The Whiskey Museum in Salzburg is smokey woodsy with sawdust on the floor,the first
thing that you notice, actually is the sawdust on the floor, & the smell. The smell is great of old wood & whiskey swirling around glasses as people try the various(300 plus bottles) with the help of the bartender, Joel, or the very capable & knowledgeable owner, Peter, who talks fast & lets you try for yourself different levels of the whiskey. One that I truly enjoyed is the Lagavulin with its smokey taste from the charred Scottish barrels that it had been sitting in the last 5 plus years. It's only 100 euros a bottle. The other one is a VERY RARE MIDLETON of 300 euros a bottle. Guess which one I totally loved?
Lederergasse 5
PS They have Guinness Beer,too...hey! the owner is Irish! 
HEY HEY HEY It's GIN o'clock...somewhere...especially at the 5020 Destillerie Gin & More
Goldgasse 12; Salzburg
Ok everybody has a story concerning how their fascination of some aspect of Gin was born. Stephan's is a curiously strong story of personal challenge & fortitude. "I lived on a farm in Austria that had a lot of fruit trees & so I dabbled with making Schnapps. A friend of mine told me I should make Gin, but my only recollections of Gin were headaches the next day from very bad hangovers! I moved from my fruit tree farm & my friend convinced me to come to Munich to a Gin Bar where I tried some very high quality Gins that were very good. The next day I was very surprised that I didn't have a hangover from Gin. So, I decided to make my own." https://www.instagram.com/5020gin/?hl=de 
As we walk amoung the rooms, Inge tells me about her life as a member of Salzburg's cultural society, in face a Vice President, so to speak, & later at dinner while Peter & I are sitting at the table he tells me that he truly admires my Vice President Kamala Harris & I smile when I see how they compliment & respect each other while the other is busy. I say that yes Ms. Harris (once you become the President & his circle you forever become a Ms., Mrs. & Mr.) is such a accomplished woman & has had such a varied life of commanding presence yet seems that she just now believes that she has won the Miss America pageant with such happiness at her position. He laughs.
Behind me is Inge's collection of the most impressive masks from Mexico City & Africa that I have ever seen, by the way, & I smile as I think perhaps that represents the many faces of Eve that Inge has incorporated into her life, staying true to herself & her career, yet quite happy now to make dinner for her husband & surprise house guest. 
Inge invited me to dinner with the couple & we chatted about the diplomat wife's prior wife, such as Ruth Prawer Jhabvala(pictured here with Merchant & Ivory on the set of Jefferson in Paris). I show you the picture because Inge reminds me of her, at the very least a Merchant & Ivory picture, with its breathtakingly beautiful panoramic views & way of looking at the world. 
"We've had Kings & Queens, royatly, diiplomats, politicians, & curious people stay here. I am always surprised that they find us, yet they love that it is so close to the city. Right here in the center," says Inge as she shows me the 500 year old stone stove sitting shyly in the corner of the breakfast room. It is gorgeous, as every detail in the jewel of hotel that I have found. And I say (yes Steven you would be proud that I said such a thing), "You don't know how they find you! O my God it is the most BEAUTIFUL hotel that I have ever seen! It even rivals the Blue Gans which I thought could not be rivaled!" in that Judy Darling way of speaking that only Darling could
do!
do! "We have a pool house, too. It is open in the summer & the guests seem to love it." my host tells me as she shows me around. They reside on site, so it is a tiny part of their life that they share with the guests, & I certainly hope that the guests appreciate the supreme graciousness & generosity of the couple that gave me such laughter & joy the couple of days I stayed in Salzburg to write. Inge tells me that her husband Peter plays the piano & it is just a question of feel if he shall play when I ask him. Later after dinner he does & he plays my favorite composer & my favorite piece, Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which brings such magic to the evening. Ingrid says that hers is Mozart & Mozart brings tears to her eyes with emotion when she hears. I feel that way with Mr. Ludwig Beethoven who is a true gift from God. We talk about composers & I tell Inge that perhaps she feels that way about Mozart since he was 5 years old when he composed. "Close to God," she says. True. 
