I’m here for a week for the Salzburg Seminars, meeting and teaching wonderful physician fellows from across the globe as part of the American Austrian Foundation’s Open Medicine Program. Mr TBTAM is with me, and we’re having a grand old time. Next week, it’s off to Prague and Vienna, and maybe a spa town in the mountains.
Blogging may be a bit sporadic for a bit, but I’ll return soon with pics and tales from across the Atlantic.
This was my third trip to Salzburg, a wonderful place to visit any time of year, though early January would not have been my first choice. I had some work and sleep to catch up on, and they kept us busy with concerts and dinners, so this won’t be the grand tour. We won’t be taking the Sound of Music Bus Tour, visiting the museums or Fortress, or taking any day trips to visit the salt mines or Hitler’s Eagles Nest, as I did on prior trips.We’re just going to take a few hours to visit my fave spots in this wonderful little city.
Mozart was born in Salzburg, and was court musician to the Archbishop here in his early career. The city celebrates him with festivals twice a year, one in late January and a bigger one in the summer. A visit to his birth house is a must.
If you miss the festivals, catch his music at the Mozart Dinner theater- it sounds hoaky, but it really is a nice experience – they serve a menu from Mozart’s era and serenade you with his music. ( Definitely beats the Sound of Music Dinner Theater, which is to be avoided at all costs.)
Chess at Kapitel Platz
Salzburg Markets
The weekday Green Market is located near Collegiate Church. It was small in this weather, but there were still beautiful breads and meats. Even better is the Thursday Schrannen Market at Mirabellplatz, and the Christmas markets in December. Maybe next time.
Shopping in Salzburg
Shopping in Salzburg is a cultural experience, as you wander through the old streets and narrow alleyways. There are literally hundreds of shops, and prices are not always so cheap. I mostly window shoppe, but always stop at Furst Condiserie for chocolate and visit the tiny Kaslochl Kaserei near the river just down from the Mozart Geburtzhaus.
I recall my first visit to this tiny family-owned cheese shop 9 years ago. The owner’s two -year old daughter was sitting beside her on the counter. Of course, she’s a big girl now and was in school the morning of my visit, but I had a nice talk with Mom about the cheese business, and bought some local goat cheese for lunch.
My favorite place to shop in Salzburg is Interio. It’s sort of like a slightly upscale IKEA. I got some gorgeous placemats.
Near Interio is Ma Lai a wonderful woman’s clothing shop that mixes new and used clothing.
The Supermarket
One of my favorite things to do in a foreign country is to go food shopping. It makes me feel like a local, and I love exploring the local foods. Here in Austria, it’s the meats that are unusual – many varieties of smokes bacon and pork, with Speck being the local favorite. (My colleague Amos tells me that Speck is amazing, so I buy some to bring home – I’ll tell you how it is once I use it.)
I pick up some teeny sausages for my lunch and head down the aisles. I note that every kind of sugar imaginable is available, including beet sugar.
Entire aisles of chocolate, and I notice mostly locals buying it.
I pick up some tiny noodles for soup and mayonnaise. Why the mayo? It was in a tube!
Biking in Salzburg
My Lunch
Having spent a good 5 hours wandering the city, I headed back to my rooms at the Schloss to enjoy a late afternoon lunch with the provisions I had purchased. I fell in love with the tiny sausages – so delicious!
I know, I know. You’re wondering, what would be worth a second trip across the Atlantic just one week after returning from London? I’ll tell you. The Salzburg Seminars, that’s what.
This was my third time serving as a volunteer faculty member at the Open Medical Institute’s Salzburg Seminars – a week long intensive training for physicians from Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and this year for the first time, Qatar. Funded by the American Austrian Foundation and held at the beautiful Schloss Arenberg (photo above), the Seminars are a great chance to update the old slide set and meet some amazing individuals who practice medicine without the resources we take for granted here in the United States.
This year, I gave lectures on Family Planning, Vaginal and Vulvar Diseases and Menopause. My colleagues from Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of Vienna tackled Uterine Fibroids, Gynecologic Cancers, Obstetrical Ultrasound, Ob and Gyn Hemorrhage and Emergencies, Ethics, Patient Safety and the Internet in Medicine. The international fellows gave some amazing case presentations for discussion.
