Rosona'sTravelogue: 23.07-26.07.2013 Werfenweng (the Alps!)

Salzburger land: Werfenweng. ; 23.07.2013.

The way from Vienna to Werfenweng was a bit long. We'd remembered our departure time wrong and were at the train station about 1.5 hours too early.

Ok, so, we took an earlier train to Salzburg and took a break there to eat lunch.

We finally had some schnitzel (an Austrian dish, really), although not in Vienna. it came with preiselbeeren (I don't know the English for this; these are not cranberries) and potatoes. Tasty.

The way was: Vienna -> Salzburg, lunch and call the silly Taxibus for the later leg of our journey, Salzburg -> Bischofshofen, then meet the Taxibus to Werfenweng.

Photos from the train. Here is a lake near Linz:

Pretty mountains whizzing by:

Why Werfenweng? Originally, Schladming was suggested, being rather in the middle of the Alps and around a lot of these mountain huts that you can hike to for lunch. But, Schladming is kind of hard to get to, especially with all of the construction in the Austrian train system, so I had suggested Bischofshofen or the vicinity (being pretty close to Salzburg) and the only lodgings we could find that were reasonable were in Werfenweng.

It's also rather pretty:

Our "Taxi"/Van driver spoke very "rustic" Austrian-German[harder than this to understand, although she (and everyone in Werfenweng) said "gel?" as the default "neh?" replacement]. That is, I could barely unterstand her, and without context, I would've understood nothing. She took us directly to where we were staying. The neighbor across the street asked if we needed help, and helped us figure out that the key was probably in the door with a note on it, and that we should just sort of poke around until we found it. That worked pretty well.

nearby where we stayed

around the corner

Sadly, there was no toilet paper, so we needed to go to the (one) supermarket, and rather quickly, as it was already mid-late afternoon. We asked the nice neighbor, and the directions were basically "Walk to the church,you can't miss it".

You see the church? good.

We also looked for the "info center" of Werfenweng (which had shorter opening hours than the supermarket should) and couldn't find it from the map. At the end, we gave up and wen to the supermarket. Haha. The info center was directly across the street!

We visited it, took brochures, and heard about this thing called a SAMO-Karte --8 euro, and a surprisingly large number of things therein included -- e.g. one of several weekly tours through the mountains. In particular, one was leaving the next morning at 09:30, planning to visit 2 of these alpine huts/restaurants, and take about 5 hours in total. Perfect.

Other things included in this card -- free rentals of bicycles/e-bikes/other e-things (including cars!). There was also an excursion up to Salzburg one could do (they ran a bus there and back) to see the town for a few hours. Also, taxis (which would then show up an hour later). Sounds really good if you drag grandma along and want to have her transported to the top of the mountain (some of them were accessible by car) to meet at one of the huts which you yourself could then hike up to.

But, we needed to get something from our host/person who owned where we were staying, which took some calling and negotiating.

Ok, ciao, to the supermarket.

On the sign, there were opening hours and also

DIENSTAG NACHMITTAG RÜHETAG.

(Tuesday afternoon, closed/vacation day)

?!?!?!?!?!

Grumble grumble.

Luckily, we had noticed that the "Farmer store" (Bauernladen) (clearly established to cater to tourists, selling local farmers' products) was open, and we went there to first eat ice-cream, then buy some things for dinner/breakfast; sausage, cheese, farmer-bread.

Bauernbrot

Mixed ice-cream, 3 scoops: Apple, Marillen (they are kind of like apricots) and lemon. Yum.

We also took a minute to call and talk to our host/landlord (who was in Holland at the time) about not having any toilet paper. He called a neighbor and asked them to give us a roll our two. Huzzah.

There was that night a shindig in the town square, with music and also samples of products from the farmer store, but there were no street lights between us and the town and all the traveling and the heat lead to a nap rather that going into town again.

zzzzz...

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Salzburger land: Werfenweng. Day 2. 24.07.2013.

Breakfast was like dinner: Farmer's bread, sausage (from wild pig) and cheese.

We walked into the town to the tourist info center to meet the other people who were also taking the tour. We were first all schlepped to the "Werfenwengwanderzentrum'' with E-taxi/vans.

