Salzburg: The Golden Stag, the Schlumberger & the Long Way Home
Six and a half hours across Switzerland and Austria, a currency crisis in a quiet café, and an anniversary in a hotel that has been welcoming guests since 1407.
Since our first visit to Austria in 2016, I had been looking for a reason to go back. I’m not sure I can fully explain the pull — whether it’s the people, the history, the food, or some particular alchemy of all three — but Austria has a way of making you feel like you left something behind every time you leave. That first trip had landed Vienna in our Top 5 Most Romantic Destinations before we’d even unpacked — if you want to know why, that post is waiting for you. But the moment I knew we had to return was the night we stepped out of a cold October rain at nearly midnight and walked into the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, where the concierge greeted us by name before we’d reached the desk. A complimentary bottle of champagne was waiting in the lounge. The jazz was already playing. That is Austria’s particular gift: it makes you feel expected.
Three years later, the Second European Rail Odyssey was finally giving us our return ticket.
This is Part 5 — and the final chapter — of the Second European Rail Odyssey. The six and a half hour journey that brought us here turned out to deserve its own post — you can read it in Part 4. This is what happened when we arrived.
The Currency Lesson & the Invisible City
When we finally pulled into Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, we followed our established travel pattern: ignored the taxis and decided to walk the twenty-five minutes to the hotel. We were roughly ninety minutes ahead of check-in, so we broke up the walk with a stop at a small, quiet café with only a few patrons. We settled in to celebrate the successful completion of our longest rail leg.
The celebration hit a snag the moment the bill arrived. The café was cash only — a pattern we were well familiar with by now. Mauricio confidently pulled out a handful of bills and set them on the table. The cashier looked down, then looked up with a puzzled expression.
“These are Francs,” he said gently. “We can’t accept Francs. Euro only.”
The realization landed like a cold Alpine breeze. We had used our last Euros on snacks somewhere between Zurich and Innsbruck and had completely failed to spend our Swiss Francs while we were actually in Switzerland. We had finished our drinks and literally couldn’t pay. Mauricio explained our situation — thankfully the cashier spoke fluent English — and asked where the nearest ATM was.
The man simply chuckled. “No matter,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Just bring it to me before you leave town.”
We went from horrified to stunned in a heartbeat. In the US that would be an unthinkable gesture of trust from a stranger. We couldn’t let the debt stand — we walked ten minutes to find an ATM, so we retraced our steps, found the café, and paid the man without further incident.
The Currency Transition
Switzerland uses the Swiss Franc (CHF). The moment you cross into Austria, you are in Euro territory. If you are making this journey, spend your Francs before you board in Lucerne — or exchange them at the station. Unspent Francs are a souvenir you didn’t mean to keep.
We made our way to the Marko Feingold Steg, the pedestrian bridge heavy with the weight of thousands of love locks. From the center of the bridge you can see the emerald domes of St. Peter rising in the distance, but the heart of the Old City stays hidden — teased behind the modern buildings and the hum of traffic on Rudolfskai. It gives nothing away from out here.
But once you cross that threshold and leave the cars behind, you enter another world entirely. The Altstadt was born in the Middle Ages and is accessible only on foot. The narrow stone alleys close in around you, the fortress rises above, and the 21st century begins to feel like someone else’s problem. We had arrived in Salzburg. The real one.
The Golden Stag: Where Time Stands Still
I had been looking forward to this leg of the journey since we booked it. We were celebrating our anniversary in Austria, and to mark the occasion I had splurged on the Hotel Goldener Hirsch. I had done as much research as I could, but the website does little to appease inquiring minds other than promise a stay steeped in history. Walking through the door, I was suddenly unsure of my choice.
Instead of a grand, glittering lobby, we entered a tiny foyer. A simple clerk’s desk to the left, a large staircase directly in front, a small quiet study to the right. It felt more like a private residence than a five-star hotel. I sank into one of two wing chairs in the “lobby” while Mauricio handled the check-in, and sat with my doubts.
The staff won us over before the doubts had time to settle. Their warmth was genuine rather than rehearsed — the specific warmth of people who take pride in where they work. They informed us the room would be ready in just a few minutes and pointed us toward the bar. No sooner had our drinks been set in front of us than the bellman appeared, ready to take our bags up. Mauricio told me to stay put and went to scout the room first.
When he came back a few minutes later, he was beaming. “You have to see this,” he said.
