Lost in transit

A small town

We went hiking on the weekend in the mountains of the Austrian province of Carinthia, my family and my wife's parents. My father-in-law is from there, from a small village up the mountain, which would not be of further interest to anyone except that there used to be a mine there, iron ore, that dates back to "Roman times" and maybe even the Celts.

This is way up in the hills. The roads are, once you get off the main drag, bad to the extent that they are often single-lane roads, some by design and some because the other lane has slid down into the valley. Guardrails are rare. I can only imagine what it's like to drive there in the winter.

My father-in-law will be seventy next year, and he tires us out, running from lodge to lodge, and finally to a lake near the top of one of the mountains. That is one advantage hiking in Austria has over the United States - the lodges. If you get hungry or need a beer or a toilet, the next lodge isn't too far away. Also, no bears.

Actually, someone reintroduced a couple bears to Austria several years ago, but one was hit by a car, I think, and a hunter shot the other one. Not sure what the current status of bears is.

My father-in-law hikes so hard that the soles -- literally -- peel off his hiking boots. The next day my wife and I go looking for a new pair of boots for him. The town we are staying in has one potential store. We find the owners sitting inside, in the dark. They seem surprised to see us. As if they had been expecting someone else, a tall person wearing a long robe, carrying a scythe. They turn on the lights, we look at some boots, they don't have his size and recommend a town twenty miles away where we eventually find a pair.

There is a farm way up the mountain that is also an inn, with a restaurant where we eat when we visit. My wife's grandmother is buried there, in a small cemetery beside the inn. The people who run the inn have one family name, and the inn, and farm, have another. My father-in-law explains that this is common there. Every time we go there, he explains this to me. "The farm has one name," he says, "and the family living there has another," he says. "I see," I say. Sometimes I ask him why, although I know in advance it is pointless. "That's just the way it is," he says. Sometimes he adds, "That's just the way it's always been." This is when I realize I'll never be a serious journalist, because this explanation is sufficient to me.

This time, we are the only guests at the restaurant.

From our hotel, where we are practically the only guests, we drive down to a restaurant in town, a Gasthaus, for dinner. The roads are definitely in worse condition than two years ago when I was last here. Except for an elderly couple who soon leave, we are the only guests at the Gasthaus. Soccer (Greece vs Portugal) is on television. After dinner the owner, a young man, talks to us. He leans against the bar and explains that the butcher has gone bankrupt and another restaurant and the bakery is closed down and its building owned by the bank now. He says it's pointless, that everyone who can is moving out. School enrollment is falling and schools are being closed and combined.

My wife does some family research while we are there. We visit a couple graves in the cemetery and write down dates. She tells me the iron mine was shut down once in the 1930s, for five years. It was basically a company town, so how did they live? That was, we calculate, when her grandmother's brother ran away to get married in another town. She never forgave him for taking the family cow with him.

The mine reopened during the war, but it's been shut down for decades now.

There used to be 120 kids in his school, my father-in-law tells me. The one he attended is closed now, kids go to one further down the mountain; we ask a local woman how many kids there are, she thinks about it and tells us maybe four.

A few years ago, five or ten, they had a big exhibition at the mine and built this large modern addition, with lots of steel and glass and the town perked up a bit while the exhibition was going on, but it was only temporary.

At the Gasthaus, the young owner tells us this is a typical evening for him. He had one bus of tourists earlier in the week. It's a matter of time, he tells us, before he closes down.

A mass is held for my wife's grandmother in church that Sunday. My daughters are the only children there. The average age of the worshippers is seventy.

Posted by Mig at June 14, 2004 09:10 AM