On
Christmas Eve, Salzburg shuts down by midafternoon. The vendors close up their stalls at the
Christmas market, shops and grocery stores lock their doors and shut off their
lights, and most of the restaurants and cafes send their employees home for the
night to spend Christmas Eve with their families. Christmas Eve is traditionally when Austrians
have their Christmas celebrations. We
decided to do the same in our cozy little hotel room which meant we needed to
stock up on some Christmas goodies before all the stores closed up for the
day. But first, some breakfast.
 |
| Hmmmm - what to have, what to have. Besides deciding if it was wise or not to get on a train with a kid that has the stomach flu, what to have for breakfast was the toughest decision I had to make during this vacation. |
Everyone
woke up Christmas Eve morning healthy and hungry – finally! Both Ellie and Leah were ravenous so we
headed down to breakfast at our hotel for the first time all together as a
family. Let me share a little something
about typical hotel breakfasts in Austria – they are AMAZING! Eric has traveled a couple of times to
Austria for work and he always comes back raving about how fantastic the
breakfasts were at the hotels he stayed at.
After listening to this a few times, I had high expectations and the
breakfast at Hotel Via Roma did not disappoint.
Let me see if I can remember all there was for us to enjoy:
· The usual scrambled eggs, bacon and
sausages, and also a big pot of boiling water with a bowl of eggs next to it so you could prepare your own fresh hard boiled egg for breakfast.
· All different types of delicious
rolls and breads, bundt cakes, pastries and croissants.
· Platters of meats and cheeses,
including the most amazing cream cheese I have ever had with herbs swirled into
it and then rolled in chives, as well as various other types of soft spreadable
cheeses. They even had a plate of smoked
salmon which Leah enjoyed every morning as that is one of her most favorite
foods.
· Freshly sliced melon, and trays
filled with oranges, bananas and plums.
· Bowls full of jams and packets of
other spreads for toast. The only packet
I recognized was Nutella. Not sure what
the others were and there was so much food to choose from for breakfast, we
never had the chance to find out.
· Yogurts and granola and bowls full
of different types of dried fruits and nuts for topping.
· And for drinks, four different kinds
of fruit juices, and of course, coffee which you could get any way you wanted –
plain, cappuccino, espresso, Americano style, and even just plain steamed milk
you could add a packet of hot chocolate to which is what Ellie enjoyed a few
mornings.
Now I fully
understand why Eric speaks so highly of the breakfasts in Austria.
Our bellies
full, we headed out to find the tiny little grocery store just inside the Old
City that I had passed several times to get some good food and drinks for our
quiet Christmas Eve celebration in our hotel room. Now, this was no ordinary little convenience
store which is what you might have expected from the small size of it. Each time I had walked past the windows, I
couldn’t help but gaze inside at the baskets full of fresh breads and rolls,
the display cases that held various types of cheeses and meats they would slice
for you, and the wall full of fruits and vegetables.
 |
| Outside our favorite little grocery store in Salzburg. |
The woman
behind the counter, quickly realizing we weren’t native Austrians, helped us
pick out a few different kinds of good Austria cheeses, including the same
herbed cream cheese from the hotel breakfast – score! She recommended some of the house salami so
into our basket it went, along with an assortment of fresh rolls. We picked up some juicy grapes, a package of
crackers, and last but not least, some drinks.
For the girls, a couple of cans of their new favorite here in Europe –
Orange San Pellegrino from Italy. For
Eric, a couple bottles of Austrian beer.
And for me, a bottle of Austrian wine of course. We then took a quick walk down to the
Christmas market where we picked up a meringue pretzel which would be dessert
along with some Christmas cookies Eric had gotten from a bakery the day
before.
It was a
beautiful day and Eric and I had already spent a couple of days exploring the
city, so we decided to take a nice walk instead out of town towards the mountains
to a place called Hellbrunn Palace. We
didn’t know anything about Hellbrunn Palace, but it was highly recommended that
we visit it and the surrounding grounds, so after dropping our Christmas
Eve feast off at the hotel, we headed towards the outskirts of town to the path
that led to Hellbrunn. I knew exactly
where this path was – right in front of the yellow von Trapp family home I had
stumbled upon my first afternoon in Salzburg.
The lane that leads to Hellbrunn is the same beautiful tree-lined lane
with snow covered mountains in the background you see in The Sound of
Music.
Fun fact - or maybe not so fun: What you see hanging from the tree in the
photo below is mistletoe, and yes, when we figured this out, Eric kissed me
under some and the girls thought it was hilarious. It was everywhere in Salzburg, including in
most of the trees hanging along the lane that leads to Hellbrunn Palace. The clumps of bright green mistletoe with
their smooth, shiny leaves were beautiful hanging from the bare trees. BUT – mistletoe actually penetrates the
branches of their host trees, sucking nutrients and moisture away from the
tree, often killing the branches and sometimes, the entire tree. Kind of sad.
Hellbrunn Palace and the surrounding
grounds was built as an Italian style country residence at the foot of
Hellbrunn Mountain back in the early 1600s by Salzburg’s Prince Archbishop
Markus Sittikus von Hohenems. Hellbrunn
ended up rarely serving as an actual residence though. Because of its grandeur, the palace was
primarily used for lavish celebrations and hosted spectacular events. Today, the palace itself is home to a
folklore museum while you can wander the vast grounds as your leisure, enjoying
the sculptures, ponds, landscaping, a beautiful playground for children, and a
couple other surprises we’ll get to in a moment.