My charming beautiful room where I want to stay just a little while because Inge & Peter are so of interest & I had such a lovely conversation with the both of them; especially loving the cooking experience that my room seems lonely. That is very rare to me as usually I love to just sleep! And I say, "THANKS."
They have something that they call "Parmesan Sunday & Wednesday" where they swivel the pasta inside the huge round bowl of Parmesan in front of all of the guests, & they present it to you after they have prepared it. People love the process & the food so much that good luck finding a seat. Just reserve as quickly as possible to be sure to receive your plate!
https://direnzi.at/
The presentations of the chef at Di Renzi are so incredibly beautiful that when you see these, especially from the entrance, you might hesitate thinking the food too pricey. It looks "Michelin" style & therefore you think too much money here. Yet it just seems that way. The food is very reasonably priced & very very good. 
https://www.timeless-cafe.at/
Priesterhausgasse 2
Senad is a family man-his little daughter always comes first, & I'm so happy to meet all of my friends again coming back to Europe in 2022. He tells me that the staffing problem of Salzburg is as bad as the rest of Europe, though, & works 24/7 so when he has precious moments with his daughter would I mind chatting the next day instead of that night. Of course! I say & smile as they're very happy to have a little special time without catering to guests. They're very busy with the locals building up 1/2 of their base & the tourists the other 1/2 having gotten a great reputation the last years, which is truly what you want, yet if you have a limited team it is especially important to know how to multi-task & Senad does that here too. Always his guests come first when he is working with his team. Always. 
I always see tons of locals at the Timeless cafe, especially outside where the fun playful fountains are & the family enjoys the spritzes while the children play in the water spouts! It always seemed like such a fun place & Senad is a big teddy bear. All smiles & helpfulness, so you will definitely feel at home here. 
And although pizza is now on the menu, Demer says they had to do that, as people kept asking how they could have a Italian Osteria without pizza, so they sent it to the Timeless Cafe where Senad is usually at. However, all of their items are super healthy & original recipes, so come eat.
The Saunas are a special treat representing the culture of Austria & here you can have the best of both worlds, with actual experiences in the pools & saunas. Then on to the restaurant with your family to try the steaks on the grill & the specialty pizzas. 
Freistil-Bergheim
Iselstrasse 20A
5101 Bergheim
Iselstrasse 20A
5101 Bergheim
The Sky Bar which is a coffee sky bar concept open for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Lounge is available to the public from 9:00am to 10:00pm Monday to Friday & for Events Booking Saturdays & Sundays; has a Other Worldly View of the Castle & the Mountains of Salzburg if you're into beauty & awe-inspiring photos! The Sundown is so Amazingly beautiful Andreas says that people come for aperitivos & just to see the sundown all the time now! Hope you find it!
https://www.coffee-house.at/
When you see The Coffee House in Salzburg, tucked & hidden down a little alley at Linzergasse 39, you'll immediately have your own "FRIENDS" Episode Sitcom. The place is so reminiscent of the longtime running TV show where all the gossip happens amoungst the Characters of Friends, that you just want to settle in for a couple of hours of coffees & cakes. Or perhaps their "Chili recipes from Paraguay," as Andreas,along with his wife Isabella, tells you. "We have the coffee from a accidental road trip between Verona & Florence, where the family roasts two kinds of beans for us, & we have the guacamole recipe from Mexico where we vacationed & fell in love with their recipe!" 
Deluxe Organic Yogurt Bowl, Fluffy Pancakes, French Toast, yet all healthy. A page of Gluten-free items instead of one to choose from. They were healthy before it was a trend to be healthy & after the pandemic people are so much more aware of how important it is to rebuild the immune system & to protect the body with natural foods. 
"Yes, & we opened Eden about 1/2 a year now in the University Building with a coffe house restaurant on the bottom level & a Sky Bar Coffee Bar on the 4th level Rooftop where you have a direct & very close view of the very beautiful Castle. The view is amazing & we're open til 10:00pm Monday to Friday with events on Saturday & Sundays, so that is very cool. The kitchen items, a lot of these, we make here & take to the Sky Bar, so a lot of people find it very cozy, especially on a warm sunny day to lounge on the rooftop!" says Andreas. 
