Saturday 31 March 2012

Drifts of white crocuses



Across the meadows, as the snow drifts retreat, fresh drifts of white and pale purple crocuses are bursting out and basking in the sun's surprising warmth.

The farmers are working to repair fences which are staggering drunkenly beside the fields having been shoved aside by the snow plough as it struggled to keep the lanes clear. In the gardens, there are broken branches, battered bushes and burgeoning buds. The birds are busy with homemaking and courtship.

Embach is clearing up the damage left by the short but intense winter: just three months but with some extremely low temperatures and more snow than has been seen for a good 30 years. Now, the snow is slowly loosening its grip on the north facing slopes and the lower meadows are awash with melt water. Cattle frolic and jump about to loosen up as they venture outside their stalls for the first time in months.

Skis are being returned to the cellars and children are rediscovering their bikes as the school holiday begins. Washing can once again hang outside to dry and windows cleaned without the water freezing on the glass.

April is a month when few tourists are to be seen in the village, hotels and restaurants close while staff take a break, all is quiet except for the village band practising for its spring concert.

The view from here is turning from cool white to spring green.

Sunday 25 March 2012

Wake up to the six o'clock clappers


The church clock was particularly loud this morning. I think someone had moved the church tower right outside my bedroom window. During the night we moved to summer time so really it was 5am when the village alarm clock went off.

It’s not crowing cockerels that gets life here going in the morning, it is the six o’clock clappers. Every day of the week, Sunday included, mass or no mass we get the usual hourly chime and then a bigger bell kicks in with over 100 rousing, resounding bongs. You can almost here the groans across the village as bare feet swing out from under the covers on to cold floors, and people stagger to the bathroom.

By 7am Annie and Marian have opened the shop, commuters are scraping ice off car windscreens and schoolchildren are assembling in their traditional locations, waiting for the school bus (boys around the bus stop and girls by the bank).

I have here in the past said that the Austrians are a calendrical folk – life's activities are arranged according to the calendar. They are also dictated to by the clock – or more accurately by the church bell. Once upon a time, workers were called in to lunch from the fields by bells housed in intricately carved belfries on the roofs of the farmhouses – they are still a feature of many old buildings today. But now the big bell takes over and at midday it booms again. work is put on hold, ski slopes and roads become quiet, hardly a soul is to be seen in the village, the shop has shut and everyone is enjoying lunch and possibly a snooze to follow.

The end of the working day at 7pm is signalled again by 100 hefty chimes – time to put up the feet and relax…except on Friday when, after a long working week, the bells begin the weekend with a jubilant volley at 3pm and there is a festive air in the village.

The only exception to this noisy routine is in the few days before Easter when the bells “go to Rome”. Well, not literally, but this is what we are told. It is really that their joyous cacophony is inappropriate at such a sombre time in the church’s calendar. The village falls silent – fortunately there is no school so there is no bus to miss, the shop doesn’t open on Good Friday anyway and businesses and banks are closed. Lunch, though, may be a little late without the church to remind the cook.

How do we manage to get out of bed on these days? Instead of bells, someone stands outside the church swinging what can only be described as a very large rattle, of the sort that used to be heard at soccer matches. It's not as insistent and easier to ignore – it might just be possible to sleep through this noise, but who can sleep in this unaccustomed silence?

Wednesday 14 March 2012

The colorful politics of rural life


Embach with its twin, Lend have a quarterly magazine mainly about social activities the schools and council. Those of us who help produce it are proud of its quality and it is popular among residents. Being one of the production team for a number of years, I have often been surprised by the strength of political feeling which permeates deep into life here, so far from the nation's capital.

Embach and its bigger twin sister village, Lend, are united by a single council with its own mayor and deputy mayor with considerable control over finance and other activities.

However, these are unalike twins. Lend, down in the valley is an industrial village dominated by a large aluminium manufacturing plant. Embach, 500m higher, is a farming village with many small, traditionally-run dairy farms.

Lend, because of its location in a narrow valley, is considered rather gloomy because of its lack of sunlight, whereas Embach lies on a sunny plateau. The people of one village, participate little in the activities of the other.

Lend is red while Embach is black. Political parties are defined by colour – red leans naturally to the left and black to the conservative right. Move further right and you come to blue and orange. And so the two villages are not only unalike, but in many respects they appear unrelated.

