Hungary / Austria / Germany pt II / Liechtenstein

Hungary

• When we were planning the trip, I felt a little bit of trepidation about Hungary.  I had heard so many great things about Budapest, but I’d also read a lot about Viktor Orban’s authoritarian regime – was it a riskier destination?  In hindsight that felt a bit silly, and besides, after our choice of stopover to Europe it’s probably only the second most autocratic country we’d visited

• Budapest didn’t disappoint. It’s a really great city, truly grand and picturesque, but also friendly, easy to navigate, relatively cheap, and less manically touristed

Yes, we are grumpy that you made us get out of this lovely hot pool to take this stupid photo

• It’s known for its thermal baths, many outdoors and in the lovely art nouveau style the city is renowned for.  Unfortunately, almost all of them are closed to children, but that did make it easy to choose the Palatinus Bath on Elizabeth Island which welcomes all ages.  Elizabeth Island is a good spot – in the heart of the city in the middle of the Danube, it’s a great location for a picnic, and features a bunch of cafes and bars if you forgot to BYO

• The baths are excellent, with a mix of indoor and outdoor pools in a range of temperatures, plus a decent wave pool, and an adventure pool with a very powerful lazy river.  The kids liked the hot pool with built-in chess boards, even if the waterslides were closed for the season

Scrubbed to within an inch of its life

• As you’d imagine, Budapest has a top notch old town, with Buda Castle perched on high, with a handy funicular if you’ve had enough of walking up steep hills on hot days.  Like Prague, the castle complex is a bit of a mash-up of state buildings and churches in a range of architectural styles.  A good few were being renovated and refurbed, and those that weren’t under scaffolding looked like they’d had a very recent scrub, particularly Fisherman’s Bastion, the striking castle wall overlooking the Danube – so much so, it felt almost too clean and Disneyfied

That's a good roof right there

• I’m a fan of a good church roof pattern, and this is a really good church roof pattern

• A change of pace is a visit to one of the city’s ‘ruin bars’ – pop-up drinking establishments in abandoned buildings in the city’s Jewish Quarter.  By the time they’ve made it into Lonely Planet, it’s safe to assume that the genuine arty hipsters have long since found somewhere else to go and it’s just dorky tourists like us, but they’re still an atmospheric place for an afternoon pint after a day’s walking round the city.  It’s also fun to imagine the conniptions a NZ health and safety professional would have – multiple levels of broken and uneven concrete floors, dodgy staircases, and rumbling walls and pillars overrun by vines and creepers

Don't ask for the Health & Safety documentation

Austria

• Next stop Vienna, with its air of classy, grown-up formality.  It’s architecturally very easy on the eye, with good urban planning and a mix of baroque, gothic, neoclassical and modernist buildings, with a few bits of Hundertwasser craziness thrown in

Now that's a roof pattern

• It’s well known for its palaces, with the Hofburg in the central city and the Schonnbrun further out of town.  There’s also a cracking cathedral, with an even better roof pattern than the one in Budapest

It's a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes and try to keep up

• Vienna is also renowned for classical music, with Mozart and Beethoven both living in the city.  The Haus der Musik is a fun museum that’s heavy on the hands-on play for kids, including a musical staircase, and a write-your-own-waltz machine

• We were there at the right time for sturm – a cloudy, partly fermented grape juice sold at wineries and wine bars for a few weeks heading into harvest, and also available at Vienna’s finest roadside hot dog stand

The Viennese food pyramid is all here

• Also pictured is Almdudler, a herbal lemonade that’s another Austrian classic, and is also available as a Haribo flavour

• It was about this part of the trip that Kitty discovered that the panorama setting on the phone camera was much more fun if you ignored vistas and used it to make vertical funhouse mirror pictures of your family.  My photo album is now full of them

• Our accommodation was a hostel with a great breakfast and an even better slide

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

I do like a good jar-shaped observation tower halfway up a mountain

• We drove west to Salzburg, but stopped in the Salzkammergut, a gorgeous area of lakes and mountains named after, and made wealthy by its salt mines.  We stopped at Lake Traunsee, and visited the Baumwipfeldfad (try saying that after a few glasses of sturm), a brilliant jar-shaped observation tower halfway up a mountain (the company that built it has a series of a dozen others across Europe).  You catch a cable car up, and access to the tower is via a treetop walk.  After a climb and view that’s not for the faint of heart, you can either walk down, or for a couple of Euros rent a mat and go down the windy slide

Toboggan is not in any way an intuitive word to spell

If that’s not enough adventure for one afternoon, there’s also the summer toboggan, a luge-on-a-rail that goes surprisingly quick (or so I hear:  your humble narrator was but the photographer for this one)

• Next stop Salzburg.  We stayed in a lovely guesthouse a short walk from the old town, and enjoyed a day wandering around, although we opted to admire the castle from below rather than taking a very steep walk up a very steep hill

Why wouldn't there be a small man on a golden ball in the town square?

• The Kapitelplatz is one of many fine squares, but the only one with a weird sculpture of a small man atop a giant golden ball

• Mozart stans are well catered for, with squares, fountains, and the house where he was born, which is no way cheapened by hosting a Spar on the ground floor

  
  
  
  
  
  

You talking to me?

