I continue to have a lot of firsts in Austria, but a bride being kidnapped takes the (wedding) cake.

Let me start from the beginning. We had been invited to a wedding in the country near Salzburg. While it wasn’t a fully traditional wedding (minimal traditional dress) they did uphold one of the old country traditions of kidnapping the bride.

It works like this.

Once the ceremony is complete (not that I could understand a thing at this one because of the Salzburg accent) the guests head into the reception. As long as the bride was carrying her bouquet she is ‘safe’.

The moment she puts it down she is at risk of being kidnapped by the groomsmen and carted off on a pub crawl around town along with anyone who wants to come along. The groom then has to track them down and when he finds them he has to pay the bar tab. For everyone’s drinks.

Ouch.

As this wedding was in a tiny town the bride (and entire congregation of 80-100 guests) went downstairs where they drank and danced in smoke filled cellar bar. I instead chose to stay upstairs and embark on a ‘Schnaps of Austria’ tasting journey. This may not have been the smartest move.

As photography was banned at the wedding (!) the only photo I have is a sneaky selfie of us posing with New York themed props.

The remainder of the weekend was spent exploring in and around Salzburg. We visited the Red Bull Hanger 7 which was really cool – full of anything to get your heart racing.

On our final day we decided to take the scenic way home (yes, actually scenic – we didn’t get lost) through the mountains and around Wolfgangsee (a lake). Very very pretty but SUPER cold. I had to laugh when they said that this very weekend in May was COLDER than Christmas Day…and that’s in winter!