St. Gilgen

A Pilgrimage to St. Wolfgang, Austria

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It was October 12. The next stage of our Austrian adventures involved a hike from St. Gilgen to St. Wolfgang and a ferry to Strobl. Incidentally, one of the many things I learned on this trip is that you can download any language from Google translator onto your phone and use it even when you don’t have Wi-Fi or cell. That turns out to be invaluable when you’re in a German speaking country and your only German consists of Gesundheit.

Once again, a very nice breakfast buffet at our St. Gilgen hotel (Kendler Hotel). J and I are getting used to the pushed together twin beds, each of which has its own duvet. It turns out that minimizes a lot of arguments about who has pulled the covers off of whom. This coffee machine was exceptionally good, with at least six plus types of coffees, and once again, many types of breads (you are given a basket, just so you can completely carbo load), meats, cheese, eggs, fruit, yoghurt.

The hike from St. Gilgen to St. Wolfgang is an actually a pilgrimage route for St. Wolfgang himself. He lived as a hermit, later founding a monastery in St. Wolfgang. Lots of information boards along the way told his story, including in English at first…but then someone clearly became tired of translating and they were in German only.

Some very steep uphills made the trail markers that depicted pilgrims carrying heavy crosses quite appropriate. A small white church stood at the peak, right by a spring (shrine) that was supposed to have healing properties. Although I felt I could use some healing properties by that point, I resisted the urge to take off my boots and dabble my feet. The trail had a nice mix of up and down, and reminded me a bit of the Balkans.

One of many Virgin Mary shrines
Two Yogis – Look Closely

We reached St. Wolfgang in time for lunch at a cafe by the church. The very young servers seemed overwhelmed, so it left a bit to be desired. St. Wolfgang is quite the tourist spot, but still retains a lot of charm. Nice little boathouses line the lakeside; it looked like you could rent them. And I was amused by all the statues of yogis! It was quite the contrast to the Virgin Mary icons we were seeing everywhere, at stops on trails, above front doors.

The 15th century church, right beside the lake, was amazing – painted ceilings, multiple carved alters.

We bought our ferry tickets online and took the 15:45 to Strobl, where we were to stay for two nights. Like the buses, the ferries leave right on the dot. It was about a 20-25 minute ride across the lake to the far end. Strobl feels smaller than St. Wolfgang, although it looks bigger on the map. I think it’s just less touristy.

A fair number of places were closed for the season. We stayed at the Hotel Strobler, very nice and convenient, but right by the church which rings its bells every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Our window looked out on a well-maintained and colorful graveyard, decorated with flower gardens atop each grave.

After a walk down to Lake Wolfgang (Wolfgangsee), we had dinner at a brewery with very interesting food. I had a vegetarian meal of baked potato with sour cream, root vegetables and chestnuts. J had Wiener schnitzel (not so unusual). Sleep was a bit hard to come by, with the church bells clanging every 15 minutes.

The next day was Friday the 13th. After our somewhat disrupted night, we made it to a grocery store to pick up lunch food for our day hike. We started off by passing the elementary school track races; lanes had been marked off by the lake, and there was lots of excitement.

The start of the Burgl Panaramaweg (Trail) is neat. In contrast to the ancient Wolfgang pilgrimage we had taken the day before, it opened in 1982. The trail starts off on a boardwalk tethered to the side of a mountain as you round the Burgl Rock. It then meanders through a valley (replete with very nice cows, all wearing bells), and though a pass and up, up, up to the Schwarzensee (see means lake).

On the way, we walked through beautiful mossy areas that looked like fairy spots, biodiverse forests, followed by spread out tall pines with light dappling through. The lake seems small compared to the others, but it’s large enough when you walk around it.

We had a nice picnic lunch in a secluded spot on the banks, and made it back to St. Wolfgang (where we’d been the day before) in time to catch the same 15:45 ferry.

As I wrote this diary entry, we were enjoying a drink in the garden at the Hotel Strobler while vaguely watching the only other Americans we’ve seen (two men, investments bankers?), who were also on the ferry, trying to figure out how to order drinks.

Our final night we had dinner at Kirchenwirt – we even made reservations. J had a goulash, and I had spinach dumplings. Fortunately we were either so tired or so used to the every 15 minute church bells we didn’t even hear them that night. A good thing, because the next day was 9 miles to Bad Ischl.

