So as you probably know by now, Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday.
Thanksgiving arrived today at work! #SOEXCITED!
For me, it’s a holiday that cuts across everything that can divide us- religion, region, race, nationality- and all the other thousand things that people find to fight about and wage wars over. At the heart of Thanksgiving is food, friends, family, abundance, and gratitude. It is about being thankful for those around you and for the previous year, sharing whatever meal you can cobble together, and being surrounded by those you care about.
It’s probably the one day a year that I miss home the most- and also the least celebrated of all the American holidays here. Yes, you can find Thanksgiving meals (mostly at American-esque restaurants) but overall, Thanksgiving goes unnoticed here. I’ve noticed over the past 13 years that Halloween has become super popular- there were houses in our neighbourhood decorated this year- with jack-o-lanterns and spider webs…. We didn’t get any trick or treaters but there were a few hanging around the neighbourhood. Even 4th of July has the occasional firework or two in Darling Harbour—ok actually there are always fireworks in Darling Harbour so I’m not sure if they’re specifically for the 4th of July but it adds to the festivities. Super Bowl Monday morning- yup becoming a thing here.
**I know you’re confused by this, but due to the time difference the Super Bowl is shown live across Australia on a Monday morning…. And people go to pubs to watch during their “lunch” break. I say “lunch” because I swear some people disappear at 10am and come back when the game is done at 2pm.
But Thanksgiving? Nope. Nada. Zilch. Not interested. Aussies are too busy celebrating Christmas starting in September to even bat an eyelid at Thanksgiving. And sadly, I’m not joking about Christmas in September, I swear major shopping centres have already had decorations up for over a month. It’s not right. It’s very awkward.
Australians have missed the memo that there is an entire holiday devoted to hanging out with mates and being a glutton. You’d think that every country would be on board with a holiday like this. On paper (and in reality) it’s a genius idea. “Hey everyone, let’s convince one person in the family to cook a lot of food, and let’s go to their house every year and spend 6 hours eating.” Where is the downside to this plan? I don’t see one!
So, I’ve made it a bit of a personal mission. I’m bringing Thanksgiving to Australia. For nearly all of the last 8 years- I, and now we, have done Thanksgiving. And not a small, contained, quiet family affair but a big Thanksgiving BBQ event. I think one year we had 60 people, this year…. Well, we’ll see. But the excitement of planning the BBQ takes the edge off the homesickness for me- and it gets me excited. It’s like a little project for me… one of many little projects we’re working on at the moment. There’s a menu to plan, a house to clean, and lots of food prep to do. And I love it!
So many recipes to choose from…. how do I pick just 5? Or should I do 7? Or 10? Somebody stop me!
This year, we’re doing it a week later- due to a triathlon, of course. So it’s going to be a late Thanksgiving/early Christmas BBQ on December 6th. Stop by if you’re in Randwick. There will be plenty of food and hopefully plenty of friends…..Oh, and in 20 years when Australia starts celebrating Thanksgiving as a public holiday, you can thank me. But no, you don’t have to rename it Stephsgiving, Thanksgiving works just fine.
Weekly. Every week for the last 6 weeks. Different Types. Every Week.
And bringing them to work on a Monday. I’m not sure whether my work mates are just being polite and humoring me or if they actually like the brownies I’ve been bringing in. What I do know is that I’ve been taking in containers full of brownies for the past 6 Monday mornings and taking home empty containers on Tuesday afternoons.
I’m really enjoying baking every Sunday, it’s quite relaxing and therapeutic and a great way to end the weekend. My work mates are mostly pretty happy with it- although a few are complaining about having to go to the gym more. I should be going to the gym more because let’s be honest, brownie batter is DELICIOUS!
The hardest part I’m finding is coming up with new brownie permutations to test out!
So far, I’ve done plain Chocolate, Salted Caramel, Cookies and Cream, Chocolate and Raspberry, Rum and Raisin, and Spiced Chili! I think the Salted Caramel were the crowd pleasers- although I was quite partial to the Cookies and Cream myself!
There are literally thousands of brownie possibilities out there- so, which ones should I make in the next few weeks??
Really, there’s not a lot to say except that I baked brownies for the second Sunday in a row…. In a row!
