Central Europe: September 9 1998

Schöckel, Bad Loipersdorf, Riegersburg

During the day Eva's Mom and her dog Purzel went with us to Schöckel, which is a mountain near Weiz. We took a suspended cable car to the top of the mountain and hiked down. At the bottom we saw mountain bikers wearing full protective gear: helmets, vests, etc. They let the bikers take the cable cars up and then they ride down! It looked like fun, and seemed quite dangerous. Eva's Mother told me a biker got killed recently, but he was actually going down the paved road and got hit by a car.

Mighty Purzel

At the top of Schöckel we saw some very large cows who were certainly intimidated by Purzel (at least Purzel thought so). We also saw a launch ramp used by hang gliders; we thought it was too cloudy for hang gliding but there were people there waiting for a break in the clouds which surrounded us at that altitude. As we started hiking down one of the cows was ramming its head against someone's car which was parked in the field. Hope they had insurance.

On the way down through the woods and fields we met an old man dressed in traditional Austrian Lederhosen, and had hot drinks and sandwiches at a mountainside outdoor cafe. Also Purzel tried to initimidate a large German Shepherd dog but I think that backfired.

Bad Loipersdorf

We dropped off Purzel and Frau Jettmar in Weiz and went on to the mineral baths in Bad Loipersdorf ("bad" means "bath"). This is a spa located very near the Hungarian border with hot thermal springs. The picture here actually shows only a 1/5 of the available bath areas. There was quite a variety. Eva's favorite is the big whirlpool which is a donut shaped bath where they turn on water-jets causing the water (and you along with it) to swish counter-clockwise around the donut. That was fun but I preferred sitting in the hot water outdoor pool higher up and looking out on the countryside. Some other flavors of baths were the faux underground cave, the wave pool and the Hot/Cold body-shock twin baths.

Feeling very relaxed we left at closing time and decided to stop at the nearby village of Riegersburg. This village had another castle on top of a high hill and even though it was late (~10pm) the gates of the keep were open and we were able to hike up, up, up through the keep right to the drawbridge over the moat. It was very dark but there was enough moonlight to allow us wonderful nightime views of the surrounding hills and mountains. Completely deserted and quiet, it was easy to pretend it was the year 1200 and we were a couple of castle-dwellers out for a nighttime stroll. Eva got spooked by the shape of a big owl sitting on a sign. It was so dark that we could not tell if it was real or just a statue, ha ha. I'd love to go back in the day sometime so we could inspect the castle interior. In fact, maybe I could even stay there! There are lodging facilities for rent at the castle.

We had no problems sleeping that night after the spa and hiking the Riegersburg hill!

Riegersburg Castle We parked at the X, walked over to the S and then all the way back left to the top.