A U S T R I A
13 - 20 July 2005

Small World -- Thursday, 14 July 2005

07:55 AM - The Hotel Seelos
Our hotel is marvelous.

I hadn't realized how soul draining it is to stay at cookie-cutter chain hotels that, no matter how luxurious they pretend to be, are just a brick box with a bar/restaurant decorated with the same naff tat as every other chain hotel.  Hotel Seelos (in fact, nearly every hotel I've seen here) is a family-run business, and the personal touch really does show.

The Hotel Seelos.

The owners come around frequently to greet, shake hands and chat with their guests, and the staff all behave as if our happiness is their primary life-goal, making the insouciance of the night clerk at the Howard Johnson's in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania seem inexcusable by comparison (although, I have to admit, if you're the night desk clerk at the Howard Johnson's in Wilkes-Barre, PA, it's insouciance or suicide--take your choice).

The décor here, like in most mountain chalets, is 'mountain chalet'.  (I mean, why would you build a mountain chalet for vacationing tourists and decorate it like an Italian villa?)  The woodwork is dark, warm and ubiquitous.  The door to our room is heavy and solid and opens with a brass skeleton key, swinging outward like the opening of a wooden bank vault.

Our room is spacious, with a sitting area, large bathroom and enough closet space to store, well, I guess to store lots of bulky coats and ski equipment.
 There is a marvelous shower that turned out to be smarter than I am, but the hair dryer was smarter than my wife so I figure that makes us even.  Aside from those diversions, the bathroom also comes equipped with a heated towel rack; something I never thought about before but, having tried it, would not mind having one installed at home.  There is nothing quite like stepping out of the shower and bundling yourself in a big, fluffy, warm towel--it's better than sex.  Well, really crappy sex, maybe.

The lounge/bar area.

But charming décor, effusive staff and bathroom amenities aside, it is the view that sells these rooms.  Each is positioned to take in a sweeping vista (actually, it would be hard to position one that didn't) and comes with an ample balcony and deck furniture made for comfort.  Which is why I'm sitting out here now. 
It is a glorious morning; the sun is shining and it promises to be another grand day.  Right now, however, breakfast is ready, and so is my wife; time to head out.

10:30 AM - Breakfast
Having narrowly avoided a major wine-related faux pas at dinner the previous evening I managed to make a cock-up of getting coffee.

I have given up expecting decent coffee while traveling outside of the US so it came as no surprise when I was confronted with a large table containing cups, saucers, hot water on tap, a huge tray of tea in various flavors and a single jar of instant coffee.  After selecting some tea for my wife, I started digging around in the coffee jar with a tiny teaspoon, trying to coax out enough out to make a sufficient cup of coffee.  I was interrupted by one of the helpful staff, her face a mixture of confusion and concern as she struggled to make herself understood.

"Der koffee est not gut.  Koffee not mit . . ."

"It's decaffeinated coffee," I offered.

"Jah.  You like Koffee?"

"Si, uh, yes, I mean, Jah."

She took my cup and trotted off.  Thinking she was leading the way to the coffee making area, I followed her.  Into the kitchen.  At this point, she glanced over her shoulder and, seeing me still shadowing her, shook her head and indicated that I was to return to my table (where, ostensibly, I would stay out of trouble).  She smiled as she directed me, but I could tell she was thinking, "American dumkops!  How did ve ever lose zee var to them?"

When the coffee arrived, it made the episode worthwhile.  It was superb; hot, strong, aromatic, and came with warm cream.  The best cup of coffee I've experience in quite some time.  Unfortunately, my wife couldn't say the same about the tea, which was disappointing but not surprising.  It appears to be a universal law that any country providing good coffee will invariably provide awful tea, and vice versa, and Austria proved no exception.

After breakfast, we were required to attend orientation, where the tour company tries to sign you up for day excursions and get you to book more holidays with them.  This company is good, however; no hard sell, just suggestions on what would be worthwhile seeing.  They did not steer us wrong.

The meeting took place in a bar with a small bowling alley in it.  The place reeked of smoke from the night before and all of the people attending crammed into the tiny, after-thought of a non-smoking area, as if sitting in the spacious, comfortable area near the bowling lanes would mean they would have to smoke.

They were eventually asked to move anyway, as the talks took place in the smoking area and they wouldn't have been able to hear otherwise. 
No one lit up, though.  In fact, despite the ubiquitous nature of ashtrays here, I haven't seen anyone smoking.  It must be because most of the people here are Brits in whom the government-enforced non-smoking habit is deeply engrained.

4:54 PM - The Mountains
The dead guy was still there when we left our hotel the second time that morning.  We had spotted him earlier, apparently sleeping next to his car on the grassy verge of the parking lot.  When we returned to the hotel after orientation, he was still there, in the same position.  It was nearly 10 AM by then, and the sun was getting so hot I found it inconceivable that he could be comfortable lying there like that.  When we left an hour later, he was still there, and still in the same position.  That was when I became certain he was dead.  I felt as if I should draw a chalk line around him.

"Well, if you touch him," my wife said, "and he is dead, he'll become your problem and you won't get to do a lot on your holiday except fill out reports and answer questions."
 
I saw the wisdom in that and gave him a wide berth.  After all, it wasn't as if he was wounded or sick or anything; then I might be morally obligated to help.  But a dead guy?  With or without my help, he wouldn't be any deader.  (Turns out, of course, he wasn't dead after all; just a case of too little sleep and too much alcohol.  We've all been there.)

One of the cable cars going up to one of the peaks.

Seefeld, in addition to being impossibly quaint and friendly, is a tidy little place with a quiet but efficient bustle.  It's a place where you just know the trains run on time. 

We were, coincidentally, taking a train that day, but not the one from the main station on the edge of town.  We were heading up the mountain, on something called a funicular railway.  Being the first nice day in about a week (the day we landed saw the end of a long and enthusiastic rainy spell) we were not short of company but, nevertheless, the train gamely climbed up the side of the mountain despite being heavily loaded with tourists.

The view.

At the top, which wasn't the top at all, but a high plateau between two adjacent peaks, we disembarked into the Rosshütte--an accommodating bar/restaurant with an ample sun deck, a men's loo featuring a violet backlit urinal-wall and piped-in yodel music, and cables cars providing access to the not-so-nearby summits for those of us too unadventurous to want to climb (and there were a lot of us).

The sundeck at the Rosshütte.

The views from the Rosshütte were so much grander than from the valley floor, and the scenery from the peaks was beyond description.  I have never seen anything like it for scale or grandeur.  We all just stood, looking around, snapping photos, ohh-ing and ahh-ing.  I was thinking about how far this all was from the little rural town where I had grown up when someone said, "The Catskill Mountains are just bumps compared to these things!"

Seefeld from above. 

Turns out, it was a guy who had grown up in Columbia County, same as me, in the city of Hudson about ten miles from where I lived.  It is, as they say, a small, small world.

Ambitious hikers trekking back down the mountain. 

For some, there was more to do up there than stand slack-jawed at the view or bump into people from back home.  Para gliders launched themselves from the slopes, gliders swooped and dipped on the valley's air currents and a few intrepid souls, who had opted for the easy way up the mountain, chose to hike back down.

Ambitious para-glider soaring over the mountain. 

We decided to return to the Rosshütte for refreshments, utilizing the conveniently provided public transportation.  This allowed me to visit the yodeling urinal again and have a fine Austrian beer and a Cuban cigar while enjoying the views and watching cows graze contentedly along the footpaths.  It's a remarkably beautiful place, especially when the sun is shining.

This is what it looks like in the winter. 

"Ich kann mein haus von hier sehen."

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