On July 8th, most of the Adriatic crew disbanded and returned home (Raine and Bill back to the States, Beccy back to her London home, German back to Spain, and Jamie on to the Spanish National Hanggliding championships in the Pyrénées). Gay and I, however, had originally planned to remain a few days in Croatia. Having flown all the way from Fremantle, Australia for this trip, it seemed pointless for her to return after just one week.
At the last minute, the challenges of Croatian train and bus travel as well as the difficulties encountered in trying to rent a car caused us to decide to leave Croatia altogether (we had, after all, already been there a week). We spent Gay's final five days in Europe touring neighboring Österreich.
In German, this name means Eastern Kingdom. In English, we've altered Österreich into Austria.
Again, pictures tell the story better than words.
After taking a train across Croatia and Slovenia to Graz, Austria (birthplace of California governor Ahh-nold), we spent one night there and found a rental car the next morning. We began our tour in ernest in familiar territory for me; Greifenburg (title picture above). This small hamlet of perhaps only 100 houses hosted the 2004 World Hanggliding Championships.
Gay and I spent the second night up on Emburger Alm above Greifenburg and, though no hanggliders were flying the next morning, I took Gay to the launch ramp to give her a view of what it looks like before one steps off into the air.
Below was the scene at the same place three years earlier, during a pilot's briefing just before the day's task begins. I'm seated in the foreground, holding a cup of coffee, sitting between eventual world champion Corinna on my right and the entire Dutch women's team on my left (one of whom will be greeting our fleet's arrival in Rotterdam in a few days).
A storm passed over southern Austria on July 9th. The next morning, a light snow was falling as Gay and I left our 1800 meter high bed & breakfast. She spent the entire day kidding me about just what I had hauled her into when she'd been so warm and comfortable basking half naked in the sun two days before.
As we drove on through the morning, the mountain tops, bald and gray the day before, were dusted in a fresh white covering from the previous night's storm.
On we moved up a valley towards Mallnitz, where we took a car-carrying train through a mountain...
...to emerge at Bad Gastein, renowned for it's natural hot baths.
There we explored rich forests on foot by trail...
...and viewed immense waterfalls by road.
We drove on a bit and spent that night in Bad Ischl before moving on to...
...a full day in Hallstatt, an achingly beautiful village on a lake amidst granite cliffs all around.
There we explored the city by water...
...and foot.
Driving to our next destination that evening, we were 20 minutes away from it when, at 9:30 p.m., an accident brought a five mile section of the autobahn (a section that included us) to a complete halt. We did not get off the autobahn until 4:30 a.m.
Content enough with sufficient food, water, and each other, it was more of an odd adventure than an ordeal. At least no daylight was wasted, we told ourselves. And we also took comfort in the idea that we'd saved the expense of a hotel.
Arriving exhausted in Millstatt at 5:00 a.m., where we had planned to spend two nights, we waited until a hotel allowed us to checked in at 7:00 a.m. After a few hours nap, we moved onto our final adventure: Landskron Castle near Klagenfurt.
Here, during three performances a day, professional animal handlers send various birds of prey on sweeping flights over the audience...
..., so close that people are warned not to try to touch the birds as they pass.
The grand finale is when a Golden Eagle, secretly released before the show had even started and biding it's time overhead and out of sight, was called down to the handler, turning from a speck few people could see into a massive six foot wingspan hurtling down to a spot only a few feet above one's head.
After dropping to the valley below to pick blackberries (visible in the foreground a few photos above) at a harvest-it-yourself farm, we spent a quiet evening on our room's terrace at Millstatt, a city perhaps not as overwhelmingly grand as Hallstatt but still one full of attraction in its peace and quiet.
On July 13th, we moved on; Gay back to Australia by way of one more day in London with her daughter and I onto one last visit to Spain, though to a region I've never been to before.
