Austria

Gerti and I on our annual pilgramage walk around Semmering.


Since my last posting we have had nearly three weeks holiday visiting relatives in Austria so apologies for the long gap in between postings. We very nearly didn't make it this year, normally it's our suitcases that go missing, we think there's a big black hole in Amsterdam where they hide them for 24 hours. The last two years we have only taken cabin luggage, that really messed up KLM! but we were booked with Lufthansa to change at Frankfurt this year and decided to give them a chance with one suitcase and if they managed OK then we might take two next year. I was confident and the flight from Birmingham was uneventful, as usual full cloud cover so I didn't see the coast of either Britain or Belgium from 35,000 feet.

We decided that we didn't like Frankfurt, it was a grey and cold building, no colour and quite depressing. The signs weren't very clear to us either but we eventually found our gate. No monitor's to keep us informed so we sat down to wait. With 20 minutes to go to our flight Pat decided to ask at the desk when we would be boarding, ha, this was when Frankfurt went to the bottom of our European airport list with a minus 3 marking, they had cancelled our flight and not told anyone. Great , now what were we to do?. We were booked on a later flight to Vienna but couldn't let Gerti and the others know because we had packed the book with telephone numbers in the suitcase, oh God where was it going to end up? the suitcase that is. As it happened it reached Vienna at the same time as us and still in one piece.

This year our final descent into Wien took us right over the city centre. It was a fantastic sight, St Stephan's Cathedral with it's beautifully coloured roof shone like a beacon and the Donnau Canal and River Donnau snaked their way across the city, great, it was the perfect height for sightseeing a city!

Me, relaxing inVienna.

It was hot in Vienna it had been over 40 degrees C but was now a balmy 36 - imagine we had just left Orkney, about 12 degrees C and now this, we were going to be a bit uncomfortable unless we managed to acclimatise pretty quick. Even the Pigeons were sweating.

We didn't acclimatise and after a delicious birthday dinner for Gerti which Karin cooked that ended with the most mouth watering ice cream dessert ever invented, we were whisked off to the mountain house.

It was still the same, as we got out of the car I could smell the Pine trees and hear the Semmering railway high above, echoing down the valley. It's a famous railway and was the first built through a mountain range, one year I would love to make the journey by train, it's supposed to be very beautiful scenery. If you're at all interested in railways there are a lot of sites on the Internet with it's full history.

This one gives a short history. http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=785

The next 2 weeks were very restful and we loafed around the garden, I played tennis with Klaus and Philip and did manage to hit the ball over the net more times than not and I also made full use of the swimming pool.

I loved to float on my back and just look at the clouds floating by it was a magical time. One evening the air temperature had dropped to about 18 degrees and the pool was still at 26 degrees and I found myself swimming through a light fog lifting from the pool, very unusual. This was also the evening when I found a Dragonfly laying her eggs along the bit of moss growing between the pebbles on the edge of the pool. I had a snakes eye view, my head was level with her. She couldn't see my body so it didn't frighten her (that's about the only time my body won't frighten, when it's out of sight) and I swam to the edge and studied her. She was lovely and Pat brought me a camera (I was under pain of drowning if I dropped it in the pool) but I failed to get a good picture from my vantage point.

Gerti has two dogs now, 'Bailey' a golden Labrador and 'Archie' a black Labrador. Both are getting on in years and they are the only ones who understand my German. I certainly don't have any problem with them because they don't answer back! Archie loves to play football and keeps bringing a tennis ball and putting into my hand and he'll also drop it in front of me and looks up expectantly, it's hard not to play but I had to be careful, after one quite vigorous game he wouldn't lie down and if you stroked his back he whined. Throughout the night when he did manage to lie down he would whine when getting up, I think he'd run and jumped too much and his muscles weren't used to it and they'd seized up, just like me after I'd been on the treadmill for 10 minutes! Anyway he did improve over the next few days so no lasting damage.

The little Terrier is Rocky, a neighbour who often calls to spend the day playing.

Bailey loves to swim in the pond and will lead you there given the opportunity. The trouble is she's over 12 years old now and has to be careful. She paddles around the pond and then suddenly brings her front paw up to splash the water and tries to catch the splash in her mouth, it's very funny to watch her paddle, paddle paddle, splash, snap, splash snap, paddle, paddle etc etc.

The mountains in this area are about 6ooo feet and the house is maybe at 3000. The hills are covered in Pine forest except for the very tops. We've spent some wonderful days in previous years, wandering the mountain paths and when we were in a lazy mood we'd take the chair lift to the top. It always turned my stomach over, they are single chairs and don't stop so you have to get on and off whilst they are moving.

The nearest shop is Semmering village about 1000 feet above us, I remember our first visit when we were still fit and wondered why it knackered us to go and buy a packet of cigarettes, only after consulting the map finding out the height difference did we realise why.

Sadly Semmering is a bit of a ghost town now, you see the new road and tunnel took away a lot of traffic. In winter though the place comes alive because of the skiing. They have a night course lit up and also make their own snow, it's true we've seen the reservoir where they take the water from, soon there will be skiing not only all night but all year as well.

There are some beautiful walks from Semmering, contouring the hills and a short one has become a must every year. The view over the valley is fantastic and you can see two spectacular viaducts on the Semmering railway as it winds it's way through tunnels and the valley like a model. There is also an ant's nest about 3 feet high and 6 feet in diameter about 2 yards from the path!

