MikePadgett.com

Salzburg

— Beautifully baroque, Salzburg properly embodies Austrian elegance down the ages.”

From across the river, I catch sight of Salzburg’s fortress straddling a high ridge above the old city like an arched eyebrow. It’s almost as if Salzburg’s thumbing its nose at me.

Perhaps there’s something of the snob about Salzburg, a city apparently well aware of its poise and elegance.

Scrupulously clean streets, neat window displays and rather proud hotel managers.

Good times brewing

Salzburgers have to let their hair down sometime, though they go to the most unlikely location well beyond the city centre to do so. At the Augustiner Bräustübl in Mülln – a former monastery, no less – the monks may be gone but the beer still flows from the barrels.

The process is simple and unfussy and therefore unusual for this most fastidious city: grab a tankard, pay the man, have it filled and then drink deep. Buy some food accompaniments in the corridor outside the drinking halls. Rinse and repeat. Several times. Nobody would thumb their nose at that!