Colour blind in a red and black world

Embach as it looks today

Early in the new year there will be an election for the local council which covers the industrial village in the valley, Lend, and the farming village of Embach 500m above. The result is a foregone conclusion. Of the 2500 residents, those in Lend will vote red (socialist) and here in Embach they will vote black (conservative). The reds will win more seats on account of the bigger population.

Politics are ingrained deep into life here almost like skin pigmentation. It pervades even the most benign group or organisation. Each village has its own pensioners club reflecting the “colour” of the residents. Other groups, such as those for sport and social activities also have a tendency towards one colour or another.

The recent visit by the red pensioners, albeit with a number of Embachers, to a huge steelworks in Linz, contrasted with Embach pensioners’ traditional Advent get-together with zither and accordion music, poetry readings and primary schoolchildren in a short nativity play, followed by coffee and cake, wine and plenty of gossip.

 

Traditional entertainment enjoyed by Embach's pensioners

Being an incomer, an outsider from London, only resident in Embach for 11 years – one doesn’t have this red or black streak in the DNA. For this “colour blind” outsider who has activities in both communities the indelible colour definition is still something of a surprise.

Embach once had its own council and mayor and, for some, the colour-clashing merger of Embach with Lend in the 1930s has rankled ever since. The council and mayor do their best to organise events and activities that bring the communities together. But if an event in Embach is reported in the media as happening in Lend, grumblings echo around the mountains.

However, there are some things on which both villages are agreed. A class of children at the local school (which has pupils both from Lend and Embach) were unanimous as to what they would be eating on December 24th: Wurstlsuppe. This is a thin soup with noodles and pale frankfurter-type sausages swimming about in it. Christmas Eve is, after all, a time of fasting.

Embachers will also indulge themselves with Backikoch, As we wrote last year, everyone has their own recipe and no-one seems keen to give it away. It is made of milk and flour whisked together over heat with a pinch of salt and a little butter. Some people also add honey. Apparently everyone eats it and loves it – but only on Bachltag (Christmas eve).

To all readers of this blog around the world, as the Embach people would say:

Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch in das Neue Jahr – happy Christmas and a good slither into the new year.

 

Embach pensioners enjoying each other's company

Monstrous tradition

Doing the rounds this week of schools and homes with children is a bearded old chap in long robes: St Nikolaus. He brings little gifts for good children, carried in a basket loaded on to the back of his small, but also bearded, assistant. Wearing a tall mitre, his face obscured by a white beard and carrying a crook to tend his flock, the saint’s true identity is only given away by a pair of clumping-great farming boots.

However, before his arrival, children are often fearful in case they have been given a bad report. For St Nik is also accompanied by the fearsome krampusses. These huge, hairy, roaring and cacophonic creatures were roaring around the village at the weekend, lunging into the crowd, dragging out wrongdoers and whacking them around the shins with bunches of twigs.

True to say, most of the punishment is meted out on teenage girls who “foolishly” place themselves near the front of the crowd, secretly hoping to be singled out though they don’t know who lies behind the mask. For the masks are huge and hideous with snarling mouths and fearsome teeth.  Long horns add to the ghastly appearance.

The masks are old and carved in wood, handed down through generations - Embach does not allow krampus groups wearing the modern “horror” masks. Shaggy bear-like skins cover the body and on his back, the krampus carries huge iron globes full of something that sends out a deafening clanking sound – possibly the teeth and bones of previous victims.

As St Nikolaus visits homes in the village during the following evenings, the Krampusses hover menacingly in the background, ready to deal with any children who their saintly master dictates need punishment. The threat is enough and the sound of them outside the home makes the blood run cold.

Looking back, I see that this is pretty much where this blog started out two years and nearly 70 blogs ago. The story above is much the same as it was then…but isn’t that what tradition is all about?

Dark arts on dark nights

The first look into the mysteries of the distilling process

Mysterious rights are being performed in sheds and cellars in the dark evenings as the autumn mists swirl around the village. Fires are lit under cauldrons, pungent fluids bubble, steam swirls and liquids drip and splatter. This is the season when 40 litres of mushed pears can be turned into one litre of pure alcohol – schnapps.

Schnapps brennen, or distilling, has all the hallmarks of alchemy, a dark art where the results remain a mystery until completion of the process. Our village postman is nervous.  He is no warlock, but busies himself with preparations in his distillery, lighting the wood fire under his still and giving the brown mash a final stir with a huge wooden spoon, looking for all the world as if he is about to cast a spell.

 

Loading the 40 litres of fermented pear mash 

After the harvest of fruits and berries, the fermented mash is prepared. An average pear tree produced the 40 litres of brown liquid that is now poured through the porthole into the still. The door, like that on a submarine, is closed and sealed with a spinning handle.

 

The fire is lit and the brew is sealed into the copper cauldron

Tension mounts as the mash warms and begins to shift uneasily in its copper cauldron. Through the portholes above, the first signs of steam are beginning to appear. Clear liquids drip and splutter. More wood goes into the fire, the temperature rises, the mash bubbles and froths. Alcohol turns into steam before water, so the steam rising into the condensers above is pure alcohol. Here it cools and before long the first drops plink into the bottom of a glass.

