Eva outside of the church
Dav on the dock at Wolfgangsee
Weißes Rössl
Main square of St Wolfgang
Sankt Wolfgang, Linz
Sleeping late again , we had the car packed and were on the road around noon heading for Linz. This drive took us west and into the beginnings of the Alps and then north. They have these tunnels that go on forever. If I remember correctly one of them was about nine miles long. Halfway through it I began to forget what life was like outside of the tunnel. But when we were not hurtling through the interior of mountains the views were magnificent! This is a lovely part of the world; the Austrians put a lot of priority on respecting and preserving the natural environment.
Along the way, Eva taught me some short (1 verse each) austrian folk songs which came from the local region, effectively doubling my paltry German vocabulary. The first song concerned the region we were passing through (Salzkammergut), the second was about a famous hotel in the village St Wolfgang (Weißes Rössl) and the third concerned another region of Austria (Salzburg).
We stopped in St Wolfgang for supper. It's a very picturesque town which borders a lake (Wolfgangsee) high in the Alps. We tried to rent a pedalboat or a rowboat but we were just a bit too late; there were only a few hours of daylight left. We had tea at the famous Weißes Rössl outdoor lakeside cafe and then had supper in a nice restaurant with live folk music. After the meal Eva tried to teach me to polka in the streets but we both were horrible and knocked knees rather badly. My knee was sore for a month afterwards. Polka is dangerous, kids. Stay away from it.
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Eva outside of the church |
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Dav on the dock at Wolfgangsee |
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Weißes Rössl |
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Main square of St Wolfgang |
So just after dark we pulled back onto the road and came into Linz within a couple of hours. We checked into the Hotel Ibis and got ready to go to a party associated with Ars Electronica.
The party was a bit strange. We got there before Negativland was onstage, and the current band was rather crappy. There were a few old time (atari 2600 age) home video game consoles set up and some sort of hovercraft thing you could ride on if you wanted to stand in line. Finally a band started which we thought was the opening band for Negativland but they were not so great. Mildly interesting but too repetitive and droning. There were several film projections accompanying the "live" music that were sort of interesting. Eva ran into an old friend from her Vienna days named Barbara. She was involved with the Ars Electronica festival and told us that the band was actually just a mixture of some local guys and a couple of guys from negativland and that they didn't get anytime to practice together before the show.
Afterwards we headed back to the main festival location where there was another party happening in a nearby club. There was a really cool band playing upstairs but it was so packed, hot and smoky we did not stay long, but ordered a grilled cheese sandwhich and ate it outside on the bank of the Danube.