Austria 5/26: We Finally do what Monga Wants to Do.

I will begin this account by clarifying that Monga is not anyone’s actual name, just the affectionate title of our beloved grandmother. Her real name is Brenda. 

This morning, Monga and Dad went to an Austrian bakery. They bought most of the store and brought it back for our breakfast. The pastries were divine. We packed the fresh bread with some lunchmeat and cheese to take as a picnic. 

Monga wanted to go on a real Austrian hike so we all pulled on our hiking boots, stuffed our rain jackets into our backpacks, and drove up to a popular local hiking spot. 

The first part of the trail was a wooden boardwalk with sturdy railings that wound through a gorge. The boardwalk ended at a large dam, and the trail carried on as a gravel sidewalk beside a wide river. We walked until we came to a little bridge and the trail split, so we crossed the bridge and walked back to the gorge on the other side.

There were lots and lots of flowers along the trail. We recognized almost all of them; they were the same flowers we have all over East Tennessee: buttercups, daisies, clover, dandelions, Queen-Anne’s lace. There were also two types of purple flowers that I didn’t recognize. 

   
When we’d finished our hike, we returned to the vans to retrieve our picnic and we realized we’d left everything at home except for the chocolate. We ate the chocolate with great eagerness. 

We made sure to stop by the grocery stores before they closed at 7:30pm. The rest of the day was spent sitting around at the rental house and being lazy.

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.