Wagrain Kleinarl Salzburg
I am thoroughly enjoying exploring all the towns outside Salzburg City and we have pretty much been to each large town within 2 hours out of Salzburg. Today I wanted to find a smaller town and see if it would feel less touristy and more authentic Austrian and Wagrain did not disappoint.
To get there you go to Schwarzach-St. Veit train station (The train took us about an hour to an hour and a half). Then we caught the Postbus 520 — and that took us straight into Wagrain in about 25–30 minutes. The whole thing ended up being around 1.5 to 2 hours.
We had every intention on going for a hike and found a great hiking track but as soon as we arrived it started snowing and didn’t stop https://www.wagrain-kleinarl.at/en/explore/hiking-tours.html.
We decided instead to explore the town and the surrounding smaller forest tracks, it was the best of both worlds as Ben got to feel like he was out in the forest and I got to feel that I was close to town.
The first thing we came across right in town was a giant snowman (at least 6 metres high) made out of ice. That’s the biggest snowman I have seen before.
We walked all around the town and found 2 skii centres that were open and active with skiers and the gondolas running but today we were staying on the ground.
We came across the sweetest Austrian restaurant and to our surprise we encountered our first abrupt Austrian. I think he was a little taken aback by us as we (a) were not in skii clothes or any skii gear and (b) not speaking the language. The first thing he said to Ben was ‘its very expensive’ which made us both chuckle that he must have seen us as riff raf or made the assumption of us not being able to afford his restaurant. We gave him a lovely big smile and then went and found a table and expecting the menu to be more than we have paid before we were surprised to find it the same prices as Salzburg City (our 2 dishes were 17 and 22 euro ) we didn’t think it was expensive at all, but maybe compared to country towns it is.
The menu was in German and there was no reception at all so we picked 2 dishes we could work out part of what they were and they were both yum. Wildragout - bit rotkraut und spatula and Pongauer Fleischkrapfen - bit sauerkraut weinempfehlung. To my non delite when we left and we asked our lovely garson what the meat was and he said ‘deer’ I almost fainted…poor bambi, I had no intention of ever eating deer but today I did and it was actually quite like beef but sweeter. I actually did bring it up with Ben after my first mouthful as it tasted different to me but the sauce that it came with was spicy and like a gravy that any meat would taste good with it so just ate it as normal. (We shared both dishes). The other dish was like an empanada filled with herb and a type of meat (possibly speck and cheese) that was quite good too.
