So the Obertraun story continued...

Thanks for the set-up Steph!

So we arrive back in Obertraun after our long day of hiking. I should mention we're a little on edge from the skulls in Halstatt (that was way creepy) and the walk back in the dark. We decide to hit the restaurant where we ate the night before. Since it's the only restaurant in town that we know is open at night, it seems a natural choice. Plus it's right next to our hotel, which equals less walking. We head on over, but lo and behold there's a wedding going on! Obertraun has about 700 full-time residents. Needless to say, a large percentage of them were in the restaurant. I was kind of still for going in, but Steph wisely said we should move on (she also got a better look at the dining room full of wedding guests).

So we still wanted a drink and some dessert (given our lack of success at the top of the cable car in Halstatt). Before we set out on our hike that morning, we'd walked across town to the grocery store and noticed that there were a couple of other restaurants and things there, so we figured maybe one of them would be open. It was a long shot, but hey, we'd already walked 18 km, what's another 1 or 2, right? We head off across town...

Now before I can properly tell you what happened next, you need a little background on some Austrian folklore. St. Nicholas, the original Santa Clause figure, is a big deal in Austria-his feast day, December 5th is widely celebrated, and actually resembles our Christmas Day a lot-there's presents and candy and decorations-we saw lots of displays in Vienna. This is fine, but for unknown reasons, Austrians also lump their All Saints Day in with this holiday (It's actually the day before-December 4th) which is kind of like Halloween. In Austria, though, instead of the children dressing up as monsters and going around for candy, young adults dress up as monsters/devils and walk through the streets scaring little kids-this is called krampus (I'm still a little fuzzy on whether the day or the devils themselves are called krampus, but moving on). The devils wear very elaborate wooden masks, which are handed down through generations, and carry wooden switches and whips. They look grotesque, but evidently it's all supposed to be in good fun and everything we heard about and everything in our guide books seemed to indicate it was really a holiday for children. Nothing to be worried about, really.

So back to us walking across Obertraun in the dark. Imagine the scene...quaint alpine chalets-warm yellow lights in the houses nearby, the moon overhead...absolutlely lovely. We're getting near the other restaurants we saw earlier in the day, when what should we hear but sleigh bells jingling...okaaaay...weird, but last night it was polka music, so we rolled with it. We go a little farther up the street and lo and behold, three krampus devils are walking up the middle of the road, ringing the sleigh bells as they come. My glasses were kind of fogged up, so I never actually saw them all that clearly, but Steph said they were definitely the real deal-grotesque wooden masks, furry bodies, the whole nine yards...including the switches and whips. They get near us and start to move past us, and we're commenting to each other "Cool" "Wow, I'm glad we got to see this" "Neat masks"...

and then the first devil hit me on the legs with his switch!

Okaaaaay, that's a little weird, but it must be the tradition Ha Ha, how quaint...

then the second, larger devil hits me with HIS switch

Okaaaaay, that kind of hurt, but oh well, they're moving on

then the third devil, who is the smallest by far (this kid couldn't have been more than 10) comes up and starts WALING on me with his switch

Okay-now this is getting ridiculous! And painful!

That's when the second devil comes back and decides his whip (read: cat-o-nine-tails) needed a little taste of the action too.

So now we're like "Whoa, whoa, WHOA! What the hell is going on here!" We make a big fuss, I'm trying to duck and cover and get out of range (all the while not being able to see anything real well) and Steph's yelling at them to cut it out!

Thankfully at that point they move on down the street, and we're left standing there about as stunned as you can get. I mean, THAT certainly wasn't in any of the guidebooks! And it really hurt! Especially that little guy wasn't pulling the punches! Thankfully, they were only hitting me (Steph said she'd probably have hit them back if they hit her-and I would have helped). I was really too surprised to even react in the moment.