Let’s not make this a habit….although I’ve worked out that I can bribe one of my work colleagues with brownies, so I may be baking more and more.
This week’s edition…. Donna Hay’s 80th issue cover recipe: salted caramel brownies.
The caramel layer is still setting in the fridge so I’m not sure how they are but the caramel got The Runner’s tick of approval! (And I got to use the candy thermometer I bought ages ago on sale!). We’ll salt in the morning so fingers crossed they will look like the cover!
For our 1st anniversary, I gave The Runner a BBQ and Beer Cooking Class at the BBQ School in Willougby.
It was a 2 part class led by two chefs, Ben, an Aussie Chef who previously worked with Marco Pierre White in London, and Seamus, an Irish Chef who we later learned makes chocolate goodies for one of our favorite patisseries, The Sweet Spot, in Randwick.
We were welcomed with a beer which was brewed with a WilliamsWarn brewing kit and then we were talked through exactly how the device worked. It seemed pretty idiot proof to be honest and Ben was sure to tell us just how simple it was to use. It makes 21L of beer which sounds like a lot but after a night in Munich at the beer halls, I’m not so sure.
The first hour of the class was a bit of a sales pitch for WilliamsWarn and I can see how handy and useful a contraption like that would be. (Un)fortunately for us, The Runner’s man cave is taken up with triathlon gear and we don’t have a lazy $7500 to spend on a home brewing machine. (Especially since someone just bought a fancy new bike…) It did seem foolproof, but not as fool proof as just buying 6 packs from Dan Murphy’s.
I remember going to Cascade Brewery in Tasmania about 10 or 12 years ago and being told that winemaking is an art but beer making is a science. Winemakers can get away with variations in their product from year to year and vintage to vintage. There’s no one perfect Shiraz or Chardonnay or any wine really—they’re characteristics that they all share but even the same bottle of the same winery’s wine won’t taste exactly alike year after year. Beer is totally different. If you buy a Guinness, you want it to taste like Guinness. Heineken tastes like Heineken everywhere in the world- to get that sort of consistency, you have to use (and follow) a formula or a recipe. I’ve never made my own beer or my own wine but having listened to the explanation today, it sounds like beer is like baking (you have to follow directions, measurements, and temperatures) and wine is like cooking a stir fry (season and taste as you go!). I’m no expert but that’s just my impression.
In the second hour we got to cook! Caramelized onions, venison sausages, carrots, potatoes and finally tomahawk steaks.
Being a BBQ class, it was one of the few cooking classes I’ve been to that have been mostly men. The cooking was pretty simple and the recipes easy to follow—and all cooked on the BBQ. The only place where things got a bit complicated was the Sausage stuffing. It’s not the easiest thing to do in general, and we had some bad luck with the casing. The Runner was front and center at the time, but I’m sure the malfunction was not his fault….
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The steaks were amongst the biggest I’ve ever cooked. Massive Grass fed tomahawk steaks from Cape Grim. Apparently, you choose grass fed beef for flavour and grain fed beef for tenderness.
We had a great time cooking (and eating them) and finished off with a Beer Spider- white chocolate and beer ice cream within an English ale!
For the second class, we focussed on the cooking- there was still in beer but it was it was already made so we focussed on the cooking! Crispy skin cod with bacon and cabbage slaw, Jerk Spatchcock (or Cornish Hens or baby chickens depending on where you’re from!) We also made sweet potato, a mango salsa, and rice and beans to go with it. We also made bacon (made bacon!) and candied it to serve with beer ice cream and little caramel chocolate pudding cakes (cooked on the BBQ). It was all delicious! And filled with lots of tips and tricks.
For example, did you know that you can make beer vinaigrette salad dressing? We reduced beer by heating it and combined it with wine wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. The reduced beer replaces the olive oil in the dressing- and is delicious. It’s definitely not a combination I would ever think about but it was absolutely delicious on the cabbage slaw.
The most exciting portion of the class was making candied bacon. First of all, we made it using bacon we had started to cure in the first class. Secondly, it was such a decadent process involving LOTS of brown sugar, maple syrup, and a bit of beer (it was a BBQ and BEER class after all!) It was delicious smelling and the syrup looked like it would be amazing poured over ice cream once all the bacon was glazed and re-glazed. If I’m honest, I preferred the small pieces of candied bacon over the big ones but it was still pretty tasty.
