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

Getting There -- Wednesday, 12 July 2005

07:05 AM - Nuts
I'm sitting in an airplane, 35,000 feet above the English Channel and have just been informed that, due to one passenger's food allergy, nobody on the plane will be allowed to eat nuts, nor will any nuts be served with our snack.

What bollocks.

This passenger, by the way, is the same one who, when she found out the plane wasn't carrying a special dish for her (because they weren't notified that they needed to) pitched a fit.  Now, suddenly, she's nut allergic and holding us all hostage to her dietary needs (and I was so looking forward to a bag of salted peanuts to go with my morning cocktail).

You might think that someone with a constitution as delicate as that would have the foresight to notify the airline company before breakfast was being served.
 Or maybe I'm just grumpy because we had to get up at 2:30 AM to catch this flight (come to think of it, maybe she's grumpy for the same reason but has a more pro-active way of gaining satisfaction).

Gatwick Airport, as few of us ever get to see it.

Actually, nuts and grinding fatigue aside, this isn't a bad way to go.  Granted, we had to get up when many younger people were on their way to bed, but the taxi was spot on time and getting to the airport took half the time because there wasn't any traffic.  The airport was nearly empty, as well, so check-in took minutes instead of hours, leaving us ample leisure time to sit in the only open restaurant sipping tea that looked like pond water and coffee that tasted like it.

Our gate was the first to open and our plane the third in line for take-off.  We're already somewhere over France and due to land in Innsbruck in about twenty minutes.

Swooping in over the mountains. 

I'm not sure what I want to do first after we arrive, take a nap or buy a bag of nuts.

09:15 PM - Seefeld
I never did get my bag of nuts.  I was about to purchase one in the local supermarket but my wife thought that was taking the joke too far and insists I point out that the poor woman had adrenaline with her and had, in fact, alerted her travel company--a lesser known and apparently not as competent company as the one we booked with--about her condition and they failed to pass that information on to the airline.  So the nut case is exonerated and I'm now fed and rested and a little less inclined to trivialize her condition.

We're sitting on the balcony of our hotel room taking in the stunning views after a long and eventful day.  Twenty-four hours ago we were sitting in my in-law's back garden in Sussex and now we're overlooking a quaint little town nestled in a valley surrounded by impressive vistas.

View from our balcony. 

I've said this before but it bears repeating: living in the UK takes a bit of the romance out of traveling to Europe.  The plane trip here was just a bit longer than my bus ride to work (granted, I don't have to report to the bus station two hours early) and we were in our room before my office even opened for business this morning.

We had a spectacular view of the mountains as we approached Innsbruck, which was a good thing, as it kept my mind off the fact that we were zigzagging through valleys and mountain passes in order to line up with the tiny runway.  Then we dipped below the cloud cover and I had nothing to do beyond hope that the pilot knew what he was doing.

We broke through the clouds into a gray and misty morning, just in time to touch down on the tarmac.  After a short walk, a wait, a bus ride and a quick trip in a taxi, we were in our hotel, thoroughly tired and hungry.  After unpacking and freshening up, we took the five-minute walk into the diminutive town of Seefeld.

Seefeld is a marvelous place, small enough to be cozy and off the major tourist trail, yet large enough to hold a variety of diverting shops, restaurants, entertainments and a train station.  And it keeps its homey nature despite having hosted portions of the 1976 Winter Olympics and boasting the longest Nordic ski trail in the world.

Seefeld. 

We spent an hour or so exploring before resigning ourselves to the ritual of trying to get something to eat in a place where English is not the primary language.

Finding a café was difficult only because there were so many to choose from.  After settled into a table in the sun on a quiet side street our waitress approached.  Before I could try my limited German on her, she said, "English?" and handed us the menus they apparently reserve for the tourists.  How could she have known?

Just as the aforementioned proximity removes the romance of travel, the willingness of the rest of the world to speak English certainly diminishes the challenge.  Being as lazy as the next Anglo-Saxon (hey, my grandfather was born in Lancashire, so shut it) I can't say I don't appreciate it but it does tend to make excursions into to foreign territory a little less exotic.  Only the French continue to make you work for it.

"The hills are alive, with the sound of music . . . " 

After being denied the opportunity to show off my single German phrase ("I don't speak German, do you speak English?") we meandered around the shops and side roads and made our way back to the hotel.  I took about 132 photos.  I couldn't help myself; the views were so staggeringly beautiful.  It made me wonder if the people who live here have to go to places like Bayonne, New Jersey on holiday for a change of scenery?  They should; it would keep them from taking it for granted.

Our accommodations are half-board, which means dinner, as well as breakfast, comes with the price of the room.  It also means that, at the appointed hour, we had to change and report to the dining room.  There's always a bit of 'first day of school' jitters at times like this; every hotel operates just a little bit differently, assuring an awkward phase while coming to terms with the local customs.  And when dealing with people whose primary language is not English, directions are not always clear.

Okay, so maybe this is a little too quaint, but, hey, they have to make a living. 

For example, at this hotel, our tour group generously provided wine with our evening meals.  The maître d' said, "Help yourself," so I prepared to grab a bottle.

"I think maybe you're just supposed to just fill your glass up," my wife suggested.
 So you see, "Help yourself," even though it's perfectly understandable English, means different things to different people.

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