We had lots of conversations about healthcare in our respective countries. And all I can say is, despite all the issues we have in the United States, I wouldn’t want to be practicing medicine anywhere else but here. Not when I hear tale of docs whose only way of surviving financially is to take tips from patients who pay to squeeze into the surgical schedule ahead of the cue. Or of abdominal emergencies handled in hospitals that don’t have a CT scanner. And not a single fellow has a microscope in their office, forcing them to rely on gram stain only for management of vaginitis. (A poor substitute for an in office wet prep in my opinion.)
Most of these docs would give their eye teeth to spend some time learning medicine in the United Sates, be it something as simple as an observership or as complex as a second residency. Unfortunately, visa regulations in their countries and ours make this extremely difficult. But all of them will be offered observerships in Vienna and in Germany at the Institute’s expense.
I’ve been part of the Salzburg Seminars for nine years now, and each time I return anticipating that there can’t be much for me to teach these doctors now that the Internet has reached Eastern Europe. But up to date information, while freely flowing, is not free. I forget that my own unlimited access via Cornell’s Online Medical Library is a luxury most physicians do not have. Just having the latest English-language textbook in their field is considered a major coup for these hard working docs, who grilled me on which textbooks I recommended. I admitted that I left textbooks long ago for online access, and advised them that a better use of their limited funds might be an annual subscription to Up To Date. (At least the exchange rate will be in their favor…).
One thing we can all afford to do is to stay in touch, and I look forward to keeping in contact with all the wonderful doctors I met last week. (Already I’ve gotten two new friend requests from them on Facebook). I gave them the address of my blog, and told them all about the medical blogosphere and Grand Rounds. Who knows? There could be an aspiring medical blogger among them…
Next up – A Little Tour of Salzburg, and of course some food photos.
and that’s got me thinking about beef broth. (See? I can turn any topic into food…) But really, it’s true. Because thinking about Mozart gets me to thinking about Salzburg, and thinking about Salzburg makes me remember my visit there a few years ago, and that gets me thinking about a very special broth I had one night….
I do recall that wherever I had broth while in Salzburg, it was delicious. Very unlike broth here, which we tend to use as a base or a container for the good stuff. In Salzburg (and I suppose in Austria in general, though I did not make it out of that fair city), the broth itself is the star and what’s in it mere adornment.
But the broth on that night…I was in Salzburg as the guest of a private foundation, and we “Professors” (I loved how they called us that, no one does that here) were invited to a reception at the private home of one of the foundation’s patrons. And it was at this very lovely, low key and warm dinner that I had the most incredible broth I have ever eaten. It was served as a first course, as I recall, with just a few noodles (or was it dumplings? I really don’t remember.) The broth was absolutely crystal clear and light, yet utterly satisfying all by itself. With flavor unlike any broth I have had before, or since. Other than the company, I honestly don’t remember anything else about the meal itself.
I came home and began making broth, trying to recreate what I had in Salzburg. And though I taught myself to make a nice broth (I even made a veal stock once), I have never achieved anything near in flavor or clarity to that which I had enjoyed in Salzburg. I suspect by its clarity that the broth may have in fact been a consomme (although they called it a broth), and that making it would involve learning to float a raft.
At this point, anyone having the nerve to call their blog a food blog would give you a blow-by-blow of their attempt to make said consomme, complete with photos of ingredients on the counter, pots on the stoves, pre-and post-strained broth, and final product laid on a beautiful table. You’ve got it all imagined right? Good – keep that thought. Because that’s all you’re getting here. (Except of course, the soup can, of which I am quite proud.). Because it is 9 pm on a Friday night, and only because my husband took the kids out to a play at his school that I had the time to write this missive. And now they are home, and my 10 year old wants me to come and lay in bed and read Raul Dahl’s “The Witches” to her. (We are on chapter 5.) So I am taking the lazy blogger’s way out and pointing you to a very nicely done lesson on making consomme here at e gullet, where you will learn tons more than I can ever show you anyway.
But as it turns out, I’ve been invited back to Salzburg again in June. And I am making it my mission while I am there to find out who made that broth, and get them to teach me how to make it myself. If it involves floating a raft, well then so be it. A raft I shall float. And I promise I’ll tell you all about it then, pictures and all.
Happy Birthday, Mozart!