The most useful part of the course was learning how to spatchcock a baby chicken. Useful but also challenging for someone as squeamish as me. I’m not good at dealing with whole animals- I don’t eat whole fish, I don’t like eating chicken with bones, and in science class I left the room during dissections. So needless to say I’m never one to search out whole beasts in my cooking adventures. My number one fear the first time I made Thanksgiving dinner in Australia was buying the turkey—and what might be “in” the turkey. And by “in” the turkey, I mean “in” the turkey. The things that would keep the turkey alive, but that are not at all necessary once the turkey is dead. I was told that in the US, those things are still “in” the turkey but in a bag or something like that. Luckily, in Australia turkeys are empty when you get them—thank goodness! So I’ve never had to deal with reaching in and pulling anything out. ICK! I was slightly challenged by parts of the spatchcock- like pulling out the neck to cut it off. I was even more afraid of what I would find, when someone else’s little bird had a heart and liver (or stomach or something) inside. I think I would have fainted if I had cut mine open to find that! Thankfully mine was empty (and well spitchcocked in the end). The Runner had no such fear about what he would find inside and attacked his with none of the squeamishness that I had. I was quite impressed by his butchering skills…and may put them to work more in the future!
The course was great- I definitely want to do another one soon. We don’t have a big, fancy BBQ so I’m not sure that I would trust our Weber Q to bake little cakes or rice pilaf or do some of the things that we were able to do in class.
I mean, I’m sure we could but we also have an oven and a stove that we could use for things like baking and sauteing. It was cool to see how it CAN be done on a BBQ, but just because something CAN be done, doesn’t mean it should be! However, those tomahawk steaks are a definite SHOULD be done!
This weekend we managed to pull off not one but two dinner parties- Friday night and Sunday night. I’m not going to lie, I was a little tired on Monday morning. I couldn’t have done it without the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. More specifically, I couldn’t have done it without the Kale salad and the Strawberry Cheesecake Fool from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook—because I served both dishes at both dinner parties. They were both THAT good!
For those of you don’t know, Smitten Kitchen is a food blog and the food blog was so popular that she created a cookbook. This is probably my secret wish for when I grow up- I would love to write a cookbook. I’ve looked into it, and it’s not easy- lots of creativity, lots of recipe writing, lots of recipe testing, and lots of time. It’s currently in the “one day” pile but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Smitten Kitchen has been around for over 9 years- I thought it would have been one of the oldest/first food blogs but according to Saveur it’s not even close. They date the first food blogs as starting around 1999 when Blogger and WordPress first were made publicly available. Anyway, I digress— the blog has been around for a while, definitely check it out if you haven’t read it because her recipes are fantastic! So good, that I served two of them twice over the weekend.
I’ve only cooked one or two dishes out of the cookbook previously (the Buttered popcorn cookies are delish!) but it’s definitely a book that’s worth picking up. The recipes are easy to follow and well written- and they have pictures!
The Kale Salad with cherries and pecans is super straight forward as you would expect a salad recipe to be- I mean really, most salads are pretty easy and this one is no exception. I love kale. Yes, I know that makes me whatever the 2010s version of a yuppie is- a DINK, hipster, buppie? Who knows, it doesn’t matter because kale is delicious. I don’t wear Kale t-shirts or sweatshirts, but I’m a big fan. And this salad really lets the kale shine. It’s just kale, pecans, cherries, goat’s cheese, and radish with a honey mustard dressing.
All hail the Kale!A berry nice dessert!
The Strawberry Cheesecake Fool is a more complicated proposition but it’s basically a deconstructed strawberry cheesecake served layered in a glass. Think gooey strawberries, brown sugar cookie crumb layered together with a whipped cream/cream cheese creamy mixture. There are quite a few steps involved and I did have to remove a refrigerator shelf in the process but it was well worth it. P.S. I also made a Strawberry and Cointreau sorbet to have with it. It was super easy- Strawberry, Strawberry liqueur, Cointreau, sugar, and ice into a blender and then into the freezer. It would have been better in an ice cream maker, but it was pretty good as it is!
Dukkah prawns with homemade wasabi mayo to start!