Gstattengasse 4 
"The Humboldt Restaurant is located right next door to the HalfMoon, and after about 12 years in the business of Dance Clubbing, we had started to try to find a place for our healthy restuarant and when the Humboldt´s opened up, we grabbed it! Love the location and love the fact that the guests here can ask where they can go have a little fun til 5.00am on Fridays and Saturdays and we say right here!" says Martin!
At Humboldt Restaurant and Bar, it is about eating healthy to energize and cleanse the body, and since the partners, Martin and Micheal, the M & M`s, own the famous Local Salzburg Dance Bar next door, named HalfMoon, they need the energy themselves! They, however, do not eat the M&M's because at Humboldt it is all about the food. As pure & clean as you can find. They do a higher level of organic & the last couple of years with activists making the world aware of the power of nature, they have increased their business double & the awareness of how eating healthy makes you stronger much more fashionable. "Before people would kind of shy away from eating organic & healthy because they would say it is just a phase or a fad & it is strange. Yet now, especially after the Covid has made all of us build strong immune systems, the all natural, organic totally clean food has become a top priority, as it should."
"The Dance Club is local and the restaurant has locals and tourists and basically, that is the way we wanted it to be. When I go somewhere on vacation, I always ask the locals where they go to party to drink to eat, etc. I want to see the real culture and meet the real people, I don´t want "touristy unauthentic places" and I believe that is the way with most people. And at both the club, and the restaurant people can come in here and chat and eat at a real Austrian Restaurant that just happens to be chemical-free and totally organic. The food tastes better, I would say different than what you are normally used to, yet at the same time better. Maybe you are used to eating food that has a lot of chemicals in it and so you don´t taste the natural food and here you taste the natural flavor of the food and you become used to that taste. And it is healthy for you and gives you energy which is totally important to me." 
"Every item in the restaurant is organic, every one. That is very special since most restaurants may have one or two items in a dish that they can seriously say meets the requirement of organic certified food. We even have organic beer-bio beer, too. For a restaurant to say that they can guarantee the plate they serve you is totally organic is rare.It is difficult to do and it is expensive since the farmer´s that grow vegetables and raise animals 100% chemical-free have to invest a little more time and money in making sure their products are totally organic and fresh.
We started Humboldt´s 6 months now, and I have been eating that way totally since we opened the restaurant. I honestly feel much more energy when the Dance Club next door opens on Fridays and Saturdays. You can feel it in your body, it is a sense of having eaten something that is good for you, yet not feeling weighed down. It makes you feel great, actually," says Martin as he tells me about Humboldt. I personally LOVE that EmmeAnesBook now has a 100% totally healthy organic restaurant and cocktail bar on it. I am into eating food that builds a body up."
We started Humboldt´s 6 months now, and I have been eating that way totally since we opened the restaurant. I honestly feel much more energy when the Dance Club next door opens on Fridays and Saturdays. You can feel it in your body, it is a sense of having eaten something that is good for you, yet not feeling weighed down. It makes you feel great, actually," says Martin as he tells me about Humboldt. I personally LOVE that EmmeAnesBook now has a 100% totally healthy organic restaurant and cocktail bar on it. I am into eating food that builds a body up."Although with every Dance Club that has Doormen, you sometimes feel a little nervous about being able to enter, but never fear, the HalfMoon welcomes everybody as long as you are nice and want to have fun!
Great DJs and a gorgeous Dance Club where the locals like to dance the night away is what
makes HalfMoon the famous fun Club that it is. Since it has been here 12 years, the two partners,
Martin and Micheal seem to know just about everybody in Salzburg that loves to have a good time! Being a Dance Club owner is long hours though..."It´s fun and we can put all of our energy in making HalfMoon a great club since it is only open for special events, which you can find the schedule on the social media, such as facebook and it is open every Friday and Saturday."
