A ride to a view (and pancakes)

While our visitors were here from Michigan, we rode the gondola up the hill for lunch (and to see the crofters fly--see the post below).  We had kaiserschmarren (scrambled crepes/pancakes), my new favorite regional treat, for lunch, and enjoyed some nice views. As is the case with many cafes and gasthausen, there was a little sandbox for kids.  This one had a personal sized gondola for transporting sand!  Though we didn't hike to the top, we did hike up to the seilbahn (gondola) station on one of our favorite village paths.  The toddler is getting pretty surefooted in Italy!

Up, up, and away

Five of those crazy crofters went paragliding (with guides, of course), and we rode the gondola up the mountain to watch.  They all made it back to ground safely, and report that they had the time of their lives.  For me, the five minute gondola ride and view from the Mut is exciting enough!

Thunk!

Brunnenburg museum (or Frau Tupfelmaus's haus)

Brunnenburg is not only an education center for American students and Pound scholars, it's also a regional cultural/agricultural museum.  One of the benefits of our residence here is that we get to wander the museum whenever it's open (which is five days a week, so we do a lot of wandering).  J has decided that the museum, which goes several levels underground, must be very similar to the house of his favorite fictional character, Mrs. Tittlemouse (whose house has "yards and yards of sandy passages" and several storerooms and cellars).  So he gets very excited to visit the museum, running up and down the stairs, and going in one building and coming out another via underground tunnels and rooms. 

Since getting a Beatrix Potter DVD from the library in German, J has decided that it's "Frau Tupfelmaus's" house, where we might be visited by friends such as "Herr Jakob" (Mr. Jackson the frog) or the "Flopsi Kanninchen" (flopsy bunnies) or "Peter Hase" (Peter Rabbit).  His best German word is "shokolade," especially when ordering Eis (gelato), but he's picking up some things from his Frau Tupfelmaus DVD.

If we can convince him that the Uffizi gallery in Florence is Jemima Puddleduck's house, he might enjoy his visit there next week more.

Here are some of our favorite rooms in the Brunnenburg/Frau Tupfelmaus museum:

This is in a wine making room--apparently vine workers wore these scarecrow outfits to keep away pests.  I'd like to see that.

The entrance hall to the main castle and Rittersaal (knight's hall), and also the entrance to our tower.

Today I want my cappuccino over there

St. Peter:  the white buildings on the hillside.

A week or two ago, we went for a walk to the village we see each morning out our apartment window.

We took the "Schlossweg".

So that's what it looks like up close!  The church dates from the 11th century.

We had cappuccino and apple strudel at a nice cafe with a lovely view of our home castle and the village above.  It was interesting to look back, thinking about ourselves looking at this cafe every morning when we open the shutters.  Hello ourselves!

It's fun to see the castle from different angles.  This angle tells me there's a ton more to explore down below!

If only it would fit in my backpack

Every town needs a Sunshine Cafe.

Splash!

Blenheim Palace, Oxford

Vienna--I feel like the guy at the bottom sometimes

Vienna--Neptune with horses:  a common theme

Among other things that bring him great joy, the kiddo really likes fountains.  Fortunately, there's no lack of them around here, from vast marble pools to the "trinkwasser" spigots around town to the dripping Etruscan (that's right, Etruscan) hands in our courtyard.  Here are some of our favorites so far.

Etruscan hand dripping into a pool with a Roman lion.

Salzburg

A party in Munich

 We spent the end of our spring break in Munich, enjoying "Fruhlingfest" (the spring "little Oktoberfest") with our friends from Kyoto (living in Munich this year).  The best part for little J was their two wonderful kids who are quickly becoming trilingual and were very generous with their toys and attention.  The kids enjoyed the rides at Fruhlingfest, and the adults enjoyed the Augustiner beer garden and its oompah band (with five thousand (literally) of our closest new friends).

After cappuccino and cake in an elegant cafe, we wandered the Englischer Garten, Munich's (bigger) version of Central Park.

We had a great time in Munich, thanks to our hosts.  We all were sad to leave, but J especially so--he kept saying he wanted to leave "later."  He was, however, pretty happy to see his castle rabbits and his friends back in Italy.

Nothing says "spring break" like a snowstorm and train strike

Cupcake the traveling dog leaving for spring break.

We're back from our work-ation, having spent a delightful weekend in Munich with friends from Kyoto (who are there on a grant for a year and a half).  More pictures when they're downloaded!

We felt lucky to be back yesterday evening.  A conductor on the DB-OEBB train from Munich to Bozen informed us that our train would end at Innsbruck, just shy of the Italian border, due to an Italian train strike yesterday.  So we took a bus through a snowstorm over the Brenner Pass (which is scary in good weather), and ended up in Bozen.  We were on our own then, since the strike meant there was no information available at the Bozen station to get back to Meran.  Fortunately, the buses were still running, so we were able to take a crowded and uncomfortable bus to the Meran station to meet our usual bus up the hill to the Dorf.  All that, and we were only 30 minutes late getting back.  Incredibly, the students were all also able to get back by late last night and were in class this morning.

We had other odd things happen during our trip on the usually efficient Austrian trains.  Most interestingly, we were delayed over an hour on our train from Linz to Vienna by a WWII bomb found next to the track (probably uncovered in some construction).  And on our train from Salzburg to Munich, we found out (by listening to the German announcement three or four times--no English on that train) that our train, scheduled to end in the Munich central station, inexplicably would end several stops earlier and that we had to get off and take the underground train into central Munich.  Unfortunately, our friend in Munich heard this and went to the station where our train ended while we were making our way to the central station where we had originally planned to meet.  Oh well, we caught up with each other eventually!

