Thinking more about that college year in Austria, I recall that Salzburg was the close, cheap weekend spot for our Notre Dame group. It’s a gorgeous fortress town with the wide and slow-moving river Salz running through it. Mozart was born there, and the Altstadt, or old town, is a charming labyrinth of cobbled streets with pubs and shops. A Eurail Pass and 250 schillings for a hostel, schnitzel and liter beers, and we were on our way. Previous groups from Notre Dame had recommended the Augustiner Brau as the fun brewery for fresh beer and cheap, hot food. Over the course of that year, I made a lot of trips to Salzburg, and the Augustiner became home. A cashier would sell you a ticket for a half or full liter of the home brew, and that ticket was given to a waitress behind a wooden barrier. She would pull a ceramic mug from a stack and and fill it from one of several spigots sticking out of the tile wall. Then you made your way to the hall, which was full of heavy picnic-style wooden tables. The beer was cool, the wursts were piping hot, and you always made new friends.
Fast forward a decade, and my wife and I (newly married and childless) were making a summer trip that started in Munich and ended in Rome. Salzburg was one of the stops. We rolled into town on the train, checked into our hotel and walked up the steep hill to the Festung, or castle. It was a warm day, and I had already regaled my bride about the glories of the Augustiner Brau, so it became the next stop. The brewery is on the edge of town, and a fair walk from the Festung, so we ducked into a small restaurant on the way to obey nature’s call. The place was so cute that we decided to have lunch there. The quiet meal after the heat of the morning, under low wooden beams next to an empty white and green tiled fireplace my wife adored became a special memory of the trip. We did make it to the Augustiner; in fact, twice. We initially had a few half liters and, as we were starting our walk back to the hotel, decided we had nothing better to do and turned back in for another beer. We ended up having dinner there and crawling into bed early.
Fast forward another decade and a half, and with three teens under tow, landed in Zurich for an Alpine Thanksgiving. Salzburg, yet again, was on the agenda. We departed from Munich one chilly morning to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Augustiner Brau. As before we toured the old town first, but it was colder than I ever remembered it being there, especially at the heights of the Festung. We decided we needed to get warm, so we started the walk to the brewery. Halway there, my wife tugged at my sleeve and said the kids were frozen and needed to warm up right away. We ducked into the next doorway with a menu in the window, and stomped and shook the snow from our shivering bodies. Once seated, the kids were drawn to the warmth radiating from a white and green tiled fireplace. It was then that my wife and I realized that this was our little restaurant we found when we escaped from the heat fifteen years before!
We made it again to the Augustiner, where the kids stared in amazement at the steins of beer being lugged around and consumed. This time, though, we didn’t stay as long. And we took a cab back to the hotel.
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