Falling in Love with Fritz

Liebe Familie, September 30th, 2008
Whew. Loads to write. Last Monday and Tuesday were normal, I went to school, it was long, got a lot of homework, etc. I did make a friend at FHE on Monday night though, his English is perfect, so whenever I had a question he could answer it. Tuesday I had to go to a copy shop and photocopy my textbook for the Politik course I'm now taking. Who knew that class would be the most interesting? Seriously, I'm still trying to figure that one out. After class I went to the Mozarthaus Vienna, which is just as worthless as the Mozartgeburthaus. It turns out that there really isn't anything left of Mozart's, so when you go into these museums all you can do is read about their lives, which you can also do on-line for FREE. So I'd say it's definitely not worth the €7 I paid to go in. Afterwards I went into a book store and talked to the cashier. She went through all of the cook books with me and we found one that she said had the most traditional food. Haha, actually just desserts. We didn't look at the rest of it. But it was only €5, and it's the first real thing that I've bought that wasn't food or a post card. I'm living cheaply this time, don't you worry. I'm not repeating Berlin.

Wednesday morning I got up nice and early—so early in fact, that the maid hadn't arrived yet so we got ourselves our own breakfast. We hopped on the bus and started driving. I read a play for my Opera and Theater class that first day on the bus, and we first went to Mauthausen, a former concentration camp. Unfortunately, they had no English translations of anything, and Austrians have a completely different view of the Holocaust than Germans. They see themselves as victims, so they are not quite so sympathetic to Jews, and do not have half of the memorials and museums about the Holocaust that Germany has. I hiked down to the quarry where they had the prisoners working everyday. The average life expectancy working there was only 4-5 months.

We then got back into the bus and drove off to St. Florian, a monastery where Anton Bruckner worked. Apparently he's a really famous musician, and he took his inspiration from the organ there. We went through the whole building, including yet another fabulous library. After the monastery we drove off to Hallstatt, where I roomed with a girl I hadn't paid too much attention to before, and it turns out we get along really well and she's also in German 320, so I'll be hanging out with her in the future.

In Hallstatt we got up early and climbed up to the salt mine there. We had to put on these amazingly hideous suits to enter, and we took a tour. They have chutes to get down into the mine, so we went down several of them. On one of them they take a picture you can buy, and measure how fast you're going. Unfortunately, I didn't go very fast, only 29 kph. Our guide brought a piece of silk to ride on, and he was way faster. That salt mine is the oldest known in the entire world. A couple hundred years ago they found the body of prehistoric miner, so it's been used for thousands of years.

After the salt mine we hiked back down, and then hiked up to a church with a “Bone House.” In Europe land is really expensive, so after you've been buried for a while they dig you up and make room for more people. At this church, they take the bones of the buried up people, and paint on the skulls their name and the years of their life. Don't worry, I found every “Anna” in that room. There were quite a few actually.

I went on a hike with a bunch of people to a gorgeous waterfall, crossing many bridges to get there. On the way back it began to pour, making for a very wet and cold rest of the day. We wandered around the village and saw all of it before leaving that night.

In the evening we drove on to St. Wolfgang, another famous monastery. This one however, has one of the oldest altars, called the Pachar altar. It really was gorgeous, but to give you an idea of how valuable it is, they once lent out one of the figures, just a small, insignificant one from the very bottom out to another church, and insured it for €1,000,000. Just for the one piece. Afterwards we drove on to our hotel in Salzburg.

On Friday morning in Salzburg we met up with our tour guide, Horst. He took us all around the old city, which I have already seen and know. I got to see a bunch of new things though, like another few churches, and the oldest restaurant in the world. The restaurant has been there since 803. Crazy, I know. After the tour my friend Annalise and I took off to hike up to the Schloss. They wouldn't let us get close without paying, and I'd already seen it, so we wandered off into the woods and found an amazing little path back to the city. It was so small, and so hidden from anything, it was really amazing that we found it. I then took her to all of the famous things, like the store where everything is an ornament made out of an ordinary egg shell, but painted so delicately that they're absolutely gorgeous. Then of course there was Mirabell Gardens, some of the older buildings, and the markets.

In the afternoon we drove to Hellbrunn, the palace outside of Salzburg. I'd already been there as well, and as it was rather cold Dr. Brewer told everyone about the trick fountains beforehand. We had thought the tour guide wouldn't spray us as much because of the cold weather. We were wrong. We were all pretty wet and freezing by the end, but it was really pretty, and we found a cool playground in the park afterwards that we thoroughly enjoyed. That evening we drove to Dorfgastein.