So, I have to say, two dinner parties in one weekend wasn’t the most relaxing way to spend a weekend, but it was great to entertain and hang out with friends and to share food and wine and time with them. Serving two dishes (three if you count the sorbet) twice did make things a lot easier—don’t be surprised if when you come over you wind up having one (or both) of the dishes—they are both so tasty and so easy- that they may become my new dinner party staples!
The Sunday night crew!An inside joke from the Friday night girls!
Of course, Smitten Kitchen doesn’t have the recipes on her website- she wants you to buy the book. But A Life Well Lived has the recipe here for the Kale Salad and Chorizo and Thyme has the Strawberry Cheesecake Fool recipe here.
So we packed up from Zell Am See and headed East past Salzburg (where we had been the day before) towards Vienna. And I swear, I cannot even hear the word Vienna without thinking of this…
The 1981 hit by Ultravox. To be honest, it’s not a great song. I don’t think it ever came out in the States and I had never heard it before we danced to it in my pole dancing class a couple of years ago. It’s not a song that I would have ever put on purposely EXCEPT that we were on our way to Vienna. And so I couldn’t get it out of my head. Which meant that I couldn’t stop singing bits of it.
It was about a 5 hour drive (I know it doesn’t look that far on a map) from Zell Am See to Vienna, and I probably sang “Oh, Vienna….this means nothing to me” about 25 times. And of course, as soon as we actually made it to Vienna’s city limits, I played it. At full blast. And sang along. Loudly, badly, with emotion and arm movements. With my eyes closed. I really got into it. Somewhere in Munich there is a camera floating around with a video of me belting out the song as we drive into Vienna….wait….I think The Runner may have cut the cord of my camera strap so that he would never have to endure seeing that video. Possibly not, but I am sort of surprised he didn’t put me out of the car.
Anyway, we didn’t really stop much along the way but we did make one stop in Melk, about an hour outside of Vienna. Melk is famous for its baroque style abbey. We got off the highway with full intention of visiting the abbey- but we got sidetracked. Well, I did after lunch at least. We stopped into a wine shop specialising in local Wachau Valley wines… and well… at least I learned a new word…. Federspiel. Federspiel is a classification for Wachau Valley wines of around 11.5-12.5%. We picked up two bottles as souvenirs (which didn’t actually make it out of Vienna) and got back on the road.
On first arrival, Vienna seemed quite well, blah. I wasn’t impressed. But….as we kept driving I got more and more excited.
Vienna has an amazing combination of architectural styles- from beautiful, old buildings from the late 1700s to gorgeous art deco buildings built in the early 1900s to hideous, drab post World War II buildings built in a rush to house those left homeless after more than 87,000 houses in the city were bombed. Once I heard that on our tour, I looked at the city differently and thought about the city a bit differently too. Vienna was bombed over 52 times by Allied forces, there were over 3000 bomb craters that were left. It sort of explains why there are blocks with 3 or 4 plain, drab 1950s building sandwiched between two beautiful art deco ones. It was also interesting to think about what it must have looked like and how a city would have behaved at wartime. On the plane over, I had watched The Woman in Gold, a recent movie about art restitution after World War II which takes place in Vienna. I really enjoyed seeing the movie in person, but it was quite jarring to think about all the horrible things that would have happened there during the war.
We were also watching the refugee crisis start to unfold during this trip. It was when Hungary had shut down the trains and weren’t letting any refugees pass through. We saw it first hand when we arrived at our hotel in Munich. We were staying opposite the main train station and it looked as though we had arrived in war zone- there were police and video cameras everywhere. Our hotel had a security guard out front. Hungary still hadn’t let the refugees pass by the time we left Munich, but everyone was on alert for when they did. I did see a refugee family approach our hotel and get turned away by the security guard. I don’t know what they asked or where they went after that. But it was quite sad, and it really brought the crisis to the forefront of my mind.
Hopefully in 60 years, people will be visiting Syria in the same way that we were visiting Vienna and Munich, two cities that were devastated by bombs only 60 years ago.
