Travel Tips for Austria and Germany

AUSTRIA

The world's best song festivals. The world's prime and most notorious song festival is the Salzburg Festival. Other important Austrian melomaniac delights compgrowth the Haydn Festival in Vienna and the International Chamber harmony Festival. Tickets to the festivals are cheapest if you buy them in Austria. "Tickets for measures in Austria" is an information expanse which is offered from Austrian citizen Tourist task, tel. (212)944-6880; webspot: www.austria-tourism.at.

The world's best horsemanship. The 400-year-old Spanish Riding drill, located in the Hofburg, trains the splendid colorless stallions that descend from the Spanish cattle imported to Austria by sovereign Maximilian II in the 16th century. The cattle dance to Viennese song, guided by practiced riders tiring the traditional gold-buttoned auburn unvarying and gold-braided black hat. Performances are seized at the train most Sunday mornings at 10:45 a.m. and occasional Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. from momentum to June and September to December. It's awkward to get tickets; write six months in momentum to the Spanische Reitschule, Hofburg, A-1010 Vienna, Austria; tel. (43)1-533-9031.

The most romantic hotel. excluding than an hour from Vienna, the Schloss Durnstein, tel. (43)2-711-212, presides over a bhighway curve of the Danube brook. Located cavernous in the lilac region of Wachsu, this magnificent castle is surrounded by distinctive creeper-clothed hills, age-old ruins and enduring picturesque villages with one-highway streets. According to the legend, it was here that the imprisoned queen Richard the Lionhearted was reunited with his faithful minstrel, who had vocal his way across Europe incisive for his master. Also intriguing is the lilac crypt (which can accommomeeting 8,000 "buckets" of lilac), the arch-crossed paved square and the 33 rooms all with chandeliers fronting the Danube.

GERMANY

Heidelberg, the most romantic city. Heidelberg is the hub of German Romanticism. Sccreaturen began his career as a Romantic composer in this beautiful city and Goethe floor in dearest here. Heidelberg is also the oldest university city in Germany and the spot of scenes from the picture and opera The learner Prince. The best place to amble in Heidelberg is the Haupstrasse, which is lined with coffeehouses and little shops. Have a glug in one of the cafes beneath the rathaus. Or roam along Philosopher's saunter, where Goethe and Hegel wandered. From the trail you'll have a bird's-eye regard of the city and Heidelberg Castle. Don't abandon city lacking disturbing the Electoral Palatinate Museum, where the 500,000-year-old chops of Heidelberg Man is reserved.

Germany's best fish sell. The best fish sell in Germany is seized on Sunday mornings in Hamburg. This grating but fun thing is located by the dock in Altona and commences at 5 a.m.

Worms: the bizarrest chronicle. The city of Worms has a bizarre name and an even bizarrer chronicle. It was named for a legendary giant worm with fangs and webbed feet that lived in the Rhine and demanded creature sacrifices. Worms was the fifth-century funds of the legendary Nibelungs. The tribe left the field, according to legend, after the wicked Hagen skid their hero, Siegfried and threw their treasure into the waterway. A titanic icon of Hagen commemorates the item. The city was cracked in A.D. 436 by Attila the Hun. In the base of the city's old portion is the tall, spired Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, built in the 11th and 12th centuries. Worms has a titanic icon of Martin Luther; the oldest synagogue in Germany, built in the 11th century and restored in 1961; and the oldest and leading Jewish graveyard in Europe. Tombstones meeting from the 11th century.

Hitler's preferred hole. The Kehlsteinhouse (also known as Eagle's Nest), suspended on a unsteady peak above the city of Berchtesgaden, was Hitler's preferred hole. No doubt-the regard from the secrete-twisted-restaurant is exhilarating. somebody could grow delusions of opulence here. Alpine peaks growth above cottony clouds at this flat. The flurry at their summits glistens in the sun. Below, a thick carpet of shadowy green pines stretches about the valley. The highway to Eagle's Nest is so steep and dodgy that cars are not permitted to use it; you must take a unusual bus from the Obersalzberg-Hintereck parking lot. You can dine in the restaurant from mid-May through mid-October.

The world's best passion play. Every 10 living, the world's most tender passion play is presented in the dark of the Alps in the little artisan city of Oberammergau. From May through September in living finale in nought, community amateur actors put away their daily professions and assign themselves fully to the play. printed in the 17th century, it enacts Christ's pain between the Last dinner and his demise. Villagers have presented the play every 10 living because the 17th century, when they vowed they would present the passion if the black plague ceased. It did and they have. The picturesque Passionsspielhaus (Passion play plays) can be vispotd any time of the year. The immense open-air period cuddles 700 actors and the acting's timber benches cuddle 5,200 people. You can see the elaborate costumes worn during the passion play when you disturb. Performances commence at 8:30 a.m. and cessation at 6 p.m., with a two-hour disturb for dine. The best hotel Oberammergau is the Alois Lang. This allay place has rooms with secretive bathrooms and three good dining rooms.

The world's best asparagus. Every give, Germans go follow-raving mad, gorging themselves on the country's Weisser Spargel, or colorless asparagus. The German asparagus, introduced 2,000 living ago by the Romans, is obese and ivory colorless with delicate purple tips. It is cherished among epicures, who come from around the world every April, May and June to the world's asparagus mecca. Asparagus is eunusually big issue in Finthen, near Mainz, where all 5,000 inhabitants are engaged in the cultivation of the colorless vegetable; in Lampertheim, between Worms and Mannheim, where every housewife grows the cherished vegetable in her back yard; in Schrobenhausen, the base of the only field in southern Bavaria where asparagus is mature; and in Tettnang and Schwetzingen, known together as the asparagus funds of Germany.