Dorfgastein is a tiny village of 700, with most people working outside in bigger cities like Salzburg, as well as running a bed and breakfast in their homes. Everyone has big, tall houses of several stories, and they rent out the top floors to tourists. I'm pretty sure we were the first Americans to be there in many years. Most of the tourists that come are Austrian and German, so almost no one speaks English there. There was no one hotel big enough for all of us to stay, so we spread out across three different bed and breakfasts, on opposite ends of the village. I would love to come back in the winter for skiing. Our first day on Saturday we got up early and took the Lift up to the top of one of the mountains. (Oh, the Dorf is surrounded by the Alps. It's amazing.) We then hiked down to the bottom. As we were hiking through snow, I was wearing three pairs of socks and a plastic bag around each foot. I unluckily discovered in Hallstatt that my shoes get wet very easily. I wish I would have known we would be doing so much hiking, because my hiking boots are in Provo.

On that first hike in the Dorf we stopped by at an Alm, a mountain farm. The Dorf is surrounded by dairy farms, so there were cows EVERYWHERE. I did see an occasional goat though. At the Alm I had my first ever Almdudler, a special soda that they drink in the country in Austria. The man whose house I was living in, Fritz, came with us on the hike. He was amazing. He was seriously half of the charm of Dorfgastein. He speaks so clearly and so slowly so that there is no confusion, as he does not know any English. I begged him to hike all the way down with us, because there were a few of us who didn't want to take the Lift down, and wanted to keep going. We took a cow trail down from the lift, which was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my entire life. My toes were smarting for hours afterwards, with the combination of the 3 pairs of socks, and going downhill so steeply for so long, it was painful.

After the hike, Fritz took us to a soccer game, Dorfgastein versus a neighboring village. His son is the goalkeeper for Dorfgastein, and he had been the coach for 18 years, so it was really funny seeing him get into the game.

Sunday morning we got up nice and early for mass at the one and only church in Dorfgastein. It was Austria's Thanksgiving, (“Erntedank,”) and it was amazing. For Erntedank the farmers and their wives dress in traditional clothes, everyone but us were wearing either Dirndls or Lederhosen. The wives of the farmers even wear these fancy black hats, that they only wear for very important holidays. After the mass there was a parade around the very small town, complete with a band.

After the parade we went to a Restaurant across the street, where everyone had an Austrian salad, and then Wienerschnitzel. That was by far the best Wienerschnitzel I had ever eaten. It was amazing.

Annalise and I broke off from the group and went on an impromptu hike—we were just exploring the village when we found a trail, and we went hiking in church clothes and shoes. After doing the first trail to a waterfall we went back and changed, and took off on another hike. We hiked up to another Alm, and then to Unterberg. We met some of the coolest people hiking up there. Annalise doesn't really speak German, so I had a lot of fun talking to them on my own. People there are so friendly! They were really impressed that we were learning German, and even taught me a few new vocabulary words.

Monday morning the group went on another hike, this time to an Alm where we were to have breakfast. Being the enduring person that I am, I was definitely heading up the group again, and enjoyed a delicious traditional country breakfast. I need to learn the names of what I ate, because it was amazing. After stuffing myself, I lay down for a 10 minute nap while everyone else ate, I hadn't been sleeping well sharing rooms with people for so many nights in a row. After getting back to Dorfgastein, Annalise and I went on the last hike in the town that was less than 3 hours and we hadn't already done.

I walked around the town some more, and then showered and packed. While getting ready to go to the train station we said our last good byes to Fritz. It was so sad. He had been such a big part of our lives for a few days, I wish he was in Vienna with us. He saw us all off at the train station, where we were then forced to sit for 5 hours on the train back to Vienna. I sat there doing homework for hours, and I still hadn't finished all of it for Tuesday, so I stayed up pretty late working on it.

This morning I have a terrible cold—a cold has been going around our entire group, and as it started with my roommate our first week here, I'd been doing a pretty good job staying away from it. Eve the cook made me warm milk and shoved as much bread as she could down my throat to make me feel better, it was really funny, but made me a few minutes late for class.

Austria had their elections this past Sunday, so we had a lot to talk about. I'm telling you, it's crazy learning about these complicated governments, in each country as well as the EU overall. I want to live here. After all of my classes were over I came home and did a few hours of homework. Tante Hannah and Josef fed us dinner tonight, a traditional Austrian meal with a Hungarian dessert. We started out with Carrot/Orange soup, and then had salad with a surprisingly good dressing. Afterwards we had veal and mashed potatoes. The dessert was a cold pudding, with who knows what in it, but it was delicious. We talked with them a lot about our trip, and the current elections. They are very nice people, but I wish we could just sit and talk to them more often, and not only when we are scheduled to have meals with them.

After dinner I made flashcards to study, and as I was returning the scissors Eve cornered me and I ended up talking to her for 45 minutes in the kitchen. Haha, not too much homework was done tonight. I really need to go to bed, I'm ready to collapse and I need to be up early tomorrow for an eventful day.

Love to everyone,
Anna