Wednesday 18 January 2023

Check In at the Harfenwirt

Saturday, 9 August 2003. We fly with Mum and Dad from Manchester to Salzburg, for a holiday at the Hotel Harfenwirt in Niederau in the Austrian Tirol.

This was a typical modern Austrian hotel with balconies hung with flower baskets of matching colours.

Dad had earlier this year a huge operation for cancer of the oesophagus and was a bit frail. Here he is wondering whether to have a sneaky go on the harp... Our host, hotelier Herbert Thaler, played the harp - although we never heard him play as he played one night at his other hotel down the road, "down" meaning a fairly steep hill, which was too much for Dad to walk back up after a full day's outing.

The Dining Room as seen from our table looking towards the breakfast bar where the large party of French guests would gather each mealtime to greet and kiss each other, mill about and generally get in everyone else's way...

There wasn't a great deal of time for sketching during this holiday, but one night I walked up the road from the hotel and found this log-built barn. It was the home of - of all things - a llama! A young couple walked by and started to chat to me, but my German is just a touch rudimentary I'm afraid and whilst I understood they were being complimentary and saying that the sketch was true to life, pretty soon I had to admit I couldn't understand them. They didn't speak English either so after attempts at sign language, semaphore and mime, we grinned, the young lady rubbed my arm in a somewhat sympathetic way and we parted company.

Return to Austrian Tyrol 2003 Index

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