Austria 5/26: The Castle Hohenwerfen

Today, Dad drove us up to an old and beautiful fortress: the castle Hohenwerfen.  This fortress is strategically placed by a river, guarding the passage that runs through two long stretches of mountains. It’s the first castle I’ve ever been to. 

We arrived around 11:00am, right as a demonstration was starting. We all sat down in a grassy area inside the castle, and a woman in green entered the clearing with a falcon on her arm. We leaned in, amazed to be so close to the bird. 

After showing him off, the woman threw the bird into the air. It flew away, unrestrained, over the castle wall and into the mountains. She swung a feathered bundle around her head, slowly and easily, and the falcon eventually circled around and dove for it. Right before the bird’s talons closed around the target, the woman tugged it away, and the bird pulled up, just inches above our heads. 

We watched the scene play out several more times. The demonstration ended when the woman threw the bundle up gently, purposefully letting the bird catch it. She brought him back onto her arm and took him away.

A smaller falcon was brought out next: a female, who was much faster. After the smaller falcon, we saw two other falcons, a pair of golden eagles, a bald eagle, and a vulture. Before you recoil, it wasn’t a vulture from Tennessee with black feathers and a bare head. This vulture was something a nobleman might keep. It had a soft white head, a slender neck, and a thick grey collar of feathers. The vulture didn’t spend as much time in the air as the falcons and eagles. It bounced around the grass and pushed through the crowd, chasing treats the falconers threw.

This one's the vulture.

When the show had finished, we saw the inside of the castle. Castle staff provided black audio devices which explained, in English, the castle’s features and history. We held our audio devices against our ears and followed a German-speaking tour guide through the castle’s many rooms.

The first room, a small room, was a chapel. The walls were lined with graphic sculptures and with paintings of church leaders and saints. Here, we had our first introduction to the castle’s purpose: defending Catholic noblemen from an onslaught of protestant rebellions.

As we walked through the different rooms and listened to the recorded narration of the castle’s uses, I stopped thinking “awesome, I’m in a castle.” It was much more sobering than I had expected. I was walking through an old protestant prison, looking down holes created for arrows or boiling pitch, and lingering in the torture chamber to finish listening to each contraption’s use.

Rob in the stocks

The best part about the castle tour was the view we had from the windows. My family members kept bringing each other over to the windows we each considered most advantageous and forcing the other person to look out of them.

T. Rex, my littlest brother, pretended to fire every cannon he encountered.

I also took a picture of myself with this large bludgeoning object before we left. It is definitely one of my favorite selfies of the trip so far.

My selfie with Aunt Katherine, though, tops even that bludgeon.

Austria 5/25: The Ropes Course in the Alps

Rain was forecasted for the early evening, and the tops of the mountains were smothered in clouds. A bad day to take a gondola for a view, so Dad took us to a ropes course in Hinterglemm. 

After twenty minutes of driving, we reached a small clearing in the mountains. We looked, with curious excitement, at wooden beams and thick ropes hanging from tall pine trees. More than 8 kilometers of ziplines, ladders, and other classic ropes course elements were spread out across the wooded park, making it the largest ropes course in Europe. 

The admission fare was 33 euros per person, roughly $40 when you round up. My little brothers all tried it out, and so did my mom, my dad, both of my uncles, and one of my aunts. We were all skeptical of Dad’s enthusiastic plans to join us but decided to leave all judgements up to our ropes course trainer. Despite ataxia, Dad managed to get along really well. He took a long time when he had to cross ropes but did ziplines and ladders without much trouble. We asked him about it and he said it wasn’t so bad because he was already used to putting a lot of thought into his movement. 

 Our trainer was a senior staff member who was originally from Ireland. He said he’d worked there for 3 or 4 years and had built a bunch of the courses. 

 I went on the easiest ropes courses first, right behind T. Rex. He was slow at first, but I wouldn’t help him clip and unclip his harnesses. I made him work with the clips himself. By the end of the day, he had everything down so well, he could finish a ropes course faster than our mom. 

 Once, when I was climbing a ladder underneath him, he dropped one of his carabiners and whacked me in the head.

 “T. Rex, you just dropped your carabiner and whacked me in the head!” I said. He shrugged. 

 “That’s why you’re wearing a helmet.” 

 When we were up in the ropes course, we had a good view of the rest of the pine forest and could always see one or two creeks running below us. Every time we took a zipline, though, the trees opened up and we could see the rocky snow tipped mountains that surrounded us. Water from the melted snow made countless waterfalls of all different sizes. 

 My favorite part about the ropes courses were the challenging way they made me think. All the courses were physically taxing, but when I got to the harder courses, I realized I wasn’t strong enough to complete some of the elements by sheer physical ability. I had to stop and analyze until I found an approach I’d be able to take. 

 We all enjoyed the experience, and decided to go back next weekend.

Austria 5/24: Zell am See and the Schmitten

We are staying in a house we rented in Viehoffen, Austria. Our house is about sixty miles from Salzburg and sixty feet from the nearest road, in a mostly vertical direction. We spent the morning there, woozy from jet lag, with plans to visit Zell am See in the afternoon. Gondolas there could take us up nearby mountains, and the city itself was also very beautiful.

When Rob learned of our plans he was indignant. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “We came all this way to Austria and now we’re just going to walk around and look at things? We can do that in America!”

Nevertheless, after lunch, the fourteen of us gathered cameras and hats and climbed into the two 9-passenger vans parked on the gravel driveway.

When we reached the town, we took a gondola called the Schmitten, which brought us up to the tallest, snowiest peak and gave us a panoramic view of the Alps. 

 

The lift itself was really neat, but it was also terrifying. Firstly, it was steep, secondly, it swung a little in the wind, and thirdly, it was full of people. We all had to squeeze together until we were touching at least three other strangers, and we had to take someone else’s word that Rob and T. Rex still existed.

At the top of the mountain, there were a couple of little cafes and shops. It was warm enough for most of us to wear short sleeves, but there was still a lot of unmelted snow. In many places, the snow along the cleared-off mountain pathways was piled up higher than our heads. Everywhere we looked, there were sharp snow-peaked mountains extending into the distance. It was a particularly amazing view of the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen.

 

A view of Zell am See from the top of the mountain 

We rode the lift down at about 4:30 and walked around the town itself. We took a well-shaded path that beside the lake, looked around at the small shops and hotels, and got a schedule from the train station.

I gave my camera to Sam for a while because he begged for it quite earnestly. He took pictures of everyone in our walking group. Most pictures featured the most unflattering angle he could find, and I’ve since deleted them. Some of his pictures, however, are remarkably good. I’ve decided to pretend I took them myself.

We were all hungry when we got back to the house. We couldn’t think of an Austrian meal that was easy to make, so we cooked tacos instead. They were very good.