It all comes full circle & I have perhaps finally found why the Black Forest is so mysteriously magical for me...the Vodka from Vom Fass. Of course if you want your picnic basket full of fun items to take a friendly &/or Romantic hike up the hills of Salzburg where people come from all around the world to journey the famous Julie Andrews of The Sound of Music path, you can choose yourself. From the liquored chocolates & gourmet nuts to the oils & vinegars that Vom Fass is famous for. Add some bread & some spread of delicacies such as the new pumpkin spice flavor or the yucca! You can uy a flask or bottle of whiskies around the world, such as my favorite from Scotland, or Ireland or America perhaps. You just pick & choose & they haee those deceivingly little creme liquours that taste the way gelatos taste yet have that extra kick to them. You might roll down the hills on the way back, yet it's probably worth it!
"I believe that people love the store since they can ask questions and find answers on how to create great dinners with the specialty items and the before during and after dinner drinks!" jokes Sascha. 
Here is just a couple, you can try all of these too. The cool idea here is for yourself & for gifts of all occasions. 
"The headquarters of Vom Fass are in Waldburg, Germany, where the products for all the stores are located and the barrels, too, where they purchase the bourbon from 3 places in Kentucky," says Sascha.
"The price of oil goes up because of a war, not Germany saying don't use Putin's oil, but Putin saying you can't use my oil, which of course the people that I talk to buying my carpets say we should of made a deal with America instead of crazy Putin in the first place. The price of all things go up, yet these hand woven beautiful carpets stay the same & the antique carpets we have some are 100 years old. They can be used another 100 years." 
The carpet above is #22205These carpets are original Mesgarzadeh sumack hand knotted kilims which lie very well on the floor & even more durable than woven kilims.The only place in the world where you can find these carpets is here at the Salzburg location.
"It depends on the size that they need and the amount of people that shall be walking on the beautiful carpet. For a doctor's office you need a sturdy carpet and for a elegant couple who don't have dogs, cats or children maybe they can purchase the $70,000. Iranian carpet that many people won't be using." he says.
He tells me a story, "My friend in Los Angeles says he is taking us to lunch. We drive 45 minutes in a fancy car that takes all the gas, we board his huge expensive yacht in the harbor we travel with more gas on the yacht 1 hour to a place on the coast of Los Angeles where we have lunch about 1 hour." He laughs, "So, then they complain about the price of gas!" I start laughing to. Um, yes I guess the $5,000 dollar lunch turns into a $6,500 lunch.
"Here is #30815 & it is 100 years old of our antique collections. They can last another 100 years beautifully if the carpets are made well." 
Okay, moving on to take some pictures of the beauty of these carpets that can take one year for a small section up to 6 years. "It totally depends on the heritage and on the expertise of the person working on the carpet. No, Saudi Arabia doesn't make carpets, they buy the carpets!" We start laughing. "They have oil, they buy the expensive carpets." We start laughing again.
"Turkey and Iran and Afghanistan makes carpets and a little from Asia and India. It is very dangerous to personally go into Afghanistan, so they make the carpets and transport these to Turkey, where we do travel to and where we buy the carpets," he says and we start laughing again when I ask if Germany makes carpets. "Germany makes cars, that is what they are good at." he says. "We buy the wool and we give the wool to the weavers...it is all handpicked. The wool that we buy and work with the Iranian weavers if very expensive. Yet if we let them pick they would pick cheap wool. We need to know that each carpet each piece, all about it. We know the weavers in every country that we work with, and we know that almost all of the farmers in Iran farm first, and when they have moments free they weave. For instance a farmer from Iran will weave a carpet and when we receive it, it is one of a kind. If I call that farmer and say, I need an exact same carpet that you sent me, he will say NO! There is only one of a kind. He might decide to weave birds in one carpet and something else in another. They don´t use patterns in Iran, they only weave from heart. I prefer the carpets from Iran. They are special and they are the best in terms of the longevity of the carpet. These are the carpets that last 300 years."
Is it true that the farmers weave in the middle of the night with lights in a big tent and they transport on camels? "I don't think that they transport on camels any longer," he says and we start laughing again. "Now it is a modern age and they transport on cars and trucks. They have 1,000 of years of weaving culture in Iran and my family is from Iran and maybe that is why I personally love these carpets." he says.