Anyway, Vienna was a fantastic city- we were staying in a fantast hotel- Hotel Rathaus Wein & Design. A boutique hotel themed around Wine. Yep, a Wine Hotel. Hallelujah, I had found my home. Each room had a different Austrian winemaker featured, they did wine tasting in the evening and there were loads of cute little wine and grape themed touches. And their breakfast was delish! So good, I made myself sick eating it. I highly recommend the hotel.
Our wine themed hotel
We did a hop on hop off bus tour of Vienna and saw loads of highlights including Schonbrunn Palace. A must do if you’re in Vienna. BEAUTIFUL. One of the highlights was the patisserie, where The Runner had Apple Streudel and I had Kaiserschmarrn- a fluffy shredded pancake which was delish! And while we’re on the subject of desserts….
The Viennese do not mess around when it comes to dessert!
That night we went to the Hotel Sacher, home of the famous Sacher Torte. I think it I win the lottery and return to Vienna, I would visit my Wein Hotel but splurge on a night or two at the Hotel Sacher. Rooms start at €525, for a superior room- about $1000 AUD at the moment. Of course, if I won the lottery, I’d upgrade to at least a Top Deluxe Room or a Suite. On this trip, we only saw the lounge area and we only had dessert and a couple of drinks. Wow. It is a beautiful hotel, probably one of the most beautiful lounge areas of a hotel I’d ever been to. Sadly, I don’t have any photos, but their website does.
We spent a lot of time just walking around the inner city and the old city of Vienna. We only really had time for one museum- the Belvedere Museum. And why that Museum you might ask? Because it has my favorite painting in the whole wide world. Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. Klimt painted in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. He had been a favorite artist of mine since college nearly and the Belvedere has quite a few of his paintings and drawings. I wish we had had time for more museums, but I’m thrilled that we got to see The Kiss. It’s stunning in real life. Just beautiful and huge. It’s displayed against a black wall which only makes the colours and the gold in the painting stand out more. I loved it even more seeing it person (unlike the Mona Lisa, which was a lot smaller than I thought it would be).
We had a lovely afternoon in Grinzing, a lovely suburb of Vienna with lots of Heurigen- traditional cafes that serve their own house wine on site. And by house wine, I mean wine that they actually make themselves. It’s such a beautiful area and we had a lovely lunch in a sunny wine garden with really friendly staff.
I could write so much about Vienna, but I’d like to go back one day and spend more time there. There’s so much we didn’t see and so much we didn’t do. In fact, there’s probably a list of things we didn’t see longer than what we did see. There’s so much history there as well that we didn’t get to delve into- the garage where we parked our car dated back to 1925!
After two days in Vienna, we headed to Munich. We didn’t get to see nearly enough of Munich so I’m plotting our return back maybe in a year or two….and this time I’ll keep hold of my camera.
Sadly, I still haven’t found my camera but I still had loads of fun on our trip and I thought it was worth sharing a few things with you! You can see what pictures I do have on my flickr account here.
Austria is a beautiful country and even though it was never high on my list of places to visit- it’s definitely on my list of places I’d love to go back to one day. Other than losing my camera in Munich in the last hours of the trip, it was a fantastic trip.
I must say it started well- I had Shake Shack and got to visit the Emirates First Class Lounge in Dubai. Jack, one of The Runner’s triathlon friends flies A LOT for work, and we were on the same flight to Munich so he was able to sneak me in. I’m not sure which was more exciting for me. I love Shake Shack, and the luxury and joy of being able to shower and change clothes during a long haul flight—priceless! (The burger I later learned was $15… Damn you exchange rates!!!) So, it was pretty much the ideal long haul stop over experience. (This was not the same on the way back—sadly we were back with the plebs, but I did have a burger AND a shake so…..it wasn’t all bad!
We arrived in Munich and luckily The Runner’s bike arrived too. I had been trusted as a bike courier for Gary’s precious TT bike. He may love the bike more than he loves me, so I was a bit nervous that it would show up mangled or crushed, or even worse not turn up at all. Luckily, it arrived, safe and intact and in Munich. Unfortunately, our friend Jack was not as lucky. His bike was in Bangkok. He was not happy. He was not the only one but luckily Emirates put the bikes on the next flight and it arrived early the next morning.