At first the liquid has a faint smell of glue, but as the process continues, the alcohol content rises and the fruity smell comes to the fore. The early results drop into numbered glasses, one, two, three … by the time we reach glass seven, we have the best quality schnapps. The results still have to be monitored to stop the collecting before the last final flow that again lacks the fruity nose of the best schnapps.

Shifting uneasily and beginning to foam, the mash is warming up

40 litres into one litre of pure undrinkable alcohol: watered down the pear tree has rendered two litres of quality schnapps. The postman relaxes, tastes, approves, labels his bottles and prepares for more distilling next day.

Pure alcohol steam condensing into purest schnapps

This is no moonshine, it is legal, controlled and limited. No doubt, the dark art has many forms and has been practised for centuries. It is likely that each family distilling in the village prides themselves on producing the best. The results will be ready to drink by the time of the next dark tradition at the end of this month….

Testing the first drop

Catching the flow of the real stuff

Old traditions are not dead

November 3: as dismal a day as you could imagine. Driving rain, low cloud, snow line creeping down the mountain towards us. Not a soul in sight. The last leaves are being scattered by the wind. Even the cattle have retreated to the stalls – not a cowbell can be heard.

We plod through the village churchyard where two days ago there was a buzz of activity and conversation. On All Souls Day, Austrians travel back to the village of their origin to visit the graves of relatives long, and more recently gone. Each family brings a Gesteck – an arrangement of heathers, dried flowers and plants to place on the graves.

It is not only a time to remember the dead, but also a time when acquaintances are renewed with friends and family not seen since last November 1^st, a time to catch up on family news…and to see how much older everyone looks. Is it true that old people like to see that others are wearing worse than they themselves are?

November 3: not a single grave in the cemetery which surrounds the church is without its Gesteck – some more elaborate, even gaudy compared with those which only comprise living heathers. On every grave there is at least one candle burning, now deep into it’s glowing red container.

The headstones tell of a tight and stable community: a handful of surnames appear time and time again. Faded, sepia pictures of the long departed in tiny oval frames on headstones show stolid, uncomplicated folk bearing family resemblances through the generations. Longevity is taken for granted in Embach though there are a few tiny graves of babies and children who died long ago and before their time, but are still remembered.

After church, to the music of the village band, families beat a retreat to their homes where the fat is chewed, the experiences of the past year compared, the future considered. This is a time for a tradition far older than the graves themselves, for longstanding families to reaffirm their roots here on this usually sunny plateau surrounded by meadows and mountains. Long may it last.

(On this day, it was so wet and dismal, that it was not possible to take any photographs to go with this blog)

Which twitch?

Many leaves were blown away by then föhn, but those that remain are a stunning copper and gold display

You might think that the Embachers all have some form of nervous tick. Walk through the village and hardly a car passes by without the driver giving a twitch of the hand or a finger raised in salute from the steering wheel.  The response should be a brief raising of the hand or a mere lifting of the chin. Knowing which to use, is a key part of local etiquette.

The walk from the centre of the village back home is always a source of fascination for someone having lived his life in a city. The lane is steep with fields on each side. Today they have just been spread with the manure from the stalls exuding such a rich, heavy aroma one can almost feel the warmth of the barn.

Past the old wooden farmhouse where four generations are at home. The tough old zirbe wood (stone pine) weathers all storms, needs no treatment, lasts for a lifetime and gives every building a character of its own – the knots and grain reflecting the house’s unique story

Cows are enjoying the warm autumn days, lounging about luxuriously, chewing, with eyes closed as if in some form of bovine nirvana. Some are noisily scratching themselves on the fence posts and nosily inspect the occasional passer-by. Newborn calves spring and stagger, nervously trotting away from the camera with a puzzled look.

In the distance, behind a stand of trees still bearing a few golden leaves after last week’s föhn wind, is the great colossus of the Hochkönig range. It is impossible to pass this spot without sensing its mood of the moment. Saucy pink in dawn light and a light toffee colour in the evening sun, the mountain is often grey during the day with flecks of snow on its flanks.

The lane continues up hill between meadows lined with post and rail fencing with views down to the village and up to the 2200m Baukogel, khaki brown but where the larches are beginning to turn to gold.

Past another farm: the farmer’s wife is digging manure into the vegetable patch in front of the house. Two sleek Noriker horses parade outside their stable, chickens scuttle across the road and the ducks squawk a welcome. Here three generations care for the animals and meadows, and are in many ways self-sufficient while, at the same time holding down jobs elsewhere.

Along the way one might meet the postman in his yellow van (chin up), an occasional car (raised finger) or, more likely, a tractor (twitch). At the top of the hill, there’s one more ancient, wood and stone house, great rocks on the roof to brace it against the weather.

A 15-minute walk home here is an every day pleasure whatever the weather, experiencing the season and it’s changing moods with every one of the senses.

The Hochkönig always present, always showing its mood