Walking into the room was like stepping back several centuries, but with every modern comfort quietly in place. To the right of the hallway was a large, sleek, modern bath — a welcome sight after a day of travel. But the bedroom was the showstopper. Massive by European standards, centered around a king-sized bed with a carved wooden headboard flanked by two deep wing chairs upholstered in red and cream stripe — the same palette carried through the curtains, the duvet, the patchwork rug underfoot. The bed linens were white with a delicate red floral print. Two traditional paintings hung between the windows. Everything in the room felt handmade and intentional, chosen rather than installed. This was not a hotel room. It was a very good Austrian living room that happened to have a bed in it.
The headboard, shaped like two cellos side by side, and the violin coffee table are quiet acknowledgments that Salzburg considers music its birthright. Mozart was born a minute’s walk away at Getreidegasse 9, and you cannot get to the hotel without passing that historic address.
A Building With a Past
The Goldener Hirsch has been on this exact spot since 1407 — first an inn, then a landmark. What feels like a small, intimate hotel is actually three medieval buildings joined together over six centuries. The winding hallways aren’t a design quirk. They’re history. In 1970 the adjacent Stockhamerbräu — once the third largest brewery in Salzburg — was acquired and folded in. Restaurant Herzl occupies what was originally a goldsmith’s shop at Getreidegasse 46, a third building absorbed into the whole. The hotel is listed as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Salzburg Altstadt, and its décor was personally curated by Countess Harriet Walderdorff, who bought the hotel in 1939, and after the war refurnished it in the style of her own country home. Elizabeth Taylor stayed here. Pavarotti. The Rothschilds. The Prince of Wales — now King Charles III.
A 15th-Century Feast & Sheldon’s Fun with Flags
With the room properly admired and our bags tucked into the armoire, we set out to explore the heart of the Old Town. We wandered toward the Residenzbrunnen, the massive Baroque fountain that anchors the square. Standing there, surrounded by the architecture of the Prince-Archbishops, you understand something about Salzburg that no photograph quite prepares you for: this city doesn’t just have history. It is history.
After eight days of crossing four countries and a six-and-a-half-hour train day behind us, we weren’t looking for an adventure. We wanted a good meal and a soft chair. Restaurant Herzl, conveniently located directly below our room, required almost no decision-making whatsoever.
The interior is the definition of cozy — less a hotel restaurant than a historic hunting lodge that has quietly remained in business for six hundred years. Dark wood, scenes of nature and the hunt, the kind of lighting that makes everything look warmer than it is. The servers wear traditional Austrian dress which, while a touch gimmicky, adds to the immersion in a way that somehow works. You feel, genuinely, as though you are sitting in the room hunters would have gathered in for a beer and a fire hundreds of years ago.
I ordered the beef special — served in a savory sauce with a warm wine base, pounded thin and cooked to a precise medium, the kind of dish that is easy to over-salt and wasn’t. The roasted potatoes had a slight crunch on the outside and were soft and creamy inside. Mauricio had the sausage plate, which disappeared before a photo could be taken — he did, however, make significant inroads into my onion straws. We paired the meal with a 2017 Markus Altenburger Blaufränkisch “vom Kalk” — a medium-bodied, organic Austrian house wine recommended by the server, fresh enough to complement a savory meal without competing with it. In a word, the food at Herzl is savory. In three: savory, deep, and warming. It is exactly the place you want to be on a cold Salzburg night.
“In a word, the food at Herzl is savory. In three: savory, deep, and warming. It is exactly the place you want to be on a cold Salzburg night.”
Restaurant Herzl, Hotel Goldener Hirsch — October 2019
Serving traditional Austrian fare since the 15th century, Herzl is the casual restaurant of the Goldener Hirsch — but don’t let “casual” mislead you. The kitchen is serious and the wine list is exceptional. Read our full review at ReviewSteak.com →
After a long day of travel, and with the temperature outside having made its feelings perfectly clear, we weren’t inclined to wander far. We settled into the bar for a nightcap — warm, quiet, exactly the right speed for the end of a six-and-a-half-hour rail day — then headed up to the room to laze the night away.
Somewhere in the process of flipping through channels looking for something in English, a familiar scene appeared on screen. Sheldon Cooper. His flag. We stopped immediately — of course we did. It took a full minute to register that every word coming out of his mouth was German. Perfectly dubbed, completely committed, entirely surreal. We watched until the commercial break, looked at each other, and kept flipping. Some things transcend language. Sheldon’s Fun with Flags is apparently one of them.