In some ways, it was fortunate that we only had one bike to transport because when we collected our car- a Mercedes C Class Station Wagon (or Estate if you’re in Europe), it was clear that 3 people, 2 bikes and 6 bags would have been a bit of a squeeze. Actually, it was very clear that one of us would have been dropped at the train station and sent on their way. The Runner never did clarify which one of us it would be…
The trip from Munich to Zell Am See was beautiful- it was hills and mountains and bigger mountains and alpine towns. It looked like something out of a postcard. It was just stunning. Everything I had hoped for in the Alps and more! Driving on the Autobahn or Autostrasse is no joke! It gave me a new respect for just how good German engineering is. At first I was surprised that there were hardly any Toyotas or Fords or Peugeots on the road, but when you think about the German domestic car manufacturers (BMW, Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen, Mercedes), it’s pretty obvious why most Germans would support their homegrown producers. I thought the Autobahn would be mayhem, but it really wasn’t. I mean, it is a bit crazy when you’re going 140 km/h and a BMW M5 or Audi TT goes screaming past at about 170 km/h. But people seem to know how to drive and they make it work. One eye opening thing about German and Austrian roads is their rest stops, they’re quite nice but….. well, you have to pay to use the facilities. In other words, you have to pay to pee. And it’s not an honour system either, they have tickets and turnstiles and well, yeah. But don’t worry, if you don’t have change, they take credit and debit cards.
Zell Am See is absolutely stunning. It’s a ski resort in the winter, but in sunny, warm 30 degree (Celsius) weather, it was hard to imagine what it would be like in winter. From what we heard, it is just as gorgeous in the winter as in the summer. I’d love to go back and see for myself. There were still some ski lifts running to take you up to mountain, but we didn’t decide to go up- we had bigger fish to fry but more on that in a second.
The atmosphere in Zell Am See was pretty amazing. There were so many really fit people but beyond that there were so many nationalities represented there. Everywhere you turned you could hear a different language. Interestingly, the largest international contingent was actually from the US- there were 657 Americans in the race. And we weren’t the only ones who had made the long journey from Australia- there were 250 Australians in the race as well!
All the way here, just to see Australians!
I was shocked. We didn’t do a lot of pre-race Ironman related activities, of course there was the obligatory cycle/drive of the bike course….Jack and The Runner went off on their bikes, and I followed in the car—except for when I took a wrong turn and wound up….somewhere in Austria. Somewhere with little mobile reception and not enough German to ask anyone how to get to where I was going…wherever that was! It all worked out in the end and I wound up seeing amazing scenery and gorgeous little towns like Maria Alm (We were told by a local that Maria Alm had won prettiest town to Austria- he may have been the head of the Maria Alm tourist bureau.)
The day before the race we did the Grossglockner or High Alpine Road, a twisting and turning road that takes you up to Austria’s highest points. (The bigger fish I was referring to!) It is well worth the price of admission but it’s not for the faint of heart. There are steep climbs, narrow roads, hairpin turns and a long long long drop if you make any mistakes. The view from the top (or where we thought was the top) was breathtaking. It was one of the most awe inspiring places I’ve been. A place where you realise how beautiful the planet is and how many different terrains and landscapes there are in the world. It left me speechless.
Race Day was good- it was hot. Very hot. Very Very hot. The Runner had a good race, despite the heat and he even managed to give me a kiss in the finishing chute. He got a medal which is massive and a t shirt he’s been wearing with pride. The best part was that his whole family got to see him compete and to share a part of our life that they had never witnessed before. I think they were pretty impressed with his efforts and I had a great time hanging out with them for the day around Zell Am See.
The day after the race The Runner, Jack and I went to Salzburg. We vetoed going to the Ice Caves on the way (it would have been 0 degrees in there!) and went to a medieval fortress/castle/town in Werfen instead which was pretty cool. We finally arrived in Salzburg and visited the Dom Quartier in the centre of Salzburg and the Hochensalzburg Castle. We had the obligatory post-race McDonalds (obligatory for two triathletes not for me)- I did manage to try the Chicken Big Mac—it was kind of tasty. A mix between a Big Mac and Chicken Nuggets. I have to say I’m a fan. It’s great for indecisive people like me. From there we went to Hellbrun Palace in Schlosspark and the Trick Fountains there. It was definitely one of the highlights of Salzburg for me. The trick fountains were really fun especially on a hot day. They are over 200 years old and were designed by someone with a devious sense of humour. The fountains are designed to surprise (and soak guests). Luckily we didn’t get too wet, but it was fun – like running through a sprinkler on a summer day as a kid. The Hellbrun Palace is also famous as part of the Sound of Music was filmed there. Not being a big SoM fan, I skipped that part of the grounds. I would love to go back and see more of Salzburg one day, we were only there for a few hours and there was a lot that we didn’t get to see. I’d also love to go back and actually eat something other than McDonald’s there. They have a load of chocolatiers and cafés that we didn’t get to try.