As I mentioned above, we didn’t
really know what Hellbrunn was as we headed there that day, except that many
people said the small Christmas market held within the walls of the estate is
one of the most beautiful settings they had seen for a Christmas market. They weren’t kidding because this is what we
saw when we entered the palace grounds.
We had arrived in the middle of the
afternoon and, being Christmas Eve, many of the vendors were already closing up
their stalls. We didn’t mind. It was beautiful just wandering around and
enjoying the Christmas scene. The palace
itself was made up into a gigantic Advent calendar, as you can see in the photo above. We grabbed a bag of warm roasted almonds to
munch on as we strolled. We ducked
through a small archway and stumbled upon a magnificent series of fountains, statues
and stonework. Later, we discovered
these were no ordinary fountains. This
was a Wasserspiele, or trick fountains.
During the warmer months when the fountains are turned on, be careful
walking through the Wasserspiele because you never know when or where water
might suddenly shoot out.
We wandered through another archway
and, to the delight of the girls, found a petting zoo.
 |
| Not sure how these three fit in to a petting zoo, but they were funny! |
After enjoying the animals and quickly
figuring out which signs said “May Bite” in German, we strolled out towards the
vast park making up the rest of the palace grounds. The ponds were filled with colorful
ducks.
There were beautiful tree lined
pathways that just begged to be followed.
And one of the best playgrounds we have ever seen – the fun kind filled
with equipment your kids could get hurt on but probably won’t. It was cold but we couldn’t resist stopping to
let the kids play for awhile. And we
joined in on the fun too, enjoying a ride on the long zipline like swing thing
they had – never seen anything like it on a playground before, but it was
fuuuuun!
Funny little story from the
playground: As I was sitting watching
the girls play, this adorable little girl who couldn’t have been more than
three years old walks up to me and starts talking away to me – in German. She was looking so intently at me, waiting
for my reply. I laughed because I didn’t
know what else to do and obviously didn’t know what to say. Knowing full well she wouldn't understand, I simply smiled at her, shook my head
and said, “I’m sorry sweetie, but I don’t speak German. I only speak English.” As she turned to go, she looked back at me and replied, “That’s alright” and wandered
away. You can imagine the look of surprise
that crossed my face to hear her say that so clearly in English, and to have
understood what I had said to her – and she was only three! Still makes me laugh when I think about
it.
 |
| Sorry I'm sharing so many playground photos with you, but these are AWESOME! I cannot believe what a great job Eric did photographing the girls as they played. |
 |
| The zipline swing thinging - oh this was fun! |
The sun was starting to slip behind the mountains, so we decided it was time to head back towards our hotel, but before we left, there was one more thing we would stumble upon – a gazebo. Now this wasn’t just any gazebo – it is maybe the most famous gazebo in all the world and the moment I saw it, I knew. “I am sixteen, going on seventeen…” I think you know where I am going with this. Yes, it was the Sound of Music gazebo. We stopped to take pictures of course, and good timing for us because as we were leaving, we passed an entire busload of tourists heading in with their cameras to get some pictures of the gazebo themselves.
Recognize the gazebo but
not the setting? That’s because the
gazebo has been moved. It’s original
setting on the grounds of Leopoldskron is where the famous gazebo movie scenes
were shot, but the gazebo received a little too much attention in that
location, so it was moved to the grounds of Hellbrunn Palace where it could be
better protected.
 |
| Beautiful scenery on our walk back to the hotel from Hellbrunn Palace as the sun sets. |
We made it back to the hotel by late
afternoon, cold but refreshed from our long afternoon spent outside wandering
Hellbrunn Palace. After a warm cup of
cappuccino and hot chocolate, we headed up to our hotel room to settle in for
the night and enjoy a quiet Christmas Eve together as a family with the good
food and drinks we had picked up earlier in the day. We watched Mary Poppins and National
Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in German, and a good thing it was in German too
because they don’t bleep out the bad words here in Europe. What was the midnight mass like? Eric said it was amazing - poignant and beautiful, even though he couldn't understand a word of it. He did, however, recognize the song that was sung at the end of the service even though it was in German - Silent Night. While it may not surprise any of you who have attended candle light services on Christmas Eve night that the mass ended with this familiar Christmas song, Silent Night has a very special meaning in Salzburg and Austria in general. It was written by a man named Joseph Mohr, an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and writer. He was born in Salzburg and at an early age encouraged to pursue music and provided an education by a vicar and music leader right there at the Salzburg Cathedral. It was in 1816, while he was serving as an assistant priest in a little village in the Austrian Alps called Mariapfarr that Joseph Mohr wrote the words to Silent Night.
To end today, here is Eric's description of that last song sung at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve in the Salzburg Cathedral:
Silent
Night was sung at the end of the mass in German (Stille Nacht). All the
lights were turned off and the cathedral was lit only with candles. It
had a single guitar for accompaniment and the verses were traded between two
woman singers, two men, and the choir. I could only see the two woman who
were up on a small balcony opposite where I was sitting. The balcony was
only big enough for a few people and the women were lit from a candle in front
of them. I couldn’t see the men (who were likely in the balcony directly
above me) or the choir. I think the song only has three verses but they
must have repeated the entire song because I remember them singing six
verses. They were very highly trained or even professional singers. Midnight mass on Christmas Eve in the Salzburg Cathedral was definitely a sight to behold and hear.
To be continued.... And stay tuned because the next post - a horse drawn sleigh ride through the Austrian Alps!
No comments:
Post a Comment