Baby boom follows hard winter

View on the Embach cross country ski circuit - with mist blanketing the valley below

Out for an afternoon stroll, we came to what here amounts to a traffic jam in the middle of one of Embach’s lanes: eight adults standing talking together...four couples...and four prams.

That’s four babies, all born within a month or two of each other. And that isn’t all of the children born here this past autumn. There are at least two more that I know of.

This is a good sign for the village. Children are being born. Young couples are making their homes here and not heading for the city as is so often the case in rural communities. The future of our village Volksschule or primary school, looks more secure.

Another encouraging sign is that in the past ten years about a dozen, or possibly a few more, houses have been built in Embach. Young families, mainly from the village have established in their own homes. These are not houses built speculatively, but by and for each family.

That the baby-rush has anything to do with the extremely cold and snow rich winter at the beginning of the year is mere speculation. A local long-range forecaster is warning of another very cold winter (though at present it is like spring), so, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, for those not pushing a pram, Embach’s cross country ski trail (the Loipe) is currently in brilliant condition. The 8km circuit is beautifully groomed with two lanes for classic skiers and, alongside, a “fast track” for the speedy skaters. Winding across the meadows, it will take you to corners not normally accessible in summer with vistas to take your breath away – that is if the effort of skiing leaves you breath to spare.

This morning, while the early-morning sun shooed the mists away, a thick blanket of cloud covered the villages in the valley. Embach, on a sunny shelf high above the river valley so often enjoys clear skies and sunshine when below, gloom pervades.

Some lovely spots along the Embach Loipe today

Beware! Keks baking in progress

Beware of baking housewives! Advent is a dangerous time of year in Embach as in almost every kitchen the annual biscuit bake is on. Old and trusted recipes are brought out, new and untested ones considered, packets of sugar stand ready and waiting and the box of little, shaped dough cutters is dusted off. It's all very stressful.

It’s not only hazardous to get in the way of the baking process, it could be dangerous if you inadvertently copied someone’s favourite recipe, and certainly risky to visit any household around afternoon coffee time as you will be presented with a plate piled high with keks and pressed into trying them.

Why might this be a hazard? Well, these little biscuits are not only produced in great volume, but also in unimaginable variety. A measure of prowess is the number of different keks you have made…and the numbers can run into the twenties.

Presented with over 20 different biscuits, you then “must try this new one” and “can’t resist” that gingerbread one, and those little chocolate balls are “irresistible” and before you know it you’ve tried every one and downed calories equivalent to a three-course meal.

Everyone, makes vanilla kipferl, a sort of horseshoe- shaped vanilla dough dusted with icing sugar. And then there are stars, circles, hearts balls logs, cones, rectangles and squares. Some are doubled one upon the other and filled, others are iced. Then there are those coated in coconut flakes, icing sugar, bits of dried fruit or dipped in chocolate.

Part of this wonderful tradition is, if like us, for whatever reason, you have been unable to undertake the great bake in, kind people present you with a plate of their biscuits for you to enjoy at home. So there is a lot of swapping of keks around the community, increasing the variety you may find in any one household. By the end of January everyone will have had enough, be full to bursting and thinking of fasting during Lent.

So, step cautiously into this area at this time of year. The terrifying Krampus may have gone but upsetting a biscuit baker, or over-indulgence in keks sampling could have serious consequences.

 

Antipodean Busch, rooted in Embach

If you really want to get away from Embach, the furthest you can possibly go while staying on planet Earth, is New Zealand. In fact, Stewart Island, just off the main South Island is our true antipode.

However, near the southern tip of the North Island one can find a small enclave where memories of this Austrian alpine village are cherished. Busch Hansei, a nickname given because he was a gardener, left Austria in 1956 to find work and adventure. He settled in New Zealand and apart from a brief period back in the old country, has lived there ever since.

Now 90, Hans is hale and hearty and still caring for his garden as well as himself. His living room is hung with pictures and mementos of Embach, the Maria Eland chapel and a school skiing outing in 1936. He was an enthusiastic skier and Hans has fond memories of outings and people he skied with.

When we visited him early one morning, he soon brewed up a strong coffee fortified with a dose of schnaps. No longer able to make the journey back to Embach, a surprise visit was „like Christmas...no, better than Christmas“ even though he had not known us before. It was enough that we came from “his” village.

Now we are back in snowy Embach, away from the warm summer antipodean sun, and are able to bring news to Hans' former friends and neighbours of his yearning for Embach and his pleasure when he receives phone calls or news by post. Busch Hansei is something of a legend in the village.

Despite the many years he has been away and the great distance between Embach and New Zealand, gardener Hans has not forgotten where his roots lie: firmly planted in Embach's soil.

Still a keen gardener at 90, Busch Hansei and visitor

Whipping: it's a cracking tradition

Embach was the place to have a cracking good time this weekend and not just because it played host to the annual whipping championships. The Embachers really know how to party.

