Vienna to Enns, AUSTRIA - 15 august 2002
I was too cheap to buy a sleeper ticket and had paid for a seat for the night train to Vienna last night. After the wonderful and, now I realised, wonderfully cheap sleeper trains in China and Russia, sleeping 8 or so hours curled up on two seats was not nice, although I admit that I was lucky I had two seats to curl up on.
I arrived in Vienna, not in the best of mood. I made my way to Enns, a small town and waited for Alex. I had travelled with Alex for the first ten days of my trip, around Dali and Lijiang in China. He had mentioned that I should go visit him in Austria, since I was heading to Europe. So, I took him up on his offer.
It was great to meet him again! Alex quickly updated me on the latest news. Unbeknownst to me, the rain that I had been whining and whinging about in Poland, had apparently caused massive floods in Czech Republic, Eastern Germany, Austria, Northern Italy, etc… In fact, I had most likely just missed the floods in Enns by a day or two. I was totally clueless about this when in Poland. I was absolutely cut off from world news. That was the problem when you chose to study Trigonometry instead of Polish in school.
I interrogated him for more details. States of emergency had been declared in some towns in Eastern Germany and Western Czech Republic. He said it was amazing that I even crossed the border through Czech Republic and onwards to Austria this morning. He thought I would be stuck in Czech Republic. I had fixed this date to meet Alex. But before I went to Zakopane, I was actually tempted to go to Prague for a visit instead. Just before I reserved the ticket, I was still thinking - Prague or Zakopane? Prague or Zakopane? So, in a way, I was lucky I went to Zakopane. I heard Prague was thoroughly flooded now.
Alex told me the roads to Salzburg and Czech Republic had been closed for a couple of days. Everyone knew someone whose house was flooded; some houses were flooded up to 10cm below the ceiling! 40,000 new cars that had just arrived at a factory now needed to be written off the accounts, it seemed. It was just today that the flood appeared to have receded.
Enns is a small town, with nothing going on. Today was a public holiday in Austria. That meant dead towns everywhere anyway. Alex brought me up to the clock tower and showed me bits of his town - the Danube river, the Enns river, where the rivers met, a church, where he went through his horrible army experience, another church, a concentration camp, etc… What I remembered more was, of course, the lovely home-cooked meal courtesy of Alex’s mom - schnitzel and salad! Boy, I had been so looking forward to this since… yeah, Russia! Lovely, yummy, warm, nutritious food.
We drove out to Linz, the major town nearby, and checked out the river level. The river was flowing strongly and very dangerously near the top of the banks, threatening to flood over anytime. But he believed the worst was over for Austria. Not for the Czech Republic and Germany though.
We then drove out to a spot near a dam of Enns river where he usually went swimming. We walked across the dam and to his horrors, the pavement leading to where he went for his swims was totally carved out by the floods. We could see fragments of the tarred road jutting out way across in the river, near the opposite bank. How did they get there? The force needed to gouge out the paved road and then fling the twisted bitumen across to the opposite bank and lodge there in the raging river must had been immense! He was almost in tears. His beloved tiny little spot! The trees used to line about 1.5 metres from the bank. But now, they were all uprooted and cleared, leaving a 5 metre or so gap between the bank and the remaining trees.
Alex’s mom was obsessed about the floods and kept switching channels to the news, reporting about the floods. It looked really bad.
Salzburg, AUSTRIA - 16 august 2002
Amazingly, it was sunny and blue today. I had not seen this sort of weather for many days now. The road to Salzburg was clear, Alex learnt from the internet. We could head to Salzburg today.
I had loved the movie ‘The Sound of Music’ and must have watched it ten times or so. It would be nice to visit the town where it was filmed. Not that I could remember the scenes, I was not that obsessed. But I found it strange that Alex had never watched this movie before.
Salzburg looked really grand just as we approached it. There was a huge mountain in the middle of the town, seemingly getting in the way of everything. But the authorities had converted the mountain into a city car-park. How ingenious. We expected to see many Mozart imposters but spotted only one. The rest must had taken time off in view of the floods.
This must be the most touristy town in Austria, I figured. Everywhere were souvenir stalls and milling tourists checking out souvenirs. One tacky souvenir read: ‘THERE ARE NO KANGAROOS IN AUSTRIA’. Well, we could guess which nationality of tourists that was written for.
I was told that all shops along the streets in the main square had to have their decorations in line with the town council’s requirements to keep the authentic style and maintain the charm. Lovely, intricate, Baroque-style (I may be wrong about the style here but it looked Baroque to me) wrought-iron sign-boards stuck out from the shop-fronts. It was picture-perfect everywhere. And I had not even started on the mountain scenery around.
Up at the castle on the hill, Alex pointed out “All this lovely mountain area is Austria. Beautiful, huh? The flat boring bit over there is Germany.”
On the way back to Enns, we stopped by Lake Traunsee in Gmunden briefly and admired the castle. Upon reaching home, we received more news about the flood catastrophe on the news channels. Cars were swept away, entire towns went under, chemical leak from factories, etc… Gosh!
