Austria Day 6: Traveling to Salzburg and being visited by Krampus.

Hello, hello.

After a long day and late night (for me) in Budapest, something amazing happened. For the first time in remembered history, I slept in later than Jimmy. It was weird.

To be fair, I still woke up at 8:30, because I’m me and can’t really ever sleep in too late, but that was pretty good for me.

We got up and around, and got our bags packed so we were ready for our move to Salzburg in the afternoon. We’ll have a little bit more time with Vienna at the end of our trip, but for now we’re saying goodbye and making our first move to a new base camp.

For now we are also saying goodbye to our friends, and leaving them behind in Vienna. They were planning to head out the next day for a day trip to Salzburg, so we’ll see them one more time before saying a final goodbye for the remainder of the trip.

We decided to spend the morning visiting the area around St Stephen’s cathedral, as we haven’t been there yet. We got on the metro, and exited directly into St Stephen’s square.

Exiting the metro station you’re immediately greeted with a view of the immense cathedral. It’s actually incredibly impressive to be going up the escalator and more of the cathedral is being revealed the higher you get, until suddenly you can see it all.

St Stephen’s is an absolute colossus of a cathedral, and has a beautiful gothic exterior that dates from the 1300s.

The interior is also beautifully ornate, but you have to pay to enter most of it, and we were short on time before we had to catch a train so we elected not to.

It is also always a bit disconcerting to me to see a giant iron gate baring the masses from entering a church. Jesus and the money changers and all.

That being said, the altar and interior are historically and artistically significant pieces, so if you enjoy religious art in its natural habitat, this one is probably worth the admission price.

We left the church and headed down a beautiful high end shopping street with outposts of all the major designer brands, heading in the direction of the famous chocolate cafe Demel.

Demel is a beautiful upscale cafe that specializes in all of the major Viennese cafe treats, and also makes its own chocolates and candies. The line for the cafe was really long, but you can walk right in to the take away shop and look around. It was very large, and very fancy.

By this point it was time for us to grab all of our belongs (which have slowly begun to increase as the trip goes on), and catch our train to Salzburg.

One of the great joys of traveling is trying new snacks, and here’s a favorite one from this trip. I bought it for the train ride solely because it had a cat on it, but it honestly ended up being pretty tasty.

Obviously the train ride was beautiful; I feel that goes without saying in Europe. We arrived in Salzburg just as dusk was starting to settle in, and made our way to our next lodging, which is a third floor apartment in the home of a wonderful Austrian woman named Eva and her family. I really appreciated meeting her, because she showed us around and gave me the opportunity to practice some German (which reminded me very quickly that I have the vocabulary of a two year old and even less comprehension). I got use some new phrases either her, as the only other people I spoken German to have been waiters and the person checking train tickets.

We also had a really lovely view of Salzburg fortress and the old town from our balcony.

We were excited about Salzburg for a few reasons: the first being that it is a medieval city with winding lanes and a hilltop fortress. After spending so much time with the Hapsburgs in Vienna it was very exciting to see some differing architecture. Secondly, Salzburg is a great Christmas town with one of the most well regarded Christmas markets in the region. Thirdly, we were arriving the night before St Nikolaus Day, which is when local communities celebrate the Krampus run.

St Nikolaus is like the original Santa Claus. In Austria, St Nikolaus brings gifts to children who have been good, and it’s customary on St Nikolaus day (Dec 6th) to give gifts to loved ones and children.

St Nikolaus is often accompanied by Krampus, his mean counterpart that punishes naughty children. The night before St Nikolaus Day they celebrate the arrival of both figures with the Krampus run, a parade event where (mainly) young men in the community dress up as Krampus and parade around town swatting people with switches and giving coal away. They also will go into restaurants, asking for donations for different charities.

We left our lodging, and took a tunnel through the mountain that leads to the main part of the old town of Salzburg.

We arrived just in time to run directly into the opening parade.

In the video below, you can see that different groups have their own banners and clubs that put their section of Krampuses… Krampi? Together. You’ll also see their elaborate outfits, and St Nikolaus kitted out in archbishop attire and giving the children candy.

You’ll also notice a lot of the figures heading directly to the person next to me, which was a mom and her five year old son. They lightly swatted him, patted his head, high fived him, and even rubbed coal on his nose.

As someone who didn’t grow up with Krampus that would have made me pee my pants when I was his age, but he was laughing and seemed to have a good time.

Some of adults in the crowd got hit much harder with the switches than the kids did, but Jimmy and I made it out unscathed.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the giant bells on their bottoms.

After surviving Krampus, we headed to a traditional beer hall for some dinner. Rick Steves had listed it as a more sophisticated beer hall with waiters who wear trendy versions of the lederhosen look. I had to know what that meant.

The restaurant was tucked away in a small street, up on the first floor. It was behind a door, and actually took us a minute to find the entrance once we were in the building.

Once inside, I totally got what Rick Steves meant. It had all the wonderful rustic charm, but elevated a bit. And the lederhosen did look stylish. I felt weird asking our server for a picture, so you’ll just have to go check it out to see what I mean.

I did see this mannequin in a shop window gives the basic vibe

The food was stellar, and the beer was from a local brewery that was… fine? I’m not really a beer drinker so I have no idea what’s good, but no complaints from me.

After dinner we headed to the big Christmas market in Mozartplatz and around the churches.

They were stunning with the lights lit up around all the beautiful buildings, and lots of little lanes that were a bit quieter than the main square.

We got a dessert that looks like an ice cream cone, but is actually filled with meringue and coated in white chocolate. It was a bit sweet for me, but Jimmy loved it.