Holiday in Austria, Part I: On the Road

This account is not as good as I'd like it to be, and if I had much more time I'd try to write it in a more genuine voice, but I've already revised it often and I don't want to wait too long after the event to post it. It should be a thorough overview of what happened; I haven't censored the disagreeable parts and I've only left out things that are too personal and navel-gazing. Hopefully the final result isn't too long.

July 23rd proved a good day to embark on a road trip. The cityscape and landscape were much more cheerful for the sunshine, though when our journey began at 10:10 a.m. the light was peculiarly subdued in a way more befitting the evening than morning hours, and for once the pine woods (relieved by birches, furled oaks, beeches, red-berried ash, and the other leafy trees that flock along the highway) and stark fields of Brandenburg looked relatively lively. At the roadside I spotted what looked like Queen Anne's lace, yellow-flowered mullein stalks, etc. There was even a field plunged in shade by slender lines of dusky, translucent tree and illumined by the sun and the intensely green grass, and scattered over with cows in divers tints of beige and brown, and it could have been a French or English landscape painting.

There were sunflower fields bristling with the heavy golden heads, wheat fields evidently shorn of their grain, pastures as vividly emerald as if it were spring, corn fields where the silk was browning at the tip of the sizable husks, and hay fields. In some of these hay fields the grass still grew tall and golden; others had been shorn and the grass lay in squiggly lines to dry; others had been harvested entirely, so the bales were gathered and lying in their plastic hulls.

The car was jam-packed with the lot of us, but Papa had on the air conditioning all the time, because the brisk coldness keeps the mind alert. Since I am one of the Little People anyway I had no difficulty with the scant leg room either. We had plentiful provisions, purchased by Gi. and covering quite thoroughly what Homer Simpson once termed the "neglected food groups." Mama had also made sandwiches and we had an artillery of water bottles, too, so it wasn't all unhealthy. We paused a couple times at rest stops, which varied from a pleasantly rural lane adorned on the right side with a solitary portable toilet, to commercial complexes with gas station, chain fast food store, etc.

After leaving Brandenburg for Thuringia and Thuringia for Bavaria, we entered Austria, going through Passau and crossing the Inn River. The signs diverted us to a gas station where Papa bought a toll ticket for ca. 7.80 Euros. But thanks to the Schengen Agreement there was no rifling through our luggage or filling out of forms or displaying of passports (we had along our personal ID cards, of course, since that is obligatory even within Germany anyway). Then we drove on and crossed the Danube three or four times, and contrary to expectation its idyllic grace did live up to its elevated cultural role. It was dark and tranquil and spread elegantly between the banks, where deserted pastures and trees held the water at bay, and no sordid traffic or industry was visible either on the river or beside it.

After a pit stop at the Voralpenkreuz, or a big highway crossing in the prealpine region, where we bought a map and the facial traits of the attendant reminded me intriguingly of my great-aunt's, we finally found the town of Gmunden and curved around the Traunsee, or Traun Lake, toward Bad Goisern, the location of our cottage. The roads were lined and busy with a colourful procession of cars, and as we passed along the lakeside the beaches were even more colourful with the sun- and proper bathers. Apparently the water is bone-chillingly cold, but the scene was Mediterranean. As for the lake itself, it is broad and dull, and mountains rise out of it from all sides, giving it a cooler and perhaps more Nordic flair, but then we did see it in the evening and perhaps it can look as lively and blue as a glacier lake at other times. It reminded me of Okanagan Lake, back in Canada, though the shores of that lake are lower and more gentle.