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| Sabine Stieger |
Last weekend the Blues Festival at Burg Schlaining took place. We drove to the south of the province of Burgenland and found a perfect parking close to the castle. Before the concerts started, we visited a craft market at the bailey with many stalls on jewellery, clothes, lavender products and more.
The festival took place at the moat in front of the bridge leading into the castle, a spectacular ambience. One great band played after the other. Exceptional was of course the Mojo Blues Band, an Austrian legend. A new highlight for us was Raphael Wressnig & The Soul Gift Band.
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| Mojo Blues Band |
Raphael plays a Hammond Organ from 1957 and is a virtuoso on this instrument. His music is a powerful mixture of soul and blues and their singer Sabine Stieger adds great vocals to their performance.
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| Raphael Wressnig performing on his Hammond 1957 |
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| Raphael Wressnig & The Soul Gift Band |
It was a perfect night, with great music shortly disturbed by heavy rain, but it passed and the evening could continue. We had to head back to our camper to change into dry clothes once, but that’s the advantage if you have everything with you.
The next morning, we spent in Stadtschlaining and discovered the castle there, with an exhibition on peace and another part on the regional folklore, which was very interesting. Down at the moat we walked through dense vegetation which felt like a jungle around the castle and to a pond before we went for lunch at the main square.
We left in the afternoon and headed to the highest peak of the Burgenland with 882 masl called Geschriebenstein. The weather was rainy again, but in the evening the rain had stopped and we walked to the highest point with a look out tower, from where you would see the Austrian mountains and Lake Balaton in Hungary, but the view was restricted and instead we had pieces of fog blowing through the trees, very mystic.
We drove on to a lake called Sonnensee, where we spent the night. The next day we took a shortcut through Hungary via Sopron to reach Mörbisch. We then visited Rust and finally took our bikes out to ride on the route which leads around the whole lake. We saw many storks and enjoyed the good views and the great weather.
What a great weekend !