Perpetual Change

Notes from Austria

So as well as living in Czech all summer, the trip that I was working on would actually spend more time (4 of 6 days) in Austria. These two nations as neighbors, along with Bavaria, share a lot of history, but are also profoundly different. In my introduction on trip, I would normally compare them, which I think is more interesting, than contrast them, which is so easy.

As I became familiar with the Austrian part of the trip, I realized how useful a little German would be. I met Anita one day, a restaurant owner with just a bit of English where we have lunch before cycling into the hills to stop at her mother's farmhouse (not small establishments in Austria) to a treat of local cake and cider. When I first introduced myself, an unsettled look crossed her face, which is sometimes common when you familiarize with a new area; the sub-contractors are surprised to see you and think that a group might be arriving unexpectedly. But later I learned what her look really meant was "I can't say ALL that I want to." She likes to talk. Her mother is more reserved and speaks no English, but we had a very nice conversation all the same, when I visited her home.

Often in Europe, when you order salad, it is just lettuce. Many times you want more; not so in Austria. For the first time, I ordered a salad, wanting just lettuce and got a whole lot of corn, beans and a mess of other things.

I went to a Freemason museum in one of the hotels where we stay. It was quite interesting and in removed, rural Austria. It had a bag from a club in Deerfield Beach, FL, and a map of clubs that had once been in towns in Ukraine near to where I had lived, though the old map was not quite correct in that region.

The trips in Austria attract slightly different folks than in Tuscany. The hills are smaller, as are the age of kids on the family trips.

The music on the radio is phenomenally better though.

The drivers are faster than the Italians, much to my surprise. Why is the sticker symbol for Austria - A, when the sticker for Germany is D. Austria in Austrian German is Osterich, with the two dots over the O.

The weather sure does change quickly. Reminds me of Florida.

During the season, some guests of mine from Tuscany last year came on a trip with other leaders in Czech/Austria. I met them for dessert one night, to their surprise. I keep notes on all my guests to jog my memory, but I would have remembered these two anyway. He is a big financier in Chicago with a very dry way about him. They were very surprised, and he told me that he actually googled something I said when he got home because he felt that I knew too much about Tuscany to be truthful. Google told him the truth: I never lie.

Guest can also often pick me out as an Eagle Scout. Another time, I was ironing my shirt for dinner in the hallway (In this particular hotel, which has been owned for several generations by the same family, who make schnapps for us as we are eating dinner; there is a demonstration and then we try it; their license goes back to Maria Theresa, empress of Austrio-Hungary; anyway, their irons and boards are in a recess in the hall), a guest came up to me and asked if I had a screwdriver. I was in shorts and my undershirt, and she needed a phillips, but she didn't want me to have to go for it (we have tool boxes in the support van). So effectively she was asking, 'do you have phillips in your pocket?' And I did! With my pocketknife, I was able to get her table fan working again in between my ironing.

One last story, in Ybbs an der Donau (German for 'on the Danube'), a charming town with a charming little bicycle museum that credits bike riding to liberating women of corsets and such in the 20's (apparently Susan B. Anthony said so), there was a speed sign that flashes your speed when you are going over the clearly stated number signed above it. You've all seen these speed announcements. But this one is a bit different than all the others I had seen there and in America, as I was going under the stated limit, it flashed a green "Danke"!

Labels: old notes

posted by jjs @ 12:05 AM