Wandering through a book

Austrian Adventures

As little one and I had joined my parents in Austria, for a bit more than a week this August, we lived through many different adventures. Today it is time to share another episode with you.

On my birthday, after unwrapping presents and saying good morning to the happy pigs, we (my mother, my daughter, and my sister who joined us the day before) got into the car to join my dad in Floiten. He was courageous and had cycled there to join us on a hike, only to cycle back afterwards.

Floitental is a little valley located in the Zillertal near Mayerhofen. Its scenery is marked by rough weather and impressive natural beauty. Everywhere there were my eyes fell on rocks, rough rocks and nicely rounded ones. Both types had in the past come down the mountains during winters riddled with ice and snow. Now in the summer, and with clouds embracing the mountain tops, there was no ice to be seen. There probably was some ice somewhere, after all a few days prior, I had been able to lay my eyes on a thin glacier belt up high in the distant mountains.

But how come these rocks were so different? If they both came from the same place? Well the nicely rounded rocks, were inside the bed of the valley’s creek, which most likely swells impressively in the spring. But the rocks that had not been polished, well they had not managed to join their brothers inside the creek and lay where they had fallen on the grassy ground.

Water was everywhere, not just in the clouds above. It was running here and there, and resting in puddles and little ponds. Where one would least expect it to be beautiful, it was turquoise blue.

We walked through fields of grazing cows, and said hello to two young veal that made little one squeal with joy. As we all forgot our wallets, we were strapped for cash, but managed to find the funds necessary to enjoy a nice little lunch, a bit of Kaiserschmarren and some Graukäse, a local cheese, which for me is only good in Tirol.

In the past, we would often pass by a place, and each time when I laid eyes on it, I thought that it was the scenery for The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. I always felt transported into the story when we drove by. This time we did not drive by, so my camera equipped-self could not snap a picture. But I didn’t actually care. Because here, in Floiten, I felt like I was walking through a Brothers Lionheart landscape all along, it was not just one area, no it was the whole of the valley fit Lindgren’s description. If you have read the book, then maybe you will agree with me.

When I look at these pictures, I am almost sure that they will fill my head and my notebooks with stories. At least that’s what I am hoping. The hike of my birthday felt as though I was wandering (wandern actually is the German word for hiking) through a book.