A Return to Austria

In the summer of 1966, I lived in Austria with the family Anibas, Herr and Frau Anibas and their daughter M who was only a year my senior.  The Anibas family had a gasthof (a country hotel) in the town of Grein an der Donau, just across the street from the river Danube.  During that summer M's penpal from Germany, MA also came to spend the summer.  It was this experience that made me, a 16 year old who had never lived outside of her home town, a traveller.  It was also a summer where  I made two very delightful friends.

While we each kept in touch for a few years, grad school and the years of family and career left me with little time, and likewise for MA, while at the same time M was off seeing the world herself.  Then about 5 years ago, I happened to go to Saarbrücken, Germany on business.  Saarbrücken was the near big city to where MA lived. I used the internet to look her up, and to my surprise found her and her husband.  I spent a weekend with MA and A and caught up on our lives.  This past fall, Chuck and I visited MA and A.  Meanwhile MA had searched out M, so we resolved to meet in Grein in spring of 2014.  Thus it was that on May 25 I took the TGV to Saarbrücken, met MA and A to drive to Grein, while Chuck stayed behind to work and play host to a friend who visited in Paris.  We arrived in Grein late in the day, met Maria and spent til Friday together catching up and seeing the sights.

Here's the group of us now!

Here are a few views of Grein and of the Danube near Grein. The town of Grein is small and very old, as it has existed for more than 5 centuries.  The town center includes (with the May pole in view) the old town hall, which also hold a community theatre, the oldest one in Austria dating from 1791.

Grein from downstream on my morning walk

View of Danube from my bedroom window

View of Danube from the gasthof

Old Town Hall

Town Center Grein

M hosted us at the gasthof, where we had lovely breakfasts with lots of discussion (in German except when I had to use English because I don't have vocabulary to much of economics and politics!).  We talked about our lives, our children, in the case of MA and me, our parents, and our lives as we all now near or are at retirement.

In addition those many discussions and meals together, we took in the sights near Grein.  We, of course, visited Greinburg Schloss, the oldest part of which was begun in the 1400s.  In more recent times, it was once a hunting lodge (a pretty huge hunting "lodge" by my lights).  The prince of Sachsen-Colburg, related to the current English monarchs and a prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, still makes part of the Schloss his private home.  The rest is open to visitors.

Schloss Greinburg

Central Courtyard

Underground room decorated with stones

Deer are still on the property!

With A being kind enough to take the wheel for all our travels, over the days of the week, we headed a number of sites in Lower and Upper Austria.  We visited the abbey at Melk, an astonishing, large and old (1000 years!) abbey down the river from Grein.  Melk is now supported by tourism, has a high school and continues to thrive as a religious center.

Entrance to the monastery

Melk has a lovely set of gardens, one of which is a formal garden.

Formal Gardens

What amazed me was the church of the monastery.  All the golden surfaces in the photos below are not gilt.  They are real gold.

Main sanctuary of the church

Church ceiling

In the town of Enns, also near Grein, we saw old facades on buildings which date to the 1600s.

Old Clocktower in town center

Facades in Enns

The Enns river from town

We also stopped for coffee and cake, in a konditorei (bakery with cakes), one of my favorite things to do.  I had Schwarzwald Torte!















In Schallaburg, we saw a very old castle of the pre-Gothic times.

In the 1600s, a potter added beautiful tiles to the main courtyard, which are shown below.

It was also the weekend that the Most (hard cider) festival was taking place.  Many people were in traditional Austrian costumes, leder hosen and traditional coats for the men and dirndls for the ladies.  A traditional band (of teenagers) played Austrian style dance music, and the young people danced.

The local band

The festival queens

Dancing in tradition dresses

Traditional dress for men

In Steyr, a town more than 1000 years old, on the Enns and Steyr Rivers, just before where they flow into the Danube, the center of town has lovely old buildings with Gothic facades.  Many of the facades had to be reconstructed after WW2 because Steyr held a Nazi war munitions factory.  Steyr also has an old castle, and nearby Alpine Ibex live nearby. 

Old city hall Steyr

Another lovely facade

Steyr Castle

Frescoes on the gate to the Castle

Alpine Ibex who live in Steyr

The small town of Dürnstein, which sits on the Danube, is picturesque, but mostly best known for the (now derelict) castle above the town where Richard the Lionhearted was imprisoned by his German enemies until he was ransomed.  The town is small, has lovely streets and pretty old gardens.

Castle above Dürnstein

Dürnsein

We crossed the Danube here although the river was quite high due to a lot of rain.  Flooding on the Danube has become worse in recent years.

Crossing the Danube

A street in Dürnstein

We also stopped briefly at the basilica of Maria Taferl, another church with a vast amount of gold decoration.

Because it was a special church holiday (the Ascension) when we entered the church, there was a visiting choir preparing for services there.  I took a video in which the singing can be heard, but it's too large for this blog!  It was quite magical to visit a church with singing voices floating down from the organ loft.

No visit to Austria would be complete without going to Vienna, so on the last part of our week together, we drove to Vienna to see the Schönbrun (summer) palace of the Hapsburg monarchs, built in 1695, as well as to see something of the city.  We toured the palace and its huge gardens, designed by a student of Andre Le Notre, who designed the gardens at Versailles.  Truth be said, Versailles is not nearly as large nor as impressive as the Schonbrun.

Me in Schönbrun Gardens

MA in the Gardens

Front view of Schönbrun Palace

The Gardens include this building, the Gloriette, built by Maria Therese, the most powerful of the Hapsburgian empresses.  It sits high on a hill beyond the Neptune gardens (a part of the gardens which a directly behind the palace) and was for parties.  We had coffee and cake there in the really lovely cafe that is housed there now.

The Gloriette

Neptune's fountain

Hofburg, Neubau

We also went into Vienna proper (the Schönbrun Palace is on the city outskirts).  The Hapsburg Winter Palace, the Hofburg, (within the inner city of Vienna) is even larger, but we only saw it from the outside. Below is the Neubau wing and the Burgtor (built in 1824) as part of HeldenPlatz.  This plaza is well known as the location of Hitler's declaration of the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria to Germany).

Burgtor

While I took no photos, we all had one last dinner together in a traditional Austrian restaurant.  By then my German had progressed pretty well, even to understanding the very pronounced Austrian accent of our waiter!

We three old friends are hoping to find another occasion to get together!