"Eki-ben" on the Railjet, Vienna to Salzburg (Japanese train station lunch)

What?  A snowy bus ride in Italy after beautiful weather in Germany?

Through all these unusual and inconvenient events, the toddler was the least stressed. He likes to travel and took all the delays and changes in stride. The adults in our family complained much more than he did!  I'm betting a Eurail pass is in our future some summer 15-20 years from now.  I'll buy it and he can use it.  Though it was a great trip, I'm happy to be "home" in our castle after a week of riding the rails.  There's fresh snow on the Alps, and, after a cappuccino at the Sunshine Cafe this morning, I'm ready for the second half of our Italian adventure.

Between cafes in Vienna

Schoenbrunn, the summer palace of the Habsburgs

The kid likes to draw things that are interesting to him.

Another maze!  This one was easy.

1400 rooms.  The Habsburgs were a large family.

Where is this guy's head?

Darkness and light in Austria

It's spring break at the castle.  The crofters are all off all over the place...in the Italian countryside with hammocks, hiking in Ireland, enjoying sunny weather in Spain...and we're reliving our younger traveling days with trains and a major city a day (well, or every other day).

We're in Austria, with plans this week for Linz, Vienna, Salzburg, and then to Munich for the weekend.  Those of us on sabbatical aren't actually on break (you can pity me if you like), and are taking the opportunity to do some research.  The reason we choose to head north instead of south for spring break was that I wanted to visit Schloss Hartheim, near Linz.  I'm working on a book on disability and ethics, and Schloss Hartheim is a place with the least ethical history imaginable.  It was the most notorious of six Nazi "euthanasia centers," serving as a killing facility for people with disabilities.  Thirty thousand people lost their lives in the gas chamber at Hartheim.  The castle is pictured above.  It wasn't as big as nearby places like Mauthausen because there were no prisoners to house--it only served as a killing site.

Schloss Hartheim is now a memorial and museum of disability.  The contemporary museum is very good and raises important ethical questions about bioethics, the history of science and social science, eugenics, and current views and policies regarding disability.  A blog post can't really do justice to the power (both terrible and positive) of a place like Hartheim, so I won't say any more than that it was an important place to visit and that I had a very good tour and meeting with one of its administrators.

 The city of Linz is an interesting place, though we only spent a little time there.  The other members of my household enjoyed playing with robots at Ars Electronica, and we had lunch and bought a Linzer torte at a very nice little bakery.  Linz is an interesting mix of old and new.

 Today we're in Vienna, a city I've always wanted to visit.  This is partly because of its influence on wider European culture, and partly because it is home to the Spanish Riding School and its famous white stallion dressage horses.  While the guys went to the Natural History Museum to see the Venus of Willendorf and an ostrich (J thinks ostriches come from Austria, so very fitting), I observed the morning training at the Spanish Riding School.  Being an amateur dressage rider, I was moved by the artistry of the horses and their riders.  While in performances you see all the "airs above the ground," the morning workout is similar in some ways to the Tuesday night lessons I take on my own gelding.  I was gratified to see that they warm up in much same way my friends and I do, that the horses take a few minutes to settle down (I saw a buck or two!), and that the riders seem just as pleased as I do when their horses perform well.  Of course, most of their exercises are way out of my league.

We had lunch in the cafe at the riding school (above).  The structure in the background is a covered mechanical walking arena for the horses.  They were walking around while we had our lunch.  Spinat-knodel and Lippizaners.  What more does one need?

No pictures allowed in the Spanish Riding School, but the horses looked pretty much like the ones on Maria Terese's big statue to herself, except that they were white and alive.  The riders still wear the same hats.

 

We also checked out the Stephansdom.  J likes stained glass, so he enjoyed this cathedral.  Many Viennese buildings are being sandblasted.  Stephansdom is important enough that its scaffolding had a picture of it on the outside so that the cathedral is only kinda-sorta covered up from view.

We spent the rest of our day at Schoenbrunn Palace and its gardens.  I'll post pics from that part of our day later.

Hey crofters:  if it's raining on you in southern Italy and Spain, just look at our sunshine in Vienna!  Austria is a fine place to spend spring break.

The big boss castle

On Easter, we walked up the hill to Schloss Tirol, the castle from which the entire Tirolean region gets its name. Though people have lived in these mountains for thousands of years (more on the Iceman later), the Romans built the first churches on this hill in the 400s (you can visit the dig in process just behind the castle).

Parts of the existing structure date back to the 1000s, and the wall is thought to be the oldest castle wall in Europe. The portals (artwork around the doors) are especially fine examples of Romanesque art.

A sidenote about religious art: there are lots and lots of statues of Jesus in this region--in churches, alongside roads, on dwellings, and on walking paths. When we went through the pictured portal at Schloss Tirol, J, as usual, pointed out "that statue with the beard." In Venice's Accademia gallery, he loudly noted other anatomical qualities of the statues.

We plan on numerous future visits to Schloss Tirol. On Easter, we also enjoyed lunch at the gasthaus just below the castle (with Brunnenburg wine and local vegetables), and the nice views from the castle hill. I should say, lest you think our weather is as good as it looks in the pictures, that this day was particularly windy--we had to hang onto the toddler near the edges. (Of course our weather is usually as good as it looks). Pictured is our little village of Dorf Tirol surrounded by grapevines and fruit trees.

Among my favorite views from the hill is of our castle. And speaking of things Roman, our upstairs host Mary has been filling us in on artifacts around Brunnenburg. She recently mentioned that a lion statue by a small fountain in our courtyard (the one J likes to PET) is Roman! And she suggested that we lift the tablecloth on a round table in the corner of our own apartment. We did, finding a glass case of Roman pottery shards.