Wednesday 16 August 2000. If you have read the previous article you will know we are on a coach holiday in Austria and that yesterday the coach was struggling to get up hills. Our drivers, John and Keith had stayed up late into the early hours waiting for a DAF mechanic to give the fuel feed lines a once over.
Not only that, but they took it for a long drive up and down hills to make sure it was behaving. So we all got onboard this morning excited to be going high up into the Alps for a look at the Grossglockner glacier.
With many houses in Austria being built of wood or at least framed in wood, there are timber yards galore here. Wood is a big industry.
We started to climb and waved to a group of men cutting the grass on an extremely steep slope. This was being done with scythes, the old way. One or two waved back. A few minutes later the coach started slowing and Keith had to start going down through the gears. It made no difference. The coach was not going to get up some of the steep hills in front of us.
This must have been a nightmare for the drivers but they handled it very well. First a suitable place had to be found to turn the coach around without having to do a 261-point u-turn on a narrow steep road with a long drop to one side! Then we retraced our route back down, waving again to the grass cutters, at least one of whom looked a bit bemused as he waved back. We got to the DAF agent, whose mechanic had seen the coach last night and we would have to wait for a replacement coach.
Keith warned us that the replacement coach would come with its own driver but that he would go with us whilst John waited with our coach, which would be being repaired during the day. The Austrian driver had been dropping the oil on another coach and was worried that he was not in uniform. Once he turned up though, the ladies on the coach started pumping oestrogen all over the place as a tall, blonde muscular young man turned up in shorts...
Fran took her rucksack from the overhead rack, ready to move to the new coach. A bread roll, taken from the breakfast table as per Keith's instructions of last night, bounced down the aisle of the coach to shrieks of laughter from everyone who hadn't heard Keith ask us to bring it. "They've nicked the bread for their dinner!" came a gleeful yell, "are you hungry?!?"
By lunchtime we were on our way again and had reached a town called Heiligenblut. The name of the village means "Holy blood" and it was to here that a phial of blood from Jesus's body on the cross was brought. Gallons of this along with several forests'-worth of splinters from the cross were peddled across the world during the first 1000 years after Christ's crucifixion. In terms of the time lapse between the later findings, it's the same as someone today offering to sell you the real string from Robin Hood's bow (honest Guv...)
We had our lunch in this cafe. Pommes frites - chips or fries depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on! (Oh... and tomato ketchup naturally!) I hadn't a clue how to pronounce this - which was the only thing on the menu I recognised. I said the French "pom freet" upon which a chap eyeing us from the next table suddenly burst out laughing and then choked... "Pommus frittess!" the waitress said sternly. The choking diner looked sheepish and turned back to his own dinner. Whilst we enjoy our dinner, back at the DAF garage John the driver has found himself locked in the garage after the staff went for lunch without telling him...
There was time to look in a couple of shops. I've never been a big beer drinker, but these steins looked very impressive!
Keith explains to the women that no... Chris the Austrian driver can't spend the rest of the week with us...
We leave Heiligenblut and start to climb into the Alps. The road, to say the least, is spectacular! In the lower regions the scenery is full of superb views overlooking villages, chalets and churches.
Chris's coach has a TV screen showing the first satellite navigation system that most of us have ever seen. It's fascinating watching it. the map was stationary and the marker depicting the coach moved up from bottom to the top of the screen. It was uncanny how many times the top of the screen coincided with approaching the top of a steep climb where all that could be seen ahead through the window was sky. Then the top was reached, a further bit of road came into view, and the display reset with the next segment of map and the coach marker at the bottom of the screen!
Once the coach reached the higher ground, hairpin bends and breathtaking drops were the order of the day. We'll have a closer look at those going down. Then eventually the coach turned into a turning and stopped. We have reached the glacier. Well, shall we say that we have reached as far up as the coach can go. Now there is a climb, starting with a hundred or so steps up from the car park! The road is so steep that even walking a little way along from where the coach turned off the road, we are now way above the car park level. Now what did we bring that bread roll for?
Keith at last told us the reason for the bread rolls... Cue for more hilarity in the coach as the other passengers realised we had not snaffled our breakfast rolls to eat in case we got cut off by snow... The Austrian marmot is a great deal bigger than the praire marmots or praire dogs that I had seen before (in zoos - I'm not that well travelled!) They were doing quite nicely out of the crowds at the glacier, obviously having quite a liking for a good "butty" as we would say in the north of England! So much so that there wasn't really much need for me to throw them any more!
Great Photos and blog … love the Steins👍
ReplyDelete