Second cousin, Marie Therese, took us on a tour of Schonbrunn. A huge and beautiful palace in Vienna, which eventually ended up as a one of the Emperor's residences. It's had a long and eventful life, starting out in Medieval times and being rebuilt over the years as a hunting lodge and summer home. It was eventually named after a Spring found in the grounds 'Schone brunne' (Fair Spring) and building on the palace that stands today started in 1693. For the next hundred years it was altered and added to by the various Emperor's but after the death of Marie Theresa, the widow of Franz I Stephen it had several periods when it was unoccupied. Finally in the early 1800's Franz II/I renovated Schonbrunn and painted it 'Schonbrunn Yellow' as it still is today. The next Emperor, Franz Joseph who was born in 1830 at the palace chose it as his favourite home. Somewhere along the line Napoleon spent some time there but I'm not a fan of his so glossed over the fact. I have now realised that neither of us took a photo of the Palace but there are some pictures and info at :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_Palace

A Zoo was built in 1750, which is now open to the public and the oldest one of it's kind in the world. We saw Giraffes and Gorillas but the Leopards were hiding amongst the greenery, the Hippopotamus were in bed but we did see a Panda. It was sat on a rock with it's back to us eating! Strangely enough we had been watching a TV programme the night before about Panda's at Schonbrunn and they have just had a baby, but it was safely hidden away from the public gaze. But my favourite has got to be the Otters, they were beatiful and begging for food and I didn't even have a crust!


We're not really fans of Zoo's, I try to imagine how I would feel if I could only walk about my house and garden and have nothing to do but sit and eat and watch people go by, it must be terribly boring. These animals need stimulation like hunting for food to keep them happy.

The Great Palm House built 1880-82 is a massive glass building with iron girders. It's on two floors and does have fully grown palm trees so you can imagine how huge it is. It's warm and wet and Marie Therese questioned us very closely to make sure we weren't going to faint or have a heart attack before she'd let us go in. It was amazing, there were some fantastic ferns and spiral stairways up to viewing platforms but as usual these were roped off. The walkway passed through a gap in what looked like a rock face but covered in long fronds of plastic and into a cave. It was full of fruit bats all hanging upside down in the gloom.



We had a very interesting day and our 15 year old guide enjoyed speaking English, she was good company.

We seemed to spend a lot of time eating this holiday and I have written down some of Gerti's recipes in the hope that I can recreate them now I'm back home. The only trouble is they taste so good that we've both come home with about 2 kilos more than we went with and it's really going to take some shifting. I liked to watch Gerti throw all the ingredients in a pan which would then turn out to be a lovely tasty sauce to go with either the meat or fish or sometimes just plain noodles. The word plain is a misnomer here because none of what we ate was plain!

The whole family speak beautiful English which means that we can be lazy about learning German. I've been learning for 20 years now but still can't understand when they talk to me, so all our conversations were I'm afraid to say English. Gerti and I spent a lot of our time chatting and she did manage to teach me a few more words.

This is the local town fountain, not a patch on Mansfields display. Pat took the photo from a pole, our latest craze,PAP (Pole Aerial Photography).


Our last night in Vienna was spent with Karin and Christian. They had invited us to a ' farewell meal'. Karin had cooked beef and served it with potatoes (Austrian style) and Spinach, it was delicious. Apparently it was Emporor Franz Joseph's favourite meal. Lisa, their daughter, who is 22 is like a breath of fresh air, she loves animals and has a horse, 2 Guinea Pigs and just recently bought a rescue dog from Slovakia, Jessie, a beautiful Alsatian who has been very well trained. Lisa speaks better English than we do and I'm sure she's like me and been vaccinated with a gramophone needle but I love to chat with her she's a very interesting person.

Philip, their son, is quieter that Lisa, but plays better tennis, speaks perfect English and is a true Gentleman and lovely to talk to.

Brigitte, another cousin had unfortunately had a wisdom tooth out that day so was in agony and didn't stay too long but we had visited her earlier in the week and spent an afternoon with her. Her flat is simply gorgeous and only a 30 minute train ride from the centre of Vienna. It's in the part known as the Vienna Woods, the lungs of the city, so it's very green around the small town. She took us on a short walk through the woods behind her flat. The trail had lamps along it and I could just imagine wandering along on a dark winter's evening, the lamps lit and snow gently falling, but neither Pat nor Brigitte were impressed by my vision.

It was great time and the flight home was good. Frankfurt behaved itself very well and didn't cancel any flights. The weather was clear until we reached the Channel so I did see the River Rhine, it was really wide and meandered across the countryside. The coast of Belgium looked like one great sandbank with a lot of shallow water and then we were flying just on the top of a blanket of cotton wool. It was eerie, the cloud tops were billowing up and we were flying in between them. It was a bit bumpy but nothing to worry about.

The final landing was a bit scary as well. The Pilot missed the runway and had to have another go at it! Apparently he was going too fast and too high! Anyway we landed safely second time around and just to cap it off our suitcase strap had been ripped off at the roots!

A great trip to meet our lovely family.

I really like this last photo, not only does it remind me of home it's proves that it does rain in Austria sometimes.