We had a lovely day in Salzburg but then headed back to Zell Am See for our last night there. The next day we headed to Vienna……. OH Vienna……….
The view from the High Alpine Road.News flash: Austrians like beer….a lot. And you can buy it from the grocery store….Ducks- Austrians and Germans LOVE them and I sort of collect them….The biggest race medal I’ve ever seen!Salzburg SquareFrom inside the fortress at WerfernOne of the drier rooms of the trick fountains…Inside Schonbronn’s music roomThe Sound of Music was filmed on the grounds somewhere…
To myself and to you my dear readers but mostly to myself. So, I owe you a long blog post about the amazing trip to Austria and Germany that we’ve just returned from. A post full of pictures and stories and video of all the highlights of the trip. There were loads- the race itself, the beauty of the Alps, driving the Grossglockner high alpine road, all the ducks, medieval cliff top fortresses, Salzburg, a quirky wine hotel, Klimt’s The Kiss in real life, Schonbrunn Palace, BMW World, Munich, etc etc. I owe you a post about gorgeous wines, lovely mountain adventures, athletic triathletes and more. But I can’t deliver.
Because I’ve done something stupid. A momentary lapse, a split second misstep. A blip in the matrix.
I left my camera in a taxi cab in Munich in the last 5 hours of our holiday.
Yep, most of the photos and videos- gone. I hadn’t been drinking or distracted by gypsies– just in a rush and careless. We all know what it’s like that split second that you realise that all is not right. Whether it’s the moment the door slams behind you right as you remember your keys are on the other side or when you go to make a phone call and find out your phone isn’t on the table where it had been just a minute ago. Or when you figure out that you’re on the wrong bus the one day you’re late for work, or coming back to a car with its lights left on knowing full well that it’s not going to start. It’s that sinking feeling when you kick yourself for being so stupid and careless whilst realizing that accidents and mistakes happen to us all.
So unfortunately that is how my amazing trip to Europe ended. In tears. In a Munich police station trying to use the little German I know to tell a police woman how I had momentarily been careless enough to get out of a taxi with no receipt, no license plate number, no drivers name and no camera. Of course this is after The Runner and I had been staring down taxi drivers for an hour to see if we could find the one we had been in before (we couldn’t.). I guess if there is an upside (there’s not really) it’s that I’ve learned the word “lost” in German (verloren) and discovered a universal truth: Taxis are the worst place in the world to lose anything no matter what country. There must be an international black hole where lost taxi items and socks go never to be seen again. I’ve finally fallen victim to it.
I will share some of our adventures in the coming days, but I need a bit of time to mourn the loss of Cam the Canon Camera. Outside you were like any other camera, but what was on the inside of your little memory card brain can never be replaced.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons and picked up a lot of tips in the past few days- most of which I will probably never implement. Like always note your taxi driver’s name and number, take a picture of your contact details as the first photo on your camera SD card, write down the serial numbers for all of your possessions, write your name on everything with a dynamo label, check for your belongings every time you leave a vehicle. All common sense things that no one does all the time. We might do some of the things some of the time, but the one time we don’t….. oh well….Maybe I’ll just use Uber from now on. At least, it’s traceable.
Still 5 hours to swim start but if you want to track Gary’s race progress today.... Here you go and if you want his real time, GPS location, you can track him here (it only works for the race not all the time!) On the second map, you will need to put his bib number in (1731).
He starts at 10:58am Austrian time, which is 9:58am in Ireland, 6:58pm in Sydney, or 4:58am for the US east coast! I’ll also do my best to keep the updates coming both here and on the He Runs, I Cook Facebook page– (like it if you haven’t yet!)
He Runs, I Cook 