Sunday In Caranthia

A sunny day. At first.

Had a leisurely morning, part of it spent communing with one of the coolest cats in the world.

Herr Spring, whose purr if left unattended could trigger earthquakes

Early in the afternoon we headed out for Hochosterwitz Castle, about 30 minutes away by car.

Castles? You want castles? You can't swing a dead Austrian cat without hitting a castle, but this one is pretty impressive.

 Your goal: with no air power or modern weapons, get through the 14 (!) gates

on the very steep road leading up to this castle. Good fucking luck.

This castle evidently still belongs to descendants of whoever eventually connived to get it, way back when (behind every great fortune, there's an enormous crime of some kind or another) but part of it is open to the tourists and it's worth taking the walk (for the lazy or infirm, there's a mechanized thing that'll get you up there.)

There's a tremendous view of the surrounding Carinthian countryside from up there, but it's also noteworthy to consider how well defended the castle is. As you walk along through the (now open) gates, you get an idea of the problem: invaders would have to get through all the gates, each of which was well defended in and of itself---sometimes with a drawbridge, always walled with places for archers and/or guys who could throw stuff off, like big rocks or boiling liquids.

Imagine being the first group of guys at the first gate, down on the bottom. No way you'd survive long enough to get through the final gate to enjoy whatever raping and pillaging might be in store for you. In fact, no one ever took this castle or even really tried too hard. Evidently the expression "Fuck this shit!" was as common in Ye Olden Times as it is today.

If the defenders withdraw the bridge, then what?
While you're figuring that out, think about the next 13 gates.

This view from near the top doesn't even move the needle on the Suck Meter.

Up at the top, there's the obiligatory souviner shop, a restaurant, a museum, and an art gallery.

The art gallery is in a kind of dungeon-like setting. You walk down a flight of stairs. It's quiet and cool in there. The paintings hang on the rock walls with a bit of light to illuminate them. Dirt floors. Some of the paintings, by artist Rafael Ramirez Maro, were pretty good but I can't imagine the dude allowing his work to be shown in this setting. The lighting sucked.

The museum was interesting---lots of weapons and armor, including a suit of armor for some giant of a guy 7' 4" tall. They had the armor on a mannequin and you could see how huge the guy was even by today's standards, but especially when compared to the runts they had back then, when most of these guys were no taller than Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. Still, big or not, an arrow in the head would ruin your day.

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We drove back to town. B wanted to take a swim in the lake, now that the sun had finally come out. At the lake, B started talking to a woman who was coming out of the water (in German of course) and I just assumed she was asking about the water. I went about my business, taking pictures. Then I sat down to watch the sailboats. The woman came up to me and said hello and only then did I realize it was Margot, who had been out for a swim herself. It was kind of embarrassing not to recognize her, but if you've only known someone for a day, they look different in a swim suit and wet hair.

It started getting really cloudy so B only swam for fifteen minutes or so then we went back to the house. Shortly after this, the sky opened up---it was a real thunderstorm, sudden and violent. We shut all the windows and watched it rain like hell. 

And a few minutes after that, the sun came out---while it was still raining. Franz said: "They say that's a sign the devil is beating his wife."

Or maybe it's vice versa.

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After the rain stopped Franz, Margot, B, and I drove about a mile up a winding road to a hilltop restaurant, where we met Monika and Wolfgang for dinner. I got this shot from the parking lot, looking down on Reifnitz.

Though it doesn't show, this was actually a double rainbow.

Click to enlarge and you can see a bit of the lake at the extreme left over the tree tops.

There was a wedding reception going on in the other side of the restaurant. Some of the music was kind of traditional, and some of it was EuroPop from...whenever. Stuff I never heard before, because there seemed to be an unwritten rule in American radio since it began: If a song ain't in English, don't play it! I guess they were afraid no one would like the song if they couldn't understand the words, which seems kind of odd when you consider the fact that the lyrics to most pop songs are so insipid and banal that you kind of wish you couldn't understand them.

But it sounded like they were having a good time in there, after the wedding.

I snuck this photo of some of the wedding celebrants

A good dinner together, and then down the hill to home and a good night's sleep.