Chapter 72 - Winter in Klingenbach

It's mid-March here in Klingenbach, and as I sit here it's snowing again. The winter hasn't been as bad as I feared, but we've had frequent light snows. Actually, I like snow although Bob hates it; he only feels the cold and doesn't appreciate the beauty. Snow changes the village and surrounding fields, easing the severity of the starkness of winter. This softening of the sharp edges gives it a look that I - raised in Texas - have rarely seen. It looks like a holiday card or an old black-and-white movie on late-night TV. The spire of the village church rises above the white roofs, and you might almost imagine Father Joseph Mohr gazing out a garret window in 1816 while writing the poem, "Silent Night." He and the composer, a schoolteacher named Franz Gruber, both lived in Oberndorf, an Austrian village near Salzburg.

Before the winter actually began, we noticed some changes. These wooden snow breaks were installed along the roadsides outside villages around here. Their purpose is to prevent huge snowdrifts from totally blocking the roads. That was certainly a daunting thought for me! Visions of the village totally cut off by deep snow darted through my head.


Notice the pole alongside the road. Up and down the roads they attached these two-meter poles topped by reflectors on top of the short reflector poles. So I asked myself after seeing these snowbreaks and tall poles, how much snow did they expect, for heaven's sake? Blizzards and avalanches?


We had been told several times that this part of Austria didn't get much snow. So why the extreme preparations? A few years ago they had so much snow in these parts they had to call out the army to shovel off roofs to prevent collapses. So I guess it's better safe than sorry, but it kind of freaked us out! At any rate, we haven't had that much snow this winter. The most was about four or five inches in late January which is nothing compared to what some areas of the U.S. had this winter.

So here are some pictures of the snows we've had. These are out our front window.






This is snow, not rain. I was trying to do something arty with the camera.


These are out our back windows.








This is the village from one of the nearby hills. I like this view of snow-covered roofs.


So if you'd don't have the snow softening the harshness of winter, you get to look at everything looking so brown and dead.








If you look closely at this picture, you can see smoke wafting through the air of this pretty village. A lot of people here still heat their homes with wood stoves. You see huge piles of chopped firewood in yards and in areas alongside the roads outside the village. Smoke sometimes fills the air from all the wood stoves which certainly doesn't enhance the purity of the air. It has an acrid unpleasant odor, much different from the whiffs we'd occasionally get from neighborhood fireplaces during cold spells back home.


It certainly seems like such a contradiction; they're supposedly so concerned about the environment and have all these rules and regulations on so many things like homes, cars, businesses, trash, etc. Austria is ostensibly in the vanguard of the green movement in Europe. They pride themselves on their attention to the environment - which is why we have five different trash cans in our flat (plastic, paper, garbage, metal, glass), and it takes a year (literally) to build even a small house because of all the environmental restrictions. But they ignore the quality of the air they breathe. I could write reams about smoke-filled rooms here where even babies and small children inhale masses of secondhand smoke, but then that's another story.

So that's winter in the vineyard country of Austria. I'm ready for spring!

Chapter 71 - Fasching

After taking a break to get over a bad cold, then two weeks to enjoy the Winter Olympics, I thought I should probably do a blog.

They celebrated Fasching over here recently. Fasching means Carnival or "go crazy for four days before Ash Wednesday." It's celebrated in many Roman Catholic areas of Europe and is called Fasching in southern and eastern Germany, Switzerland and Austria. For a few weeks before Fasching sections in stores are set aside for costumes, like Halloween in America. But over here people get to dress up twice each year.

Klingenbach may be a small village, but they go all out every year for Fasching. They discontinued their village parade about 15 years ago, but the partying is still in full force. I thought Texans knew how to party, but these Austrians have partying down to an art form!

Here in Klingenbach it all begins with the Fasching Balls. There are three of them, one sponsored by the Fire Brigade and held at Ivanschitz Restaurant, a second sponsored by the Social Democratic or Red Party, also held at Ivanschitz, and the third, sponsored by the Christian Democrats or Black Party, held at Gregorits Restaurant. It would be like if the Democrats and Republicans did things like that in small towns in the U.S.

We were invited by Kreso to attend the Ball held at Gregorits on Saturday evening. Like all the new experiences we've had here, it was interesting.

At each ball young people are presented to the community, much like debutantes in America. The presentees are members of the youth clubs of each political party, and at the Fire Brigade Ball, they are a mix of the two youth clubs. They are normally in their late teens when they do this, and they can do it more than once if they choose. There is a very formal procedure that must be followed in which the boy must present a corsage to the girl's mother and ask permission of her father.

At the Black Party Ball there were eight girls and eight boys. Here they are waiting to be presented.


Being formally presented. Someone was talking for a long time on the microphone while this was going on, but we didn't understand any of it.


They promenade back and forth in opposite lines.


Then they dance an intricate Polonaise they had obviously carefully practiced. The boys looked embarrassed, but some of the girls were quite good.


The kids dance a formal waltz with each other, then the girls dance with their fathers and boys with their moms. The music was traditional Viennese waltz music.

After the kids finished their official dances, they raced into the bar - the drinking age in Austria is 16 for beer and wine (18 for the hard stuff). We shortly heard a rising crescendo of what was obviously a good time. The kids later danced some, and we saw one who had changed into her waitress uniform serving the adult guests. A small band played a variety of modern music, mostly fast music but enough slow tunes to get Bob out of his chair.

Here are the old folks from Texas at the Ball!


On Sunday afternoon at the community center at least half the town attended the community talent show. In the afternoon kids put on acts (primarily lip synching to largely American hit tunes), and in the evening adults performed. There was lots of food to be had, enough alcohol to float the place of course and a haze of smoke guaranteed to choke non-participants. We saw some of the afternoon performance but left before the adults took the stage.

Here are pics of some of the children's acts. Aren't they cute?












On Monday evening the biggest blow-out was held downstairs in Burschi's Bonanza Bar. Called the LuftBalloon (air balloon) Party, several hundred costumed were expected. The entrance to the Bonanza Bar is one floor down from Burschi's restaurant (we live above that) and laid out perpendicular to us in a renovated bowling alley so we don't hear anything from the parties. Before the party Thomas (DJ and Burschi's son) and 10 friends spent a few hours blowing up 3,000 balloons. I went down in the afternoon to see that!

Burschi showed me the balloons and told me that before the night was over, they'd all be popped.








We went down to the party and had a drink. It was fun watching the people in some really crazy costumes. This is Thomas and Tina. The pictures in this section are from ANS New Media (www.ans-newmedia.com).


Bob and me with a bubble-wrapped Ljuba


Here's a sampling of some of the costumes.











This party went on until dawn.

On Tuesday afternoon there was one more festivity for Fasching - a party for the village children, again held at Burschi's Bonanza Bar. A couple of hundred children gathered for a costume party. Here are a few snaps.








So on Ash Wednesday the village was really quiet as everyone recovered from Fasching, and we assume that it will continue to be fairly quiet during Lent. We hear, however, that at Easter the village goes crazy again!