Country 5: Austria

Innsbruck was the destination for the first holiday I truly remember in any detail. The conceit which Austria has been allowed to get away with, namely that it was an unwilling victim of the German Nazis was enough for the country to fit into Dad’s 'world view' that it was somewhere we could visit. It was thanks to his job with British Rail that we qualified to go on a holiday using free rail transport as our method of crossing Europe. It also meant we stayed in the Station Hotel at our destination.

My main focus on this trip was on collecting things... Specifically badges of all the places that we visited to pin on my new red felt Tirolean Hat. Very similar to the one above, I remember agonising for ages over the spray of feathers that would best match the hat when I bought it. I wore it everywhere. I was so proud! I can acknowledge now that I must have looked like a total knob. I remember though that I was by no means alone. Many people on the tour had them, and comparing badges that had been bought during the day was a big topic of conversation every evening. The fact that the average age of the other badge collectors on the tour was 60 is an aspect I leave it to you to dwell on.

Another theme of the holiday was my parents interest in hearing me speak German. I had been learning this language at school after all for several months and was expected to navigate our family through the perils of all things teutonic. When it became clear very quickly that all the locals spoke in perfect English, I remember my Mum deciding it would be hilarious if I asked the man at the reception desk of the Station Terminus Hotel for directions to the Station. “Wie komme ich am besten zum Bahnhof bitte?” certainly sounded authoritatively non-English enough to convince my Mum I had learned something. I also remember it earning me a rather ironic round of applause from the reception staff of the hotel when I trotted it out. Bless them for pretending to be delighted with my sad little display of English foreign language teaching.

I was so focussed on buying Alpine badges, that when I came across a Star Wars figurine of Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper outfit, I didn’t have enough spending money left to get it. My Mum consoled me that I wouldn’t have wanted to waste my money on things I could buy at home anyway... Of course she couldn’t understand the burning intensity with which I wanted this figure that I had never even heard of. Possessing it would be the only way to make up for the humiliation of loving Star Wars and not knowing such a figure was available! She negotiated me out of badgering her for the money though and I went home determined to track one down there. Of course I never saw that figurine ever again. For many years I even doubted its existence and thought I had imagined it, until I told this story to K and he was able to tell me the year of my holiday from the limited edition year of the release of that figure!

On that trip, so the family mythology has it, all three of us almost died in Kitzbuhel. A lorry shed it’s load of sharpened metal cog wheels all over a pavement we were walking down that was only wide enough for single file pedestrians. I remember hearing this lorry making weird noises as it came towards us, braking for the traffic lights and I remember seeing the canvas come off and stuff falling out of the back. I then remember being turned around, pushed and told to “RUN!” and running back down this pavement, trapped in between the wall and the out of control lorry. As I burst into the little square at the end of the pavement, hundreds of spiky metal cogs were scattering from behind me all over the place. I had a cut on my leg where one had hit me. I remember one being embedded in Mum’s handbag, which she noticed as she went for her purse to pay for the tea and apfel strudel we treated ourselves to so we could help calm ourselves down from the shock. I remember lots of people in the square being very kind to us.

As an adult I have returned to Austria only the once, and as the leader of a school skiing trip. How did it go? Well, I am now on first name terms with all the staff in the X-Ray department and am more familiar with the layout of the Krankenhaus Zell-Am-Zee than I was with the slopes. As the photo shows, I did get some time on the slopes though.