Walking in the air

From Salzburg we had booked a week end in an Alpine hut to just get a weekend of relaxation before my courses started. The reason the hut caught our eye on Airbnb was that it had a sauna. As Finns we got sooo excited.

Our hut was part of a small farm yard, that the hosts owned. They had some animals like a few chickens, some goats, a dog, few cats and in the summer they grow some fish in little ponds on their yard. We got to meet most of the animals when we arrived. We got to accompany the hosts while they fed the goats and especially their two new baby goats who were just two weeks old. We got to meet the chickens briefly and the hosts gave us a couple of eggs to make for breakfast. Mostly we got to spend time with the family dog who roamed around the yard freely and popped up at our hut a few times a day and joined us on our little walks around the premises of the farm.

The hut didn’t have any electricity or running water, so it was very old timey. We had a gas stove to cook our food, but in the evening we operated in candle light. Electricity was available at the main farm house and we did visit our hosts for coffee and tee while we put all our electronics in chargers. They were nice people and very interested in Finland and how our time in Graz has been and what other trips we have in our mind.

The weekend was very peaceful, and we got to focus on just being there, and doing simple things like heating up the sauna and the hut with fire and looking at the star light sky in pitch blackness at night. It was still rather snowy, so we didn’t make longer walks so most of the images are from the farm yard or our hut. So, check out the pics and have nice day.

Our hut viewed from up hill

Sauna was sweet

Little ones were full of energy

Inside is our "natural" refrigirator

Warming the hut up took a good while

Candle light dinner

Sauna also in candle light

Funny how quickly the clouds come over the mountains to cover the sky

Someone suddenly showed up every time we were cooking

Sunny valley

Even with sun in the clouds it was very bright and hard to keep eyes open long for a picture

She had logs everywhere in case she needed to chew on something

Hosts farm house and yard

Houses on the other side of the valley

Salzburg day filled with Mozart and beer

After two nights in Salzburg last Thursday we actually got to go around the city. Personally, I didn’t know much about Salzburg beforehand, just that Mozart is from there and that they have a pretty good football and ice hockey teams. The game plan for the day was to head to town and see where the sights take us and stop by at the apartment before some scheduled evening event. Gonna mention here that sorry about the bit of a long post so hope you people don’t mind.

Again, the weather was perfect with not a cloud in the sky and we decided to head for breakfast before walking to the old town. When we got to old town and saw the Salzburg castle hovering over it we decided that there’s probably a pretty good view from up there so we headed up the hill to the castle. Castle was a nice old fortress with some interesting museum exhibitions on the history of the castle and some other things including marionettes. Funniest thing to me was the English translation in the exhibition information plates - seemed like they were written using Google translate. Some of the text was just clunky and hilarious. 

Sunny day for sightseeing

Nice breakfast to start the day

Lots of old little streets

Some local art piece

Trying out the local merchandise

Heading up to the castle

Views weren't bad from up there

Marionettes

This is the hilarious texts

Cool old timey weaponds

On our way back to the apartment I had spotted a beer garden which is a part of the Augustiner monastery brewery in Salzburg. Unfortunately, we could not get a tour of the brewery, but we spent a nice afternoon session in the outdoor garden with beer, sausages and pretzels. This was some good shit, definitely stop by if you are in Salzburg. Boy was happy there. 

This was good

Only thing we had pre booked in Salzburg was a Mozart dinner concert. This was a dinner where a small orchestra performs some of Mozart’s music. Expecting it to be a civil dinner we got dressed to the best of our ability with what we brought from home. The place was really nice and civil with waiters directing you to the table and bringing you the drink menu containing wines up to 2 500 euros a bottle. Had to be careful there not to order the wrong thing, so I stuck to beer. The evening was wonderful even tho I was far from my natural rock n roll environment. The program switched between food and a 20-30-minute set of the orchestra accompanied by two singers for the opera pieces, they were really good.  It was good rhythm as I have to admit after 15 minutes of opera I kinda start to check out, part of the reason we have not gone to one in Graz at least yet. I will add a video Anne recorded of them performing so you get the idea. 

Funniest thing to me in there was that I found my spirit animals or my spirit family. In the next table from us was an Asian family enjoying the evening. The family consisted of kids, parents and at least one grandparent from what I could tell. The kids and grandpa clear did not really care to be there. I just started following their on goings when there was a break in eating and the music. I was awestruck when the smallest kid asked for a spoon so he could “eat” his coke. Yes Coca Cola. The boy looked at his glass of coke like it was some holy relic (as we all should) and for like an hour used two hands to spoon-feed himself the black goodness. This kid has a great future ahead of him I can tell. The grandpa was another story as he sat back towards the performers and played video games with his phone. Yup I didn’t know the games, but the man was clearly playing almost through the whole evening with a grouchy look on his face. Rest of the family sat there hypnotized by the music and the performers. Their little girl was clearly amazed by the performance and was dancing while there was a break and it was fun to see someone presumably from such a different world compared to Mozart to be so expressively affected by the music.

Evenings menu for music and food

Artsy desert