men who had died in April and even May of 1945. They were among those who perished in the very final days of World War II, giving their lives, most on an involuntary basis, to a cause already doomed. Most of the graves bore fresh flowers. It was very moving.

We dined in a restaurant outside the immediate center of Salzburg, a restaurant patronized not by tourists but by locals. The restaurant is supposed to be a favorite of native Salzburgers, and very seldom visited by outsiders.

We were hungry, and we went all out, sampling several different foods. We had three salads: a cold potato-cucumber-onion-vinegar salad; a cucumber-sour cream salad; and an onion-fruit-Roquefort Cheese salad. The latter sounds unappealing, but in fact it wasn’t bad.

For our main courses, we ordered veal cooked in a cream-white wine sauce and roasted pork loin stuffed with plums and onions. The meats were served with sauerkraut and cooked red cabbage, and we liked the sauerkraut and cabbage. The sauerkraut and cabbage were fresh, and we learned that fresh sauerkraut tastes nothing like preserved sauerkraut. Even my sister liked the sauerkraut, which surprised me greatly.

For dessert, we ordered apple strudel and plum cake. The apple strudel had been made with tangy apples, soaked in some kind of liqueur, and it was divine. The plum cake was akin to an American fruit pie: brandied plums, set between two layers of pastry. It had a sweet-sour flavor, and probably is an acquired taste.

Our meal was superb. It was interesting, it was different, it was satisfying and it was flavorful. We were pleased that we had gone out of our way to eat at an authentic Salzburg restaurant instead of settling for fare in the tourist part of town. We had a lovely dinner, and a lovely time. It was the most relaxed, enjoyable dinner we had yet experienced on our vacation.

We did not sit down to dinner until after 8:30 p.m., and it was after 10:30 p.m. by the time we returned to our hotel.

It had been a long day, and we were ready to turn in—but it had been a great day.