Saturday, July 14, 2007--Vienna to St. Veit--Day 6

Today, after another hearty breakfast, we headed for St. Veit, Austria. On the way, we made two stops—first a rest/snack stop at the tiny village of Kindberg in the province of Styria. I bought some green grapes as big as apricots at a farmer’s market, as I was craving some healthy fruit. Our next stop was a very blah little town called Kraubath. It was so inconsequential that I only took one picture of a stream. We did have a delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, though, washed down with a cold, dark beer.

A little personal aside……if it sounds as though we drank a lot of alcohol on this trip, it’s true. We did. We had wine or beer with nearly every lunch and dinner. The alcohol content of European wine and beer seemed less than in the States, especially the beer. And usually wine and beer was cheaper than bottled water or soft drinks. This was my last hoorah as far as drinking is concerned, as I had already vowed to give up all alcohol when we returned to the States. It was a personal decision that I’m very comfortable with, and I have no regrets. Consequently, I probably drank 75% more alcohol on this trip than I normally would, and now it’s out of my system. I must say, though, that we had some very delicious wines and dark (dunkel) beers in every country.

We reached St. Veit around 2:00 p.m., and it must have been at least 90 degrees. This was our first hot day, and our hotel, The Fuchspalast Hotel, mainly caters to winter sports tourists, so we have heaters in our rooms, but no air conditioning. I’m melting!! Fortunately, the rooms each have a large window that opens wide, so I’m hoping the night air will be cool. And there’s a moat-like stream below our window (we’re on the 3rd floor), with little fountains every few yards, so it will be like sleeping with our own personal sound machine. The hotel itself (see picture) was designed by Ernst Fuchs, who must have been smoking something illegal and hallucinogenic when he came up with this design. To say the least, it’s colorful. But the rooms are pretty nice—just very warm.

We went out for a stroll to do some shopping and found that about 80% of the stores close right after noon on Saturdays, so there really isn’t anything to do here. Tony went for a run while Lisa, Bob, and I looked for a place to buy bottled water. Then Lisa and I came back for a much needed shower while Tony and Bob had a scotch at the bar. We have dinner at 6:30, then I guess we’ll have a very welcome early evening. Maybe we’ll go for a little walk up in the pretty hills before we turn in. I need to write some postcards and turn in early to try to catch up on some missed sleep. More tomorrow.

Note: There’s not much to do here. It’s pretty, but St. Veit could easily be skipped on this tour. Ditto Innsbruck. Lisa, Bob, Tony, and I agreed that the tour could be vastly improved by adding an extra day in St. Moritz and Lugano, and totally bypassing these two rather uninteresting Austrian towns.