Austria Conquered!!!

After the Oktoberfest fiasco, it was time to head to our next destination - Austria. Well, I know it's not really known for it's food, but what the hell, it was part of our plan. And surprise surprise, it turned out to be the setting for one helluva foodie story.
Our first stop was Salzburg, home to Mozart and 'The Sound of Music'. Most of our time here was spent getting over the hangover of Oktoberfest. We had to check into a slightly high-end hotel coz all the youth hostels were fully booked. But you know what you get when you check into a slightly high-end hotel, dont you? A sumptuous breakfast buffet, that's what you get! Chocolate cereal, marmalade, ham, bacon, salami, it was all there. After the breakfast however, there wasn't much to right home about in Salzburg - atleast on the food front. Lunch meant some pasta and dinner meant McDonald's. It was beginning to look like this was gonna be a dissapointing trip for Mr. foodie. Till we arrived in Vienna.
I wasn't expecting Vienna to be any different from Salzburg when it came to food. But there was one thing I wanted to try. The Hot Dog I had seen Anthony Bourdain try in one of the episodes of No Reservations. Its called the Wurst in German and comes with your choice of German sausage. So the Wurst stand outside our hostel was the first place I went to the next morning. I had my Wurst with the best-known German sausage - the Frankfurter. Pretty damn good, I must say. I thought I had scaled the peak of Austrian food, till I went to lunch at a traditional Austrian eatery.
I was with two friends - both carnivores - and after browsing the menu for a while, we decided that the meat platter was our safest bet. And boy were we wrong! When the platter arrived, we realized that the bet was anything but safe. The platter was loaded with meat enough to feed a banquet. The embarrasment on our faces was a perfect photo-op and the entire clientele - and staff - had smiles on their faces, some were even giggling! We started with the meat nervously even as we tried to hide our embarrasment and tried hard not to look at any of the smiling staff or customers.
I thought that we'd be left to ourselves after a while, but that wasn't how the script was written. The smiling, giggling and commenting continued! After a while, I had had enough. This was too much to take for a foodie. I had to come out of this with my head held high. That's whan I told my friends, "Guys, we are better than this. We are gonna finish this damn thing, no matter how long it takes!". That was it, game on! We attacked the platter with a new found vigour and egged each other on when we thought we were getting too full. It took a lot of time and a lot of extra Coke but in the end we managed. The smiles on people's faces turn to astonishment as we walked out, obviously exhausted.
With this latest victory behind us, it was soon time to leave Austria, but not before I tried the Wurst again, this time with another German sausage - the Bratwurst. The picture on top of the post will tell you, it was only better than the first one. As our train started moving out of Vienna, the title for this post struck me - Austria Conquered!!