The Market, the Mob & the Schlumberger
Our anniversary morning began at a pace that matched our mood: unhurried. The city we had walked into the previous afternoon had been quiet and calm — the Altstadt moving at its own unhurried rhythm, a handful of other visitors but nothing that felt like a crowd. That version of Salzburg was gone. High above the city we could see the hordes of tourists dotting the ramparts of the Hohensalzburg Fortress — some there for the history, some there because a certain 1965 film made this skyline the most recognizable in Austria. The tour buses had arrived overnight and the cobblestones belonged to everyone now. We stayed within the shelter of the city walls and let Salzburg come to us.
We wove through groups of tourists until the crowds began to thin, eventually finding a semi-calm square that had been quietly taken over by something we hadn’t expected: a market. A wonderful hybrid of a farmer’s market and an artisan Christmas market, despite it being only early October. The festive spirit had apparently not consulted the calendar. We spent a long while there, moving slowly between the stalls, chatting with local artists, and selecting a few treasures to bring home.
I have a tradition of collecting Christmas ornaments on our travels. They are the perfect souvenir: small, practical, and because they only come out once a year, they never lose their luster or disappear into the daily visual noise of a shelf. Every ornament has a story, and once a year, when the boxes come out, the stories come with them.
Wondering how we fit artisanal ornaments and handpicked souvenirs into our bags without checking luggage? I Only Travel with a Carry-On: 5 Reasons Why →
Mauricio at Fabrizi — the Stiegl earned, the wind ignored
Eventually we needed a rest. We found Espresso Fabrizi tucked into a small alley and decided to brave the elements one last time. We took a table outside — with our layers on and the narrow alley walls shielding us from the worst of the wind, it was surprisingly cozy. We settled in with giant steins of Stiegl and watched the city move at its own quiet rhythm from our little cobblestone vantage point.
When it was time to move on, we crossed the bridge into the modern part of Salzburg and walked along Linzer Gasse in search of a gift. We ducked into an empty jewelry store and within two minutes it felt like the hordes had followed us in. We asked the clerk, somewhat overwhelmed, whether the city was always this packed with overseas tour buses.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “It is German Unity Day weekend. All the Germans are here to shop.”
We had timed our visit perfectly with a German national holiday. To us, the crowd was the obvious, bus-sized group of international tourists. To her, the crowd was the thousands of Germans who had slipped across the border for the long weekend. We had been looking at completely different things.
Adding to the chaos were signs in every window for Woman Day — a massive biannual shopping event in Austria where women receive significant discounts across participating stores. The streets were a whirlwind of holiday-makers and bargain hunters. Even in a city born in the Middle Ages, the allure of a good sale is apparently universal.
After trying and failing to compete for space at the counter, we moved on to Trendshop Salzburg — much more our speed, filled with unique locally-made jewelry. After about ten minutes, Mauricio decided he’d had enough of the retail hunt and told me to find him outside when I was finished.
I had been half-looking all morning for something to carry the Goldener Hirsch’s red and white aesthetic home with me — Austrian linens, ideally, something for the bedroom. Nothing had quite resonated. I settled instead on a set of red linen napkins from one of the market stalls. A small thing, and exactly right.
The farewell carpaccio — not Milan, but exactly right
When I finally emerged, I found Mauricio at Pizzeria Sabroson, blissfully people-watching with fresh bread and olive oil in front of him. We took our time over a farewell lunch — he ordered a carpaccio which, while not the same off-menu mystery we had conjured in Milan, was delicious and felt like the perfect final meal for a trip built on happy accidents.
Sporer, the Blue Goose & the Schlumberger
This was our anniversary and that deserved a proper celebration. We had one thing on our list before dinner — the Schlumberger. We had first discovered it on our very first anniversary in Vienna, in that booth across from the Opera House at Gerstner, and had spent years trying to track it down in the US without success. We knew it existed somewhere in Salzburg. After a few inquiries we found Sporer — a local liquëur manufacturer with roots dating back to 1903 — and there it was, sitting on the shelf as though it had been waiting for us. We didn’t hesitate. Right beside Sporer sat Blaue Gans. We stepped in, liked what we saw immediately, and made a reservation for later that evening. With the bottle carefully tucked under our arm, we headed back to the hotel to let it chill — the first order of business properly handled.