So we keep going down the street, that's when we run into devil #4. Thankfully, this guy was the odd man out. He obviously wasn't part of the "in crowd" of krampus devils and actually seemed kind of bummed to have to be out there. He completely ignored us, even if we were watching him like he was some sort of potentially rabid dog.

We did find one restaurant that was open, but it was the definition of "local watering hole," so once again we didn't feel like we should really go in (who knows, maybe they had a whole backroom of krampus!), so we decided to go back to our hotel. Now remember Obertraun is just not that big, there's basically two roads through town, so there's a good chance we'd run into the devils on the way back to our hotel. We set off again, but this time, we're booking it, checking around corners, peering down streets, saying things like "Do you see 'em?" "Was that bells I heard? They have to ring the bells, right? They can't just pop out of nowhere, right? What was that?" and so on...

Thankfully, we did spot them down by the trainstation, which they seemed content to hang around (heaven help anyone who got off the train THAT night), and we were able to take road #2 and get back to our hotel, where, probably due to the wedding, the very nice Italian Innkeeper had opened up the bar and even the kitchen. We did manage to get our drink (which I for one, DEFINITELY needed) and our dessert anyway, but talk about a healthy dose of local color! The worst part is, we essentially walked 2 extra kilometers to get beaten and go back to our hotel.

So if you're ever in Austria around the start of November, be cautious about wandering around small towns after dark-and if you hear sleigh bells, run for your hotel as fast as your little legs can carry you!

Hallstadt and Obertraun (last part of the hiking saga)

The trail down from the restaurant is a switchback. It's long. And steep. And it was getting dark (this is at about 3:30 pm). More pics...


The view of Hallstadt - so pretty!

Within Hallstadt...the town is built on a tiny spit of land, so the houses all go up the cliff - and the roads are stairs. And the address are things like, "25 X Stair, Hallstadt". Settlements have been here since basically the Bronze age.



One of the craziest things about living in an area with no horizontal land is that that means that there is nowhere to bury your dead. So in Hallstadt (they don't do this anymore - they stopped in the 1980's) - you only got to be in the ground for 10 years. After that, they dug you up, and then they gave your skull to your family or loved ones to decorate (paint). Then, they stacked them neatly in a building next to the Catholic church. You can't make up stuff this weird. Here's the proof....



After admiring the skulls, we went for dinner (yum), and then took the ferry back to Obertraun and walked another mile back to the town. We decided to look for a place to have a drink. That's where Jim will pick up the story in another blog post, since he'll do a good job with it :-)

Walk back to Obertraun - view of Hallstadt across the lake.
Total distance - 24 km. In miles, that's 14.9 miles. I think we can call that 15 :-)


And a bit of a non-sequitor-the next day, we wandered around Obertraun a bit, and got this neat picture of the traditional wooden buildings with traditional wooden boats on the lake... pretty.

Hiking in Austria part 3

So the hike? it was to this restaurant. Which was open, according to the guide book we used, but unfortunately closed according to the rest of the world. This was sort of sad, because it was far, and it's high - 800 m above the lake - and the last 300 m are stairs. Which is a lot of stairs. And we were really excited about that beer with a view. But it's built on a fort which was constructed in 1248. And the views were TOTALLY worth it.



Obligatory head shot...
Because this area is between mountains, it is light from about 8 am to 4 pm, but only has direct sunlight from 10 to 2. The rest of the time is a looooong dawn and twilight. That's where we started, in the distance.


And Hallstadt is underneath us.

Hiking in the mountains, part 2!

More views from the trail!

We rounded the tip of the lake, and started climbing. This is the view facing Obertraun, at the bottom of the lake...



Oh, beautiful mountains!
We passed a lot of homes on the first half of the trail. One of them had cows.
Those are clouds.

The mountains! Part 1.

Jim and I went to the mountains in Austria last weekend! We stayed in Obertraun near Hallstadt on a lake. It's the offest- off season imaginable (between summer and ski season) so it was very very quiet, but absolutely beautiful.

Some pics, of course...