The village magazine, the IGEL, the intials stand stand for Information from the Gemeinde (council) Embach and Lend, but the word also means hedgehog - is sponsored by the SPƖ – the left wing political party. Their logo appears on the title page and there is a single page advertisement inside. There are some politically involved members of the production team but there is no overriding political message.

However, it is always brought home to me during the production cycle, how deeply ingrained and immovable are the differences between the red and black communities, differences which permeate many other aspects of life in Austria.

Take, for example, the motor rescue services or the banks. Until recently I was unaware, than one bank was more red or black than another. But it explains why Embach has one bank and Lend another – and possibly why only one of them advertises in the IGEL.

On a more local level, the village ski club may lean in one direction and the eisstockschieƟen (it's like curling) club in another. That one group is “black” while another is “red” is not obvious until it is time to put the magazine together, when political leanings creep in While my training is to assess a story by its newsworthiness, here,an additional factor,the shades of political color may be taken into account.

If you are born and bred here, the colour of your politics are embedded in your DNA and unlikely to change. Though they remain invisible to the incomer, they play an important role and exert an influence even in the most rural community. The strength and depth of politics in the countryside is disproportionate to the blandness of the grand coalition in Vienna.

There's no right or wrong about this – it only clarifies the obvious, that DNA is inherited and however long you live as an incomer in another country, you'll never fully absorb the local genes.
The IGEL production team proofreading a recent issue

Sunday 4 March 2012

Champion old-timer skiers race in Embach



Wouldn't you just believe it! While the ski industry is busy developing skis that are faster, safer and easier to learn on, and clothing companies are turning the slopes into a couturier's catwalk, there is a body of enthusiasts resurecting the time when skiing was done in woolly clothes on simple wooden boards.


The Nostalgie ski racing in Embach over the weekend attracted a hundred racers, some from as far away as Berlin and Slovenia as well as from Embach and neighbouring villages. Not only did they come with ancient, long, wooden skis but they dressed the part as well.

Much in vogue were lederhosen or plus-fours and bushy beards for the men, and ankle-length, flowing, heavy skirts hiding thick woolly socks for the women. Hats were adorned with badges and often with the old-style aviator goggles – later to be pressed tight across the eyes as they rushed down the slopes.

Believe it or not, Embach was playing host not only to a bunch of ski-nostalgia enthusiasts but former nostaliga world and national champions.

The racing is divided into two broad categories – those on the most basic of skis with no metal edges to help with the cornering, and those slightly more recent models with „kanten“ and from there by age and gender.

Speeding round the gates, skirts and baggy trousers flapping in the wind, crouched to gain the maxium speed and occasionally coming a-cropper. the racing on these skis requires special skills and often a long wooden pole to help with the steering. Modern bindings which release the ski during a fall, don't qualify, so mistakes can be painful.


It wasn't just the skis which were the old-timers – not surprisingly some of the best skiers had grown up the hard way riding on these unwweildy boards and could show all the flash young freeskiers a thing or two.



The Embach Nostalgie Ski Team





Friday 2 March 2012

Head's up! Mozart is back

Mozart is back! After 10 weeks being invisible, buried in snow, the one meter high stone statue of a boy, nicknamed Mozart, which stands on our terrace, is gradually reappearing. First just the top of his head, but day by day more of him is coming into sight as the snow retreats.
Mozart yesterday (above) and 24 hours later (below)
Spring is in the air. Walking up from the village this week I could feel the warmth of the sun on my back. The snow beside the road was still at shoulder height, but the ever present sounds of dripping and fast appearing puddles is a sure sign that winter, which has blown and dumped snow on us since before Christmas, is now exhausted and apart from a few feeble attempts to bring more snow, it is making a hasty exit.

In the garden the taller bushes are reappearing, crouching like old crones under the weight of the snow, but waiting to spring back upright again. Gutters and drainpipes play a constant gurgling symphony, only stopping at night as temperatures drop. The track to our house has changed from deep snow, first to ice, then slush and now to mush – the Americans call it the mud season.

Along the roads, the mountains of white piled high by snow ploughs, are turning a dirty brown and road signs and fence posts are lying battered and bruised from the efforts to push the mass of snow aside and keep the roads clear.

Other treats are in store: going out without a coat, people strolling past the house in the sunshine, sitting in the sun on the terrace, and planning activities of coming months.

Meanwhile Embach is preparing for Nostalgie Schirennen – skiing on ancient wooden skis while dressed as they did in the good old days. Watch this space.