Lower Austria (Niederösterreich)

After a drizzley but historically rich weekend in Innsbruck (castles! armor! art!), I took the early train across Austria to see Ulli, my former tandem (language partner from UniGraz) in Lower Austria.

Ulli lives in the small town of Obergrafendorf near St Pölten, 30 minutes by train west of Vienna. She and her boyfriend Roland meet me at the St Pölten Hauptbahnhof and we drove to Casa De Hummel to drop off my backpack. The area is largely rural, covered in farms and orchards and tiny "dorfs," villages. It was a lovely drive despite the rain!

Innsbruck to St Pölten

There is a narrow gauge train that goes from st Pölten through a beautiful little valley into the foothills of the alps. We rode it to the end of the line in Mariazell, which is actually in the Steiermark, Styria! Lunch was a Steirisch chicken salad, complete with cold potato salad and Kurbiskernöl (pumpkin seed oil). Wow, it's good to be back.
Mariazell is a pilgrimage site in the mountains. It's main attraction is a lovely baroque cathedral, followed closely by a  Lebkuchen (gingerbread) bakery. Yum! That evening we sat and talked with Ulli's parents, who were kindly very patient with my still slow German.
Tuesday was also rainy, so we decided to go to Vienna. Ulli endured a tech museum for my entertainment (really interactive, kinda made the Deutsches Museum look like a collection... Don't tell the Germans!)

Afterwords we went to Ulli's favorite café in Vienna, Café Central. Seattle may think it invented coffee culture, but Washington wasn't even a state when Café Central opened its doors!

Later that evening we went back to a dorf near Obergrafendorf to visit a Mostheuriger. Most is the Austrian word for hard cider (it was very similar to Basque cider!), and a Heuriger is the Swiss/Austrian word for a Buschenschank. We had a delicious sort of Lower Austrian quesadilla, where a flat bread was loaded with cheese and ham, rolled, sliced into dippable pieces, and served with a chive sour cream. Yum!