St. Wolfgang

There has been no internet access for a few days, so we are a little behind! We are on the road again, actually on the train again, on our way to Vienna from St. Wolfgang, the childhood home of Adrian’s dad Hubert. We spent a wonderful weekend there with Adi and Kiki and the extended family. But first the place itself. It has to be one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on earth. Nestled in a valley surrounded by the Alps, it sits right on the lake, Wolfgangesee. It is hard to describe the place and do it justice, we will post some pictures and you can see for yourself.
We were picked up in Salzburg by Adi and his first cousin Sonia for the 30 minute ride to St. Wolfgang. Kiki greeted us at the hotel and we walked back to the family compound, for a lack a better way to put it, for a wonderful traditional meal prepared for us by Kiki and Ursula, Sonia’s sister. The whole gang was there for us to meet, Hubert and Katherine (his girlfriend), Inge (Hubert’s sister, Adi’s aunt), her daughters (Sonia and Ursula) their husbands (Rudy and Andres) and their two sons (Andy and Moritz). Horst, Adi’s uncle, Inge’s husband, came later. It was a wonderful evening with much laughter, good food, wine and beer and getting to know one another. Fortunately, most of the Austrians speak good English because our German is not so good, except for Adi of course; he is fluent.
In the morning, Adi and Kiki took us for a walk up into the hills overlooking the town and the lake; again words cannot describe the beauty, at least not mine. On the way down, we encountered several lederhosen – clad men shooting off cannons across the top of the village. Next we see a parade of men, women and children in dirndls, and lederhosen, following a small band through town. Turns out it is part of a traditional wedding ceremony taking place in town. We have some new ideas for Kiki and Adi’s wedding. We later came across the bride and groom parading through town on the way to the reception.
The village is a resort town and has only 700+ people, a beautiful church, and wonderful buildings, all with flowers in every window box. Our hotel was wonderful and it seemed that most of the action (brass bands, etc) happened right outside our windows. Our balcony was a ring side seat to the action.
Just a note about the couple, Adrian wore a traditional Austrian shirt, coat and hat and was so handsome. Kristin borrowed a dirndl outfit from Ursula and braided her hair and she looked absolutely Austrian and so cute! The traditional clothing is worn a lot and I must say it looks great!
That evening we walked way up to the top of one of the hills surrounding town to a hut sitting against the side of the hill. It had a covered outdoor area and an inside complete with wood burning stove. This was the site for Hubert’s 70th birthday party. You start the festivities with dessert and coffee, then drinks, then dinner, then more dessert and schnapps. There was also a hired accordion player and one of Hubert’s friends plays and brought his, so they played together – it was wonderful! Many of Hubert’s friends were there, people he had grown up with and known all his life. A great deal of eating, drinking, singing, and tributes. It was such an unreal cultural experience, plus getting to know his friends was great. Somehow we managed to communicate, some had very good English, some not at all, but we all managed. Our one new phrase is “prost”, that’s the word when you toast each other before a drink, we did a lot of “prosting”. Bev, Ron, Ken and I ended our part of the evening before they did, they lasted until 1 am, and we walked back down the dark and curvy road to town, fortunately Kenny had a flashlight or we might still be wandering around in the Alps.
When we got back to town, we were greeted with a concert by the town marching band, right outside our hotel in the town square – all in all it was a weekend to remember.

Diane and the Crew