Was that really “whipping championships”?

Yes, 270 heats were judged to find the best whipping teams in the pairs, triples and foursomes, juniors and seniors. But there's no S&M here. Schnalzen is an old tradition thought to have its origin in beating away the cold winters and welcoming the spring, and is popular in many villages in this mountain area.

The short-handled whip or Goaßl is made of plaited rope, can be up to 4m long and is swung around the head to make a loud crack. Working in pairs or bigger groups each schnalzer times the cracks of his whip separately from his team mates to make a rhythm. Each heat lasts just a few seconds with competitors marching formally to their places, and away again at the end. Judging is on style, rhythm and presentation.

Schnalzen is popular among the young

Whipping up the party atmosphere started at 4pm on Friday night with a parade through the village , a ceremony to bless the Embach Schnalzer flag (as our club is only a year old), music and festivities in a marquee packed with 1000 villagers and guests, a number of bands and other schnalzer clubs.

The community pulled together to serve drinks and food to the mass of people. Drinks were delivered in seconds and empty glasses whipped away by young lads. Flocks of fried chickens and schnitzels which laid side by side would cover a soccer pitch, were brought in moments. The music continued throughout the night.

Nevertheless, the Saturday began at 9am with a parade through the village, a mass in a meadow and parade back to the start, ready to begin the competition in earnest.

All day the village reeled to the rhythmic cracking of whips. The competition over, the marquee reeled again to the village band playing popular traditional tunes and festivities continued to midnight when fireworks closed the party. One can only admire their staying power.

Marching to their positions

Competitive whipping is another example of local traditions being kept alive, not as a tourist attraction, but as a community activity, an opportunity for the Einheimisch (locals) to strut their stuff in lederhosen, dirndl dresses and club uniforms. Maintaining traditions here is not a matter of flogging a dead horse, just another reason for a party.

The judges had to assess 270 entries

The competition brought visitors from many villages in the area

Misplaced post goes to postcode twin

Only two letters, a and l, determine whether our post goes to the far side of the world or comes to Embach. Occasionally the post office makes a mistake and instead of coming to 5651 Austria, it goes to 5651 in South Australia. Fortunately, there is a nice man in 5651 Kyancutta, South Australia, who re-addresses our envelopes and returns them.

So where is Embach's “postcode twin” and how similar are they? Well, both are small agricultural communities, both pretty close to the centre of a continent. But beyond these and the postcode, we don't have much in common.

Mail returned from round the world trip to Kyancutta -
making it clear where Austria is

Kyancutta lies astride the Eyre Highway, which crosses thousands of kilometres of the desolate Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia. Farming is mainly of cereals and the village is dominated by a huge grain silo. A look at Google Earth shows a scattering of buildings spread out along the road with sparse vegetation growing in the rust red soil of southern Australia.

In stark contrast, the houses of Embach huddle together on a sunny shelf of land, meadows and woods rise steeply behind the church and a stream chuckles its way over a mill wheel and through the village. To the north, the land drops steeply into the Salzach river valley.

Kyancutta's glory days lie behind it. First settled in the early 1900s the township was proclaimed in 1917. Over the years, as the population grew, a hall (The Institute) was built for functions, a school was opened, a museum whose minerals attracted world interest was established, and a cottage hospital cared for local needs. Once there was an airport where flights between the east and west coasts would land and refuel and regular train services carried freight and passengers.

Now things are looking pretty different. Planes fly over without a glance below. Children are driven to another town for school and patients can no longer have minor ailments treated locally. There is a village store with petrol pumps for the long-distance traveller making his way along the highway – which connects Perth to the next state capital, Adelaide, thousands of kilometres away.

The Todd Highway runs south from Kyancuttta

Kyancutta's general store and post office

However, there are some things that haven't changed. That nice man who re-addresses the mail, Newton Luscombe, Ned to all in Kyancutta, is a multi-tasker who for years with his wife, Margaret, has maintained a three-hourly weather observational programme which is fed to the National Bureau of Meteorology. Ned is also curator of the museum, school bus driver, silo manager, sexton and probably scorer for the local cricket club when they can rustle up a team. His daughter has recently taken over his former role as postmaster and now runs the post office from the local store.

Kyancutta's main street and store

Although Embach is a tight, but flourishing community, with active clubs and village band, one or two new homes being built each year for growing young families, it has no museum, petrol pump or post office. It lies on an ancient north-south trading route along which produce was carried over the mountains. The church is centuries old and many houses have along history behind them. The snow we welcome every winter is never seen in the hot, dusty plains of the Australian south.

Despite our differences, we have a postcode in common and whenever a letter arrives with a Kyancutta postmark and Ned's “G'day” wishes on the back, I feel a pang of kinship, a sharing of something more than just four digits.