• One of Salzburg’s claims to fame is Sound of Music locations.  The lovely gardens of the Mirabell Palace feature a load of familiar sights to lovers of delightful famjly singalongs that take a very dark turn in the second half.  My favourite was definitely the gnome garden

• All that sightseeing builds up a thirst, and the Augustiner monastery is the place to slake it.  The monks run a very good and very successful brewery, with just the one beer, a cracking marzen-style lager. There’s a bloody brilliant outdoor beer garden with seating for thousands, and a hall of food vendors with a strong emphasis on meat (we went for the half rotisserie chicken and home-made crisps).  The beer ordering system couldn’t be simpler – you choose the size you want (500ml or 1L), pay in cash, grab a ceramic stein, give it a wash, and get it filled up  

In a very happy place

• Running shoes came out the suitcase for the second and last time on the trip, for an early morning scenic plod along the banks of the Danube

Germany

• Off to Germany for more bier.  We were a few weeks early for Oktoberfest (which starts in late September, naturally), but just in time for Bavaria’s second biggest bier festival, the Herbstfest in Rosenheim, thanks to a tip from a school parent friend from the area.  We had originally planned to spend a couple of days in Munich, but switched things up to spend a day at the festival

Thomas the bier engine

• Outside of bier, there wasn’t much on our Rosenheim agenda, but we stumbled upon the local branch of a chain of German vegan cat cafes (the food is vegan, the cats probably aren’t) which the girls were very excited about.  The food was pretty good and the pats were plentiful

• Herbstfest goes on for a couple of weeks, and our festival day was a cold and wet midweeker.  If you need a ride from the railway station to the festival site, you can catch the bier bus.  We went on foot, noting that many clothes shops in the town had window displays of traditional festival dress – dirndls and lederhosen for all ages

So much yes

• At first glance Herbsfest looks a lot like any county fair anywhere in the world – a giant midway with rides that you really hope are maintained well, all manner of food stands, and carny games galore.  The difference is the two giant halls, one each for the town's two breweries, both filled with rows and rows of long tables.  We got there early, and the beer halls were largely empty, and the midway full of families riding dodgem cars and eating candyfloss.  As the day went on, everything filled up, and the ratio of civilian clothes to traditional dress shifted as more and more locals came in after work

Sehr gut!

• We had a beer in each of the halls.  From dinner time onwards, every table is booked out (we investigated this, but you can only book in person or on the phone, which is both admirably traditional, and fairly hopeless for non-German speaking tourists) but in mid-afternoon they are fairly empty and you can grab a table as close as you want to the oompah band.  As soon as you sit down, a waitress comes to take your order – as per the Salzburg monks, one beer, two sizes, and a massive menu of meaty delights.  Cash only, and tipping required.  The food and beer was great, although a litre of lager and a pork roast for afternoon tea makes one a bit sleepy

• By dinner time, we’d had enough bier and pork, but popping in to the tents in the evening was amazing – every seat taken, almost everyone in traditional dress, and some hearty “ein prozit”.  It looked like a lot of fun, and I quite liked the fact that it was clearly all about the locals not the tourists

Castle surprisingly youthful; your humble narrator, less so

• From Rosenheim we headed to Fussen, the best place to stay for nearby Neuschwanstein Castle, famously the inspiration for the castle at Disneyland

• When I first read up on Neuschwanstein, I was slightly miffed that it was a lot less old than I had expected, built in the late 1800s.  But the background to its much older appearance is a fascinating story.  It was commissioned in the late 1860s by King Ludwig II, ruler of Bavaria, and a rather eccentric chap.  Ludwig wasn’t all that enamoured with being king in the late 1800s, with his title an increasingly ceremonial one with limited real power, and so despite having an official residence in Munich, and various other holiday homes, Ludwig had Neuschwanstein built as a chance to immerse himself in what he felt was a rather better time to be king, the Middle Ages.  Choosing a cracking site with views of two lakes and castle ruins to build upon, in close proximity to another castle built by his dad, Ludwig got the best of both worlds – the look of an era where he would have been the omnipotent ruler he saw himself as, with all the mod cons of the 1800s.  Castles taking a while to build, Ludwig sadly passed away before it was finished (in somewhat mysterious circumstances), but managed a few happy visits – always solo (other than a large serving staff, natch), as he also wasn’t that fond of other people in general, other than a doomed relationship with a male courtier and a strangely obsessive penpalship with Richard Wagner

Sure Kitty, I'd love another panorama photo

• Ludwig is a fascinating character – clearly slightly mad, but also quite likeable with his quirky mix of misanthropy and ennui.  You take a guided tour round the castle, and the amazing rooms that were only ever lived in for a few days really bring his character to life

• The best views of the castle are from the Marienbrucke – a slightly rickety wooden bridge suspended over a gorge looking down at the castle

• Kitty is really liking the panorama funhouse mirror effect...

Liechtenstein

Standing in two countries at once will never not be brilliant

• We thought the Poland/Germany/Czechia travel day a few weeks ago was pretty good – three countries within the hour!  We topped it on the way to Switzerland though – Germany/Austria/Switzerland would have been good, but we added a little bit of Liechtenstein in for good measure

• Our French car was only insured for EU countries, which meant no Norway, and also no Liechtenstein. Luckily, you can park on the Swiss side of the Rhine and walk over the Alte Rheinbrucke to Vaduz, the capital city.  So we did.  With a carload of all our stuff on the side of the road in another country, and a bit more driving to do, we didn’t stay long, but that’s one more country ticked off!