For dinner, although it was our anniversary, we weren’t looking for grand or formal. Salzburg was already doing the heavy lifting. We wanted authentic local soul, and Blaue Gans delivered from the moment we sat down. The staff was warm in a way that made you settle into your chair rather than sit up straight. It was only when we opened the menu that we understood where we actually were. This restaurant has been open since 1350 — nearly 150 years before Europeans reached the Americas. The menu is seasonal and built entirely around local ingredients. Mauricio’s Wiener Schnitzel, he declared, was among the best he had ever had. My beef shoulder was very good without quite reaching that same height. The wine list was staggering, and for the non-drinkers among you, their non-alcoholic cocktail program was equally serious.
Easy to walk past without realizing what it is. Don’t. The doors have been open since 1350 and the kitchen takes its local sourcing as seriously as any restaurant we visited on the entire Odyssey. Read our full review at ReviewSteak.com →
After dinner we headed back to the Goldener Hirsch and finally popped the Schlumberger — two glasses, two wing chairs, the room exactly as we had left it. I found myself not wanting to look away from it. There was something about the pattern — the white linens with their deep red floral print, the red and cream stripe of the chairs, the way the whole room held together in the same palette — that felt like it belonged somewhere permanent. I wanted to carry it home.
I started with what I had: the red linen napkins from the market that morning, found while I was looking for something else entirely, which is how the best things usually arrive. What I didn’t know yet was that I would spend the better part of the next several months searching for dishes that captured the same feeling. Pattern after pattern failing to capture what I was looking for, until one day the right one appeared — snowy trees, mountain cabins, that same red and white palette. Together they reconstruct something that can’t be packed into a carry-on: the specific feeling of two wing chairs, a bottle of Schlumberger, and a city that had been waiting for us to come back.
Over the Brenner & Back to Italy
Leaving Salzburg always feels like leaving a piece of yourself behind. As we stood on the platform at Salzburg Hauptbahnhof that final morning, we felt the bite of the cold air one last time and made the usual vow: back soon, a year at most. We didn’t know then that a pandemic would ground us for two and a half years — or that it would be the catalyst that eventually sent us across the ocean for good. But as the train pulled out of the station, the present moment took over. That is the thing about rail travel. It keeps moving whether you are ready or not.
To get back to Milan we chose the long, scenic route through the Brenner Pass — one of the lowest mountain passes in the Alps and one of the most beautiful train rides on the continent. The route takes you back through Innsbruck, where the tracks begin their dramatic climb toward the Italian border. This is not high-speed, tunnel-heavy transit. This is old-school rail engineering, the kind that winds and curves and takes its time gaining elevation until the Tyrolean villages below look like something from a Christmas display.
Somewhere between Innsbruck and the Italian border, Mauricio reached into his wallet to pay for something and went quiet for a moment. Then he held it up — thirty Swiss Francs, still there, completely useless on the wrong side of two borders. An unintended souvenir.
As we crossed into Italy, something interesting happened to the landscape. The border is a political fact but the architecture hadn’t received the memo. The steep-pitched roofs and heavy timber balconies of the Tyrol didn’t vanish at the boundary line — they simply began to soften, gradually, as if the two traditions were negotiating rather than competing. Austrian bones, Italian sun. You find yourself trying to pinpoint the exact moment one country becomes the other, and you never quite can.
Then the Dolomites appeared. Whatever you have seen in photographs does not prepare you for the scale of them in person — those vertical walls of pale grey limestone rising out of the valley floor with a permanence that makes everything else feel temporary. We just took it all in. This was what we came for after all, a return to the mountains.
As we descended toward Bolzano through the Isarco Valley, the steep hillsides gave way to something that surprised us both: vineyards. Meticulously terraced, impossibly green against the mountain backdrop, row after row of vines producing the crisp Kerner and bold Lagrein we had come to love. Seeing those vines set against Alpine chalets felt like the landscape itself refusing to be categorized — too Italian for Austria, too Austrian for Italy, and entirely itself.
Once we changed trains in Verona the last of the Alps retreated behind us. The architecture shed its mountain layers, the language around us settled back into the melodic Italian we had spent ten days falling in love with, and the train narrowed its focus to speed. The flat fertile plains of the Po Valley opened up and we zipped south toward Milan.