Embach's huddle of houses and the mountain rising behind the church

A shrug, or a click of the heels?

Wild, rugged and unspoilt - the Pyrenees

Probably not the obvious place to go for a holiday for someone living here, high in the Alps, is to another range of mountains. But a long-planned visit to the Pyrenees to ride a bike up some of the famous Tour de France passes, made comparisons between these two areas inevitable.

The differences are not just in the appearance of the mountains, but deeper seated: the characteristic difference between the Austrian attitude to the demands of the tourism business: a click of the heels, and the french: a shrug.

The french Pyrenees are not as heavily populated as the Pinzgau valley in which Embach is situated. They are wild, open, empty: in a word: unspoilt. And this is their attraction.

Here, the Alps are busier, a major tourist destination, big business, and the country's wealth is partly built upon it. Ever year we see more “fun” attractions being constructed: scaffolding-like summer toboggan runs, high-speed flying foxes, suspension bridges to nowhere, mountaintop viewing platforms, as if a mountain peak needed a such a thing. Near here, an enormous restaurant and brewery has been opened high on a mountain and an igloo hotel has been built on a glacier. Easy access trails are built to even the most “secret” corners and ever more elaborate ski lifts constructed. This “Disneyfying” of nature to woo additional visitors disfigures our mountains and damages their fragile environment.

It is as if the landscape itself was not enough. Yet this is a country where 81% of the population place great importance on the beauty of the countryside. The natural, unadorned, rugged beauty of the Pyrenees is a reminder of how mountains should be seen and enjoyed.

Austria is bending over backwards not only to attract tourists, but to give them the mountain experience without hazards. This can be to the detriment of the beautiful countryside itself. For example, to make nervous drivers feel secure, unsightly steel barriers are to be found along the edge of many mountain roads. In recent years they have been augmented with ugly additional upper and lower railings to prevent motorcyclists sliding under or flying over the top.

The french appear to take a different view. Often only a low stone wall or a stout wood railing comes between the foolhardy motorist and a flight into the abyss. Sometimes there is nothing. The lack of barrier encourages more cautious driving and does not disfigure the scenery.

No barriers to spoil the view - or to prevent a flight into the abyss in the Pyrenees

Ugly steel barriers line many roads in Austria

There are still plenty of untouched mountains here for those that are prepared to hike away from the experience-seeking day-trippers, and where the view from the peaks can be enjoyed without a viewing platform. But a visit to the Pyrenees rings a warning bell: beware of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

That having been said, coming back to Austria, the “whatever-the-tourist-wants” attitude makes life in many ways more comfortable than in France – but that is the pleasure of travel; experiencing the differences, enjoying them for what they are and appreciating the comforts of home.

Meeting Marga

This blog is read all around the world. In some cases friends and family read it but in many other countries, such as Russia, where I have no acquaintances, how it is found and why it is read, I know not. 

Marga

However, it pleases me greatly to think that all over the world people are reading about the unassuming Alpine farming village I now call home – a home which is so different from where I spent most of my life, London.

It was a special pleasure this past week to meet for the first time a regular reader of EmbachTimes. Marga has lead a colourful life. She was born in east Germany, grew up in England, has lived in Hong Kong and now lives in rural France. Marga was visiting relatives in Austria and had expressed a wish to meet this blogger.

Embach welcomes all visitors and if you are coming this way, make a detour up the mountain to find us in this little paradise on earth.

A dedicated follower of tradition

The dirndlkleid is in. Lederhosen are high fashion and at the same time, work-a-day clothing for some. You might think these are only worn to entertain tourists, but here on Embach's big day, the village has seen a brilliant array of traditional dress worn as “Sunday best” rather than fancy dress.

Tradition doesn't end with the clothing. If there is something to celebrate, there is a formula that has been honed through the ages, is followed faithfully and enjoyed immensely.

Put your head out of the window while I am writing this, and you will hear the oompah of big brass instruments thumping out folk music. Today we hosted he official launch of Bauernherbst, farmers' autumn, the annual promotional campaign to woo tourists to visit during the lovely autumn months.

Preparations have been going on at fever pitch for the past few days and the village street early this morning was lined with stands, a climbing wall had appeared, band instruments polished and uniforms cleaned, vats of gulasch were being heated and bauernkrapfen fried (these are farmer-size doughnuts often eaten with sauerkraut).

By mid-morning the tables and benches in rustic bars constructed along the street were filling up, fields were taken over as car parks, stands were busy and the band was playing the old traditional “heimat” numbers. A bevy of officials, VIPs from the regional administration managed to break with tradition to deliver speeches pretty much within the 30 minutes allotted. Then rather than cutting a ribbon, tradition says you hit the whole thing off with a mallet walloping a tap into a (full) beer keg.