We stayed at this place, right on the water - we were the only guests on Friday night, but there was another family on Saturday night... We had a room facing the lake and the mountains. It was GORGEOUS.


The view from our room on Saturday morning...


We decided to hike around the lake to Hallstadt, a beautiful town across the lake. There are two ways around the lake - clockwise and counter clockwise. Clockwise, it's 18 km. Counterclockwise, it's 5 km. Of course, we took the longer hike.



The trail began on the side of the water in the woods. The leaves were still on the trees (I think they're like oaks, they just don't fall off) - and beautiful red. And for some reason, there's a lamppost in the middle of the woods.The trail....



The trail a little further down...

Thanksgiving in Vienna!

I'm living in Vienna with my labmate Arunima from PSU also - she's here working on a different project. We're sharing an apartment that belongs to one of the postdocs in the lab who's out of town. Jim, Arunima and I decided to introduce our lab here in Vienna to the wonders of Thanksgiving last week! Here are some pics...


Oh food - fried chicken, stuffing, carrots and parsnips, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin and apple pies... and our guests brought salads and bread and cheese...

Arunima & Mario eating dinner

Alix & Arunima



More feasting... Sigrid, Jim and Renate

Laura and Sigrid...

I think Thanksgiving now has more fans :-)

The aquarium!

One of the people in the lab I'm visiting works parttime at Vienna Aquarium. The aquarium is housed in a building that was built to launch missiles during the 2nd World War, and is one of the tallest buildings in the city. He took us up to the roof for a gorgeous view at sunset...
There's also a little tropical house at the aquarium - I love birds. This one hopped right up to us and tried to steal the dangly thing on Arunima's cell phone.

He also gave us a tour of the seahorse breeding aquariums! These are little tiny baby seahorses.
This is a remora on a shark - the remora cleans the shark. The weird thing is that the cleaning part of the fish - the part that's attached to the shark - is the TOP of the fish's head. That's his belly on top - he's got his back pressed up to the shark's back. So strange...
Vienna at night...

Reisenrat in the Prater

In Vienna there is a very large ferris wheel that takes about 15 minutes to do one loop. Some pics...

The view from the top!
The inside- you ride inside little cabins.
And there's the wheel!

Austian adventure-a teaser

I'll write the full story later, but I just wanted to through this out as a teaser:

We went to the Alps where I encountered some local color in the form of people dressed in fur and devil masks, and bearing sticks...switches, really...which they knew how to use...

Aren't you intrigued now? :) Write more later...

Jim's in town!

There's an elevator in the Stephansdom Cathedral that brings you to the top of the north tower. The view of Vienna is amazing! And a little bit scary - the elevator stops and drops you off in basically a wire cage with stairs that you can take to nice solid stone beneath your feet...
We went to this wine cellar called the Twelfth Apostle (in English) - it was built some time in the 1100's. So beautiful. And Muskateller is an amazing wine.

This is in one of the shopping districts in Vienna - all the Christmas lights are lit now in the evenings, and it's really beautiful!
And again, the view from the top of the Stephansdom tower... We're really high up!
Sachertorte, apple strudel and melange... Vienna rocks.

More pics :-)

I don't remember the name of this church either, but I think it's St. Michael's

Random opulence...
I think this is Rathaus Cathedral also

Beautiful painted buildings...

More sightseeing pics

A plaza with a holocaust memorial.
Inside Stephansdom- no flash, so no good pics but you can get the idea.
Rathaus Cathedral in the background

Death to the fish!
And more random beauty

Pics from sightseeing Sunday

High over Vienna is Stephansdom. For an absolutely enormous cathedral, I had a hard time finding it - look at the roof though for some very cool tiling effects...


The Graben (which means ditch) - a major shopping area with stores like Versace. In the center, with the gold top, is the plague memorial statue.



They take the library seriously here in Vienna, and that's only a tiny part of the building.

Random beauty, everywhere...