Schnitzel, mountains, and mysterious Nazi memoriblia

Where Cesky Krumlov is disguised as a sleepy tourist town that can actually hold up to a mean party, Hallstatt is exactly what it pretends to be. A sleepy tourist town.

a view of Hallstatt from our hotel

It’s a tiny village hanging tightly along a mountainside, appearing as though at any moment it might slide off into the freezing mountain lake. The sprawl extends southward, into modern hotels and campgrounds, with hiking trails spidering outward from there. There’s a cable car that takes people upward to an incredible view and a salt mine, and a lager stocked boat that takes people across the lake.

The weather--like any place in the mountains--is a bit dodgy, making firm plans untenable. But if you’re flexible, willing either to spend the day in the sun on the beach, swimming, biking, or hiking, or walking in the rain and having heavy Austrian lagers from a heated restaurant that closes at 8, then Hallstatt is the place to be.

We went there last September, driving from Prague. The drive there is interesting to say the least. The Czech roads are characteristically bumpy and narrow, but into Austria it’s eerily broad with lots of tunnels. Austrians have some sort of construction fetish for tunneling, where autobahns go for miles and miles underground for seemingly no reason, except to circumvent a rapeseed field or something rather. Who knows. You can’t know, because you’re underground.

Then into the mountains. More tunnels. The GPS was not reliable here, always taking us the least scenic route possible. I once had a predilection against visiting the Alps in the winter, but now I know there’s really nothing to fear, since it’s possible to stay underground for nearly the whole drive. Do beware though that you should stop at a gas station near the border to get a highway sticker. For us it wasn’t possible until Linz, as there were conveniently no exits from Czechia until the large industrial city.

there's no shortage of beautiful villages in Austria

We were above ground at Linz, but just as soon as the land started to rise, we were below ground again. I had enough of that, so I switched off the GPS and guided us to an old highway. I wanted to see the small Austrian mountain villages on the old highways of yesteryear. Indeed, most of those roads were well kept, and the dozens of hamlets of half-timbered houses and generous spire-filled backdrops were worth the slower journey.

Hallstatt's main square

From Prague, there are two ways to Hallstatt. One is from the direction of Salzburg, and the other from Vienna. From Salzburg it’s fairly straight forward, above ground beautiful driving, and it also includes pretty much the only place to grab a breakfast in the whole region. From the Vienna direction, you have to drive over the only mountain the Austrians didn’t tunnel through for some reason. Straight up and straight down, with the near precision of Roman engineering, nobody stops roads leading to Rome, after all.

When we got there it was pouring down rain. The whole time actually, it was doing that. So we were left to the romantic strolls and beer stops. No problem there. As a formality, the local marching band—yes, there’s a local marching band—decided to don full feathered Austrian mountain regalia and play some tunes in the street, inviting everybody inside into the concert hall, with a pre-concert (and post-concert and whenever you’d like) shot of schnapps to keep you interested in the John Philips Sousa and West Side Story renditions. It was a blast from my past, when as a child growing up I was playing saxophone in a marching band known for playing West Side Story. Duh duh dun duh dun, duh duh dun duh dun, Mambo!

a view from the northside

Hotels there are less pricey than I expected. You can stay at Obertraun across the lake for even cheaper, and take the ferry in during the day. As the place shuts down at night, it’s not so necessary to overnight in the town, as we did. We stayed at Pension Hallberg, which was a comfortable place with small, warm rooms, beautiful views of the lake, and a strange collection of Nazi memorabilia. But there was no one there to question about it, since they email you a code, you get the key in a box outside, open the door, and see behind the glass along the walls random items with the Hakenkruez displayed.

random Nazi stuff in the hotel

Don’t bother driving into the town, as it’s impossible. Rather than plowing through swarms of Japanese and American tourists, it might be better to just park it in the new section of town, and walk the beautiful boardwalk into the center and find yourself the right schnitzel there.