A parade of eccentric floats, folk dancing, a bit of thigh-slapping schuhplattler, music and whip cracking demonstration by a local group of schnaltzers, followed by gulasch in the fire brigade garage, coffee and cake outside one resident's house, gröstl in the village centre, bread being baked along the street, stands selling locally-made produce and everywhere folk and patriotic music played by local groups and Embach's village band.

Dancing in the street - the village centre was packed

Everyone was in a good mood, everyone greeting friends and acquaintances, children had fun, families enjoyed themselves, teenage boys goggled at the girls in dirndls rather than their usual jeans, older folk strolled, soaking up the atmosphere and the beer.

Dirndls are in even for fashion-conscious teenagers

That traditions are very much alive is demonstrated in music, in dress, in food and drink and the way the village parties; not for reasons of publicity and to entertain visitors, but because it is the way small village communities have done things for a long time for themselves. Tourists who came across our big day by chance, struck lucky and will be telling the folks back home what fun they had.

Even horses were dressed for the occasion

Keep our charms under your hat

Embach, traditional charm on a sunny plateau

Embach is preparing to host the official launch of Bauernherbst – which means farmers' autumn. Bauernherbst is not an ancient tradition, but a marketing exercise throughout the province of Salzburg to prolong the summer tourist season. As such it is justifiable as September and October are often wonderful months with sunny days, clear skies and ideal temperatures for strolling in the mountains. It is just unfortunate that “autumn” has to start almost before the summer has got into top gear.

The honour of being the official opening village, is appropriate as Embach is primarily a farming village. The modest number of visitors on holiday does not overwhelm the local community and the main attraction in summer on this sunny plateau are wonderful marked routes for walking in the mountains.

Embach has finally won a long legal battle to prove that the thermal spring water which rises in the mountain behind the village, does not belong to the spa in the next valley. Now the question is how it should be used and who is going to finance the project. The general proposal is to use it to attract more visitors, rather than to directly benefit the inhabitants.

The balance between farming and tourism could change if a long-planned hotel with outdoor swimming lake with the naturally warm spring water is finally constructed. But we have waited years for this and it could take a few more years to come to fruition.

This problem of balance was evident on a recent journey through the Mosel valley in Germany. Here one or two villages have become “tourist attractions”. Arriving at such a village one first meets a huge and crowded car park, then a series of tour coaches disgorging snap-happy visitors, while on the river, huge cruise vessels bring more sightseers to join the throng squeezing into the main street. Shops providing everyday needs have disappeared in favour of those offering giant traditional beer mugs (steins), cuckoo clocks, postcards and souvenir tat.

A few kilometers along the valley and one reaches the next village, nestling against the steep vineyards, it is home to a few vintners and one or two modest hotels. It is quiet, and residents can go about their daily lives without having to battle their way through a mass of visitors filling in time until their tour departs to the next attraction.

Even with its spring water, proposed hotel and hosting the Bauernherbst launch, it is, thank goodness, hard to imagine Embach becoming a “must” on the package tour circuit. Farming in this part of the world is small-scale and hard work. These are family businesses with a long tradition of maintaining the local environment. Swamping them with tourists would destroy the village's most attractive asset...so if you have discovered Embach's charms, keep them under your hat.

Villages like this can be swamped by tourism, making life intolerable for inhabitants

Magic mushrooms- or three steps to heaven

There's something primitively satisfying about setting off into the woods to search for the evening meal carrying just a cloth bag. It's not so much hunting as gathering, seeking out Eierschwammel those shy chantrelle mushrooms – woodland gold.

Eierschwammerl get their name from their egg-yolk colour (Ei = egg and is pronounced like eye. I have a number of times been asked: “would you like a boiled Ei for tea?”)

Chantrelles grow in the higher and gloomier parts of the forest, often embedded in moss or needles, they are not easy to detect. The hunt involves scrambling in the steep, rarely visited areas, clambering over logs and around trees with myriad spiky branches at eye level and below.

Results are uncertain and can be disappointing. People in Embach all have their favourite spots for collecting which they will divulge to no-one. After fruitless wandering suddenly there is a flash of gold. Where there is one, there are usually more. There is work to be done to gently pull out the delicate stalk clean off some of the needles and pop them in the bag.

Today, after an hour or so there is nearly 1 Kg, enough in the bag for the evening meal for two. Sometimes there might be little more than a handful. Back home it is time for the least exciting part, cleaning off the needles, tiny creatures and other detritus from the woodland floor.

Ready for the boring bit - cleaning

Clean and ready for cooking

Then the preparation of the Eierschwammerlgulasch – sautéed with onions in a creamy sauce and served with big bready dumplings and a glass of Stiegl beer, a heavenly combination.

So, the three steps to heaven: first the gathering, then the eating and finally the vivid Technicolor dreams in HD the Eierschwammerl always produce – magic!

Preparation - mouth watering