Windischgarsten, AUSTRIA - 17 august 2002
We decided to head out for a drive around the mountains today. We had no particular destination in mind. I was not really keen on visiting the famous sights in Europe. I had come to Europe to drop by and visit the friends I have here. It would be nice to see where they live, how it is like to hang out in a regular town. It was also chilling-out time for me before I embarked on my trip to South America.
The road, at first, was curvy and it cut through undulating farm-lands and meadows. There was nothing much to see out there, and yet everything looked really pretty. Soon, rolling hills graduated to alpine heights. Houses and cattle lined the valley, with the Alps to the left and right of us. It was very peaceful and scenic. The air was crystal clear. Of the five years most likely shaven off from my lifetime for inhaling copious amount of second-hand smoke in China, I probably earned back about half a year or so just by breathing in Austrian air.
We turned up a mountain road and stopped by a lovely little restaurant. It had started to rain, unfortunately. The fog covered up the mountains around us and clouds slowly rolled in.
The variety of dairy products here in Austria was mind-boggling. At the restaurant, I puzzled over ‘topfen’ in the menu. Alex had looked up his Deutsch-Englisch dictionary to try and describe ‘topfen’ to me. It was curd cheese or cream cheese. Whatever. That meant absolutely nothing to me. The only cheese my mom bothered to buy from the supermarket came sliced and individually wrapped. He ordered butter-milk. Sourish and not bad. But the name put me off.
We stopped by Windischgarsten on the way back. This is a beautiful, quiet little town with gorgeous houses, complete with tiny, colourful flowers sticking out of most windows, lining the winding alleys. The buildings were all from 1700 / 1800 or so, lovingly restored, with descriptions on what they were used for since they were built – tailor, bakery, shop, etc… Charming.
Another traditional culture of Austria to sample is the confectionary-café culture. There were all these lavishly-decorated cakes staring at you from the counters. One would order the cakes and some coffee and sit on the lovely seats and table and while away the time, like what the immaculately-dressed elderly ladies around us were doing. This was definitely NOT Starbucks.
Alex spotted in the newspaper a picture of Cesky Krumlov, an old town in Czech Republic just across the border where he frequently went with his friends. It was also hit badly by the floods, he sighed.
Cesky Krumlov & Ceske Budejovice, CZECH REPUBLIC - 18 august 2002
Despite news about the floods in Cesky Krumlov, we were curious to head out there to survey the flooded regions.
“OK, if we leave at 9am, we could get there by 12 noon or so, in time for lunch.” I had explained last night, when planning the time to go to Czech Republic.
“3 hours?!?! Where do you think we are going? I-T-A-L-Y?? It’s just 1 hour to the border!” This was Alex’s way of telling me he refused to wake up early.
Oh, OK… Austria is small, unlike Russia. I needed to think SMALL now.
We parked our car somewhere and walked towards the gate that led to the city centre. There was a soldier stationed there with a barrier across to block people from entering. Apparently, Cesky Krumlov was now closed and only residents could go in. Alex muttered something vague to soldier in German and we strode in. He did not even bother to challenge us.
The road just around the bridge was gone. The bitumen was twisted and broken into pieces, revealing the rocks underneath. At the bridge, I watched in horrors the sheer force of the water crashing along. It was frightening. The water level was just a hint below the banks now. But one could make out the wet lines on the side of the buildings and it was really high.
All the shops were closed, of course. Gloomy residents were tossing out boxes, cardboards, cupboards. I tried to imagine if my home was flooded all the way up to three-quarters of the height of the room. EVERYTHING but EVERYTHING would be destroyed. The residents all looked harassed and solemn. The smell of cleaning detergent was in the air. Many were wiping down furniture and cookers and cleaning the floor. We dared not look into the cellars.
The town is still pretty although the air hanging around was quiet and sad. Then, a group of chatting Taiwanese tourists arrived and merrily snapped pictures of the fortress, etc…
On the way back to Austria after a late lunch, we drove through windy roads with the forest on either side. The ladies with bad eye make-up, messed-up hair and tight skimpy dresses you saw standing along the side of the road were NOT hitch-hikers looking for a ride. Well, they WERE looking for a ride, in a sense… if you know what I mean, at a price. Gosh, they looked terrible. Alex wanted to stop by the side to trick them. Once she came running, we would speed off again. We spotted a couple in the woods. Further on, a car was parked by the side. We zoomed by too fast to see if the car was rocking side to side. It had an ‘A’ Euro plate. ‘A’ for ‘Austria’. I had been trained so far by Alex on how to recognise where the European cars were registered to.
“Hmmm… Why ‘A’ for ‘Austria’? And not ‘Ö’ for ‘Österreich’?”, I wondered.
“Because we spell it in English that way,” Alex replied promptly.
“Yeah? Then, explain ‘D’ for ‘Deutschland’ and ‘E’ for ‘España’.”
Silence…
“Sh*t!! W-H-Y???” he barked now.
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