Then we started walking up the mountain, with the path becoming very quickly quite steep. Always when I go on a hike, I remember that while there is a part of me that really likes to hike, it's a much bigger part that believes that I like to hike, and then the rest of me is not convinced.

first view back down from where we came

Our path/schedule was so that we first took a break at the Dr. Heinrich Hackel Hütte to get something to drink, and then later we would pause at another hut , Moosalm Hütte, for lunch. First, the Dr. Heinrich Hackel Hütte

how it first looked

as we walked away

The path to Moos Hütte:

There were a lot of nice flowers: Thistles (Disteln), Daisies (Magariten), tiny daisies (?) (Gänseblümchen, Katzepfötchen, Arnica (Arnika), Marjoram, Thyme (Thymian), Peppermint (Pfefferminze), etc.

our guide, Waltraud Hermann, + Arnica flower

The "Almhütte" can exist in part because the farmers take their families and cows up into the mountains during the summer. Not every farmer that does this also has a "hut".

farmers and their cows

Mountain cows (their hooves are different from flatland cows)

a cow up higher than us

The following pond is used in the winter to make artificial snow for skiing:

The chair lift. It was not running, as there's no snow around:

We walked past the Anton-Proksch Hütte:

And ate at the Moos Hüttte (1640 m):

Here was our menu. "Jause" ~ plate. Käsejause ~ Cheese (and bread) plate. Brettljause ~ ,,cutting-board plate" (with cheese and wurst and cold cuts etc etc):

"Ja, es passcht" said our nice mini-waiter, instead of the English-ism "Okay":

Crocs and Lederhosen, the next fashion ;)

After Moosalm, we started descending and our path crossed that of the Gondola/Tram Ikarus:

We also saw some canadian houses. They were made in canada (out of 300 year old cedar), at some point disassembled and shipped to Werfenweng, then reassembled. Not sure why. You can stay in these overnight (probably for a pretty penny):

canadian houses

At the end I felt particularly grumpy. I found the pace once we started to descend a bit too fast. I always pay special attention to my right ankle, which I have injured many times, and so am very very slow going downwards. With all this "braking" and taking care, my leg muscles started to shake about halfway down. It was hot and there was no shade.

in the big bald patch on the mountain, you can see our path down the mountain

"close-up"

After getting back, we decided to try out the "Badesee" (outdoor swimming "pool"). It was an hour before they "closed" (at closing time, the didn't kick people out, they just lock up the changing rooms, showers, etc). And they said that with this SAMO-card, entrance was free.

near the Badesee

Der Badesee was clearly somewhat artificial, or at least had later been made so, with a plastic sheet bottom and stones on top. It was at its deepest 4m. There were also ducks swimming around and signed that feeding them is forbidden. I found the water to be too cold (esp with the sun behind the clouds) and also pretty dirty. I remembered that I had so many ear infections as a kid, esp when swimming in a reservoir, so I didn't want to put my head under water there.

The horse-flies (or, the German equivalent) decided that I was very tasty, and between that and the water, we left rather soon and went back to our lodgings to eat dinner rather than be eaten.

Abendbrot,with self-made lemon-soda

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Salzburger land: Werfenweng. Day 3. 25.07.2013.

We got up late. We'd originally thought that we'd take the Ikarus Tram/Gondola up the mountain, but in total that'd only run an hour, mayyyyybe two, and by the time we got going, they were taking their lunch break and we didn't feel like it was worth it to go up the mountain and then right back down for 11 euro p.P.

So, a gentle walk. First to Zistelberghof for lunch.

I'm no fan of this building

I had goulash soup and Marillen-juice-schorle (in Austria, it's ,,gespritzt" instead of "schorle", which is closer to "spritzer", probably a good English translation).

While we were eating our lunch, the clouds rolled in:

It rained a bit, really only sprinkled. Afterwards, we went...back. But slowly.

,,durchgang bis auf Widerruf gestattet"= you're allowed to walk on this path (through our land) until we decide otherwise

Stausee = pond made by a dam

We then took a bit of a detour, to the ,,Hochkönigausblickpunkt" ("Hochkönig" (High king) is the name of one of the mountains, so this is supposed to be a good place to take a look at it).

there were a lot of places to stay and/or eat in the area

Hochkönig

Ok, then really back.

Werfenweng, as we approached from the south.

We found a few maps of the Werfenweng hiking paths: (Werfenwengerwandernwege)

you have to be crazy or in tip top shape to be running along these paths

I took this next picture, because houses here are rather different than in the US. I'm told the German houses are built like this one as well, entirely from brick. You can also see in this photo the wreath/mini-tree on top the roof, which you put up there when the house is half-done (and you have a party to celebrate):