By the time we pulled into Milano Centrale, the mountain air felt like a memory from another life. To keep the stress of our final night at bay, we skipped the city traffic entirely and took the Malpensa Express straight to the Sheraton Milan Malpensa. Located directly inside Terminal 1, it is the ultimate low-drama exit strategy — check in, have a final Italian meal, and go to bed knowing your flight home is a short walk through the terminal the next morning. After ten days and four countries, we had earned the simplicity.
The Sheraton Milan Malpensa sits inside Terminal 1 at Milan Malpensa Airport. If your flight home is an early departure, this is the move — no morning transfer, no traffic, no variables. Book it as the last night of any Italian itinerary and thank yourself the next morning.
Ten Days, Four Countries, One Train Line
Ten days. Four countries. One train line threading them together.
Looking back now, what strikes me most isn’t any single monument or meal — it’s how completely different three places can feel when you move through them slowly enough to notice. Rail travel does that. You don’t arrive by air into a sanitized terminal that looks the same everywhere. You arrive at street level, at the pace the landscape allows, and the differences accumulate gradually until they become impossible to ignore.
The architecture tells the story first. Italy builds to be seen — the Duomo, the guildhalls, the ornate balconies that announce themselves from a block away. Switzerland builds to last — St. Leodegar burned to the ground in 1633 and had a new consecration eleven years later, no flourish required. Austria builds to be inhabited — the Goldener Hirsch doesn’t have a grand lobby because it doesn’t need one. The warmth is in the room itself.
The food confirms it. Italian cuisine is confident and unapologetic — it knows what it is and doesn’t explain itself. Swiss cooking is precise, drawing equally from French and German traditions without fully belonging to either. Austrian food is comfort elevated to an art form: dark bread, schnitzel, strudel, a glass of Blaufränkisch — dishes that feel like they were designed for exactly the kind of cold October night we were having.
And then there are the people. In Italy, strangers made us part of their evening whether we had planned on it or not — a gesture, a pulled-up chair, two hours of conversation that started because someone overheard us debating which direction to walk. In Switzerland, the reserve isn’t coldness — it’s completeness. People are not unfriendly; they simply don’t require you. Austria is something else entirely. Nobody pulls up a chair. But when Mauricio talked a hostess at the fully-booked Gerstner K. u. K. Hofzuckerbäcker into seating us for just one glass on our first visit in 2016 — we ended up in a booth overlooking the Opera House for the entire evening, the reservation holders never arriving. She hadn’t made a scene of it. She had simply found a way. That is the Austrian spirit: unhurried, quietly competent, and generous in a way that asks nothing back.
As I sit here writing this, five and a half years later, I can still hear the laughter spilling out of that Milan tattoo studio, feel the cool breeze off Lake Como, and hold my breath all over again at the memory of the gondola rising toward the summit of Mount Pilatus. And then there is Austria — warm rooms, well-prepared meals, a cold glass of Schlumberger — wrapping around the memory like the woolen blanket from that Monday night in Lucerne.
As the train pulled out of Salzburg Hauptbahnhof that final morning, I looked at Mauricio’s tattoo — the Biscione, the great Visconti serpent he’d spent eight hours in a Milan studio getting — and thought about what it meant to carry a place on your skin. We made the usual vow: back soon, a year at most. We didn’t know then that a pandemic would ground us for two and a half years — or that it would be the catalyst that eventually sent us across the ocean for good.
But the Odyssey didn’t end. It just changed form. Every year when I unbox the Thanksgiving table, the red linen napkins from that Salzburg market come out first — found while I was looking for something else entirely, which is how the best things usually arrive. The dishes took months to find after we got home, pattern after pattern failing to capture what I was looking for, until one day the right one appeared — snowy trees, mountain cabins, that same red and white palette from the room at the Goldener Hirsch. Together they reconstruct something that can’t be packed into a carry-on: the specific feeling of two wing chairs, a bottle of Schlumberger, and a city that had been waiting for us to come back.
Three cuisines, three architectures, three ways of being human in the world — all of it compressed into ten days and a few hundred kilometres of Alpine rail. There is no better classroom than a train window.
Read the Full Series
Milan, Lake Como, Lucerne, Salzburg — ten days, four countries, one train line. The Second European Rail Odyssey, from the beginning.
Start from the Beginning
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