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a facetious video about Cesky Krumlov

Check in on our latest video blog about Cesky Krumlov. It's a cute medieval town, not just for the summer.

#CeskyKrumlov #traveltips #vblog

tourist traps, the real local, and Makarska

Makarska was our first night in port and we met it with a soft, salty breeze and a cool welcome repose from the scorching sun. It’s a beautiful seaside town surrounded by steep, rocky cliffs and quite well-known for its nightlife.

A fishing boat restaurant getting ready to serve (eat there!)

We gathered on deck just as we came to port, as the policy of Sail Croatia seemed to be. Our guide, Nicoletta, told us about all the different places to go. Most of those suggestions had deals worked out with Sail Croatia, and we were given coupons for the additional draw. In addition, Nicoletta gave us a bit of confidence, advising that maybe some of those places weren’t so “local”, and it might even be better to eat on a sail ship that would come and dock later that afternoon (in the picture above). Nicoletta also told us about a cave club that we could go to at night, at the end of the beach. Deep Makarska club is literally a cave in the rock, one side the deep sea and the other a DJ stand with a rig, powering up at around midnight. They say though that the music is pretty much the same every night, so it’s not much of a local stay, but the tourists are sure to flood it. It’s of course, hard to imagine at such scenic places that people are blessed with being a “local” at all. This of course, leads me to my continued diatribe of what it means to be a “local” versus a “tourist”, and if doing “touristic” things or going to such places is in and of itself bad. The most beautiful places in a city are often the most touristic, mainly because they are the most beautiful.

There is a clientele for disaster porn, for people to brag about going to the most run-down and dilapidated places, where the only furniture is a lice-ridden cumbag surprise couch of sorts and a maggot eaten skull, the room smelling of dank mold, and occupied with a half deaf guy at the bar shouting the wrong order back to you repeatedly and a possibly dead guy in the toilet. I have been to those places, my facetious friends, and it’s not always worth it just for the cred of having gone “local”.

The patio at Riva

We took our chance with one of the officially advised places. I should know better from doing this, with as much as I travel, that places are usually advised to go to because they pay people to advise them. Then by capturing the repeat audience, their services and food slide, and soon they are the bona-fide “tourist trap” that you want to avoid at all costs, and it’s not the good and beautiful kind. I bring this up because there we were in a restaurant called Riva, sitting in an otherwise beautiful courtyard, waiting nearly an hour just for our drinks to come out, another hour and a half for our food. The food further fermented our foul verdict with its general lack of tenderness and precarious price that came to the equivalent of dining in a restaurant back in the US in some district of two-syllables like "LoDo" or "FoDo" and spaces between restaurants occupied by factory-design brobars. But if that's your thing, that's your thing.

On our way back, we ran into a couple of the people we had met on the boat. They went on about how amazing the fishing boat was. It was cheap, the fish was literally just caught, and it was utterly chaotic. The fishermen operated like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, barking out, and if you didn’t know your order, they’d shout at you until you just blurted something out. And the raki was the real deal, ready to be thrown up overboard. So if you’re in Makarska, take it from our fellow travelers, skip the restaurants. Follow the line, listen to the people ahead of you, and just repeat what they say. Remember, when you travel to unfamiliar lands, you might have to put aside your penchant for ordering gluten free, almond milk, ammaciato blockiato my priggiato.

The Makarska boardwalk at night

We went back on the boat to recuperate. Luckily on the boat was our great cheap beers on tap poured by the friendly boatswain. We went up on the top deck with our cold beers and listened to a guitarist playing at a bar down on the boardwalk and stared up at the stars, painted across with broad strokes and speckled with flecks of white acrylic. Despite the dinner, there were still few ways to beat the difficulties of life.

Ferries from Makarska sail out to Sumartin on Brac island and back up to five times a day in season. Check the schedule here for more. From Sumartin, it’s a skip to get to Hvar or back to Split.

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