On the Way to Fuschl Am See

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It does sound a bit like “I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew,” for those of you who remember the 1965 Dr. Seuss book…but Fuschl am See was our next destination after our couple of nights in Vienna. (“See” means lake; “am” means “at the”.) This entailed trains and buses and trails, oh my, and a few wrong turns along the way.

Actually, we were about to embark on the hiking phase of our trip — about a week exploring the hills surrounding the Salzburg Lake District. Our adventure started with the subway to the main train station in Vienna, a long wait, and then a train to Salzburg. Fortunately, it was easy to find the bus from Salzburg to Fuschl am See, although getting off the bus proved more difficult.

We bought tickets for the 2:15 bus and boarded almost immediately, except for the delay occasioned by some woman who insisted we put our suitcases in the cargo area below. I knew we must be in the right place, since one of the few passengers on board was wearing a native green Austrian hat, festooned with feathers and insignia. See photo above. We clearly weren’t in Kansas anymore.

We had looked at all the stops listed on the electronic display on the bus and there seemed to be only one Fuschl stop. Although this was not consistent with my previous research, we thought we better go with the real time indication on the bus and get off at that one. I should have relied on my research, as we ended up disembarking a full four stops too soon. It turns out that having Fuschl in the name of a place was not much of an indicator…there were multiple stops labeled Fuschl and the electronic display simply hadn’t shown them yet!

Anyway, we exited the bus at what was a suspiciously remote stop on the side of a highway, after making quite a production since the bus driver had to help us get the suitcases out from the cargo hold. The fact no one else got off should have been another hint. It didn’t take more that a couple of minutes before it was clear something was terribly wrong. I checked GPS (which, by the way, works without cell data or Wi-Fi) and realized we were a good three miles from our destination. Since pulling our luggage along the side of a two-lane highway without sidewalks didn’t seem like a very good idea we were happy to learn the next bus was only 20 minutes away. The bus driver rolled his eyes when we got back on but let us use the same tickets…clearly chalking it up to incompetent Americans. This time we did not put our suitcases in the cargo hold!

After three more stops, we arrived at the correct Fuschl stop and located the Hotel Jakob (which also seemed to have a moniker of the Triathlon hotel). And indeed it was aimed at triathletes and cyclists, with bikes on display and biking gear for sale. The town was quite small – on a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. J and I strolled through town and had a gin and tonic at a nice lakefront cafe, and made a dinner reservation for the attached restaurant, which was recommended for local fish.

The temperature dropped; we returned to the hotel to change. This is when we figured out that Austrians, at least in the country, eat early – between 6 and 7 p.m.! I can only describe the restaurant as staid, lots of older people (it was a weeknight in the off season), all seated at tables lined up around the sides of the room so we could all inspect everyone else as they ate their meals….I had three types of fish all from the lake – a filet whose name I didn’t catch, arctic char, and perch, served with carrots and leeks.

The next day we finally started the hike, but only after an amazing breakfast buffet featuring salmon, cold meats, cheeses, breads. I managed to mess up the coffee machine by using too small a cup for my latte (you can imagine what happened), but discovered that the coffee machines in Austria rivaled those in Spain. America needs these!

After we checked out of the hotel, we started to follow the “blue line” on our downloaded GPS map, just as we had done in the Yorkshire Dales. The first part, through a valley, was a trail themed around gnomes, with little signs up everywhere telling a story of some ill fated gnome. The landscape really does explain where the Brothers Grimm got their tales.

It was only about a five miles to our next stop, although there was a decent uphill and down, and I did miss my hiking poles – but there was no way to fit them into the luggage. One thing to get used to were all the Catholic shrines and chapels along the trails. Every couple of miles there would be a shrine with candles lit, typically for the Virgin Mary. I’m assuming the candles were battery operated.

After some good scrambling and beautiful views from Mozartblik, we descended into St. Gilgen, which is on Lake Wolfgang. It’s a very wealthy summer town, but many places were closed for the season, which had ended a couple of weeks before. It was almost too quaint, painted buildings and Austrian architecture.

We had lunch by the lake, followed by a power nap, since we still weren’t exactly on the right time zone. After a long walk through town, we capped off the day with a drink at a bar across the street, which featured someone wearing lederhosen along with many tattooed bikers. That theme continued at dinner – again, the restaurant was practically empty by 7 – where we enjoyed watching four very elderly men, clearly on their weekly outing, each wearing lederhosen with the appropriate jackets.

J and I retired early. The next day was going to introduce yet a new mode of transportation – a lake ferry.