+43 6 62 84 22 4 2 
Griesgasse 4, A 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Ali, who is Cyrus´s brother, showed me two years since one of his favorites from Iran. They also have a silk thin one from Turkey that resembles the one I have at home.
"Is it thin the way that one is? With the softness?" he asks. Yes I say I finally found one that is the way mine is. "Yes these are very expensive and rare. The little one here(the size of a table place setting) is 689.00Euros." Wow and why such expense? "The quality and they last forever. A good carpet lasts 300 years and that is one that you walk on everyday.
It is the quality. A square meter on a good carpet takes one year to hand weave. If you have a big carpet it is a 4 year carpet. That is how long it takes to make it. That is why they´re that expensive. http://www.derteppich.com/" "They have been here since 1963...and Cyrus and Ali´s father came to visit a couple of minutes while I am talking to Cyrus. He excused himself to make a call to Persia! Persia! I say, how cool to call Persia, China, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, everyday! Hey, be right back, I going to call Persia! 
Bernhard Stadler
Salzburger Straße 48 
"Each and every piece is hand made."
That is the very sincere and passionate expression of the family of Strizi. They are not about business. They are about love! https://www.instagram.com/strizialm/
Die Unterschiede bei den Strizi-Designern in Lederhosens und Dirndls sind genau das. Sie sind handgefertigt. Hat das jeder gelesen? Jedes Stück ist handgemacht. Das bedeutet, dass eine Leder-Lederhose ungefähr 50 Jahre hält. Ein bisschen wie ein Louis Vuitton! https://strizi.at/
The stunning beauty of the 1350AD Blaue Gans Art Boutique Hotel Salzburg
The owner of the Blaue Gans is a delight and I had the pleasure of sitting outside at lunch today to interview him, "You know we have many festivals in Salzburg, the Jazz festival I would be most interested in you promoting since it is about a fusion of culture in the sense of the way a classical ear is trained to listen to music. The typical Mozart concert today always has a certain rhythm to it. The Jazz is outside the norm of that rhythm and makes you listen to it in a different way, yet it stretches the culture and sophistication of the ear since you must learn to be in sync with different rhythms." he says. 
"Hmm, why do I love Salzburg at the Hotel Krone," muses Nikolaj,the director of Hotel Krone, who I remember from the 3 years since having interviewed him and stayed at the Lovely Hotel on the famous cobblestoned Linzer alley,
"I love my team the people that I am with everyday and that work with me. They are the greatest and I love the guests since I can meet everybody from around the world here. I used to live and grew up in Canada and I guess I am accustomed to the North American culture since I enjoy guests from America, they are always nice and enthusiastic to be here. The Germans, since I am German I can say that, are a little more detailed, for instance and ask a lot of questions. Most guests, though not all, come and they are very happy to have you tell them some places to visit in the city. Most, too, when I give these free drink slips to each guest that stays here!" he says."The hotel now is a foundation and its purpose is rewarding to fulfill since the profits of the hotel go directly to the disabled child of the deceased older couple. It is a historical house and the city is famous for the music and I hope people enjoy the stay with us. We have a beautiful garden outside in the back of the Hotel Krone where guests can have breakfast if they choose to do that."
"I love my team the people that I am with everyday and that work with me. They are the greatest and I love the guests since I can meet everybody from around the world here. I used to live and grew up in Canada and I guess I am accustomed to the North American culture since I enjoy guests from America, they are always nice and enthusiastic to be here. The Germans, since I am German I can say that, are a little more detailed, for instance and ask a lot of questions. Most guests, though not all, come and they are very happy to have you tell them some places to visit in the city. Most, too, when I give these free drink slips to each guest that stays here!" he says."The hotel now is a foundation and its purpose is rewarding to fulfill since the profits of the hotel go directly to the disabled child of the deceased older couple. It is a historical house and the city is famous for the music and I hope people enjoy the stay with us. We have a beautiful garden outside in the back of the Hotel Krone where guests can have breakfast if they choose to do that." 