Life in the mountains

Today I am going to tell you a little bit about the place where I'm staying, the lodge, the people … in case you were already starting to wonder (I know I'm just so funny) …

The landlady here is quite an Austrian original, an old lady with white plaits laid neatly around her head. She is very nice, always concerned about everybody's well-being, though I must admit that I find it hard to understand her Austrian dialect. It sounds rather like a foreign language than any kind of German to me. Since I am the only one who has never been to Austria before, the others will kindly 'translate' for me … as you may imagine I am a little suspicious of their translations though – they are definitely having me on whenever they start to look real grave and serious!

During the snow-season this is a lodge for skiers and other winter sport enthusiasts while in summer this place is more or less deserted. Mainly it is a farmstead, very modest and simple. One could well call it the total opposite of 'fancy'. Everything is a little bit shabby and not very clean and yet it's really homey for some strange reason. Despite the hens walking in and out of the kitchen (dominated by a huge wood-fired stove that seems to be a relic from another century) and the smell of the stable clinging to everything in the house, despite the inevitable spiders and the myriads of flies that come with the cows, I actually feel pretty comfortable here, like having been here a hundred times before.

What really irritated me when I first arrived was the fact that there are only two toilets in the whole of the house and only one shower, occupied by about everybody. The family, the house guests, the daily visitors, hikers and hunters … and I'm afraid you can tell by the look of them as well. But then I have been using the so-called 'toilets' up on the mountain huts … they are what we call 'thunderboxes', more commonly known as 'backhouses' I think.
Well, whatever you call them, they are tiny wooden shacks with a heart-shaped hole in the door, looking kind of cute from a distance but once you enter them, they loose any charm whatsoever, consisting of nothing much but an incredible smell and a board with a hole over a cesspit. The luxury ones have toilet seats affixed to the wooden plank … not that it makes much of a difference smell-wise … what I mean to say is that – regarding the alternative – I do not find the sanitary circumstances in here quite so bad after all! Considering that all the water in the house comes freshly from a mountain spring, even the water used to flush the toilet, it almost starts to seem like profusion to me!

As you can see, life is quite basic here in the mountains. There is nothing that is not necessary and the few fancy things people own are extremely appreciated, not taken for granted the way they would be in the city. Like electricity. Like a flush toilet. Like hot water for a shower … something that is only ever enough for about two people a day, so you have to take turns in enjoying a hot shower after an exhausting hike. However sweaty and sore you feel, if it's not your turn you'll just have to settle for the ice cold spring water instead (or adhere to what they call 'an alpinist's aroma' up here …)

Yes, life is quite frugal. Some call it primitive but I think 'straightforward' is a better description. One thing depends on another. There's not much fuss made about life and it's circumstances. Life is more direct, more intuitive, people depend on nature and live in close communion with it. Animals are part of people's lifes here, they are not locked out, not separated from the people the way they are at home. Of course this also leads to a certain amount of dirt. You have animals walking in and out of the house all the time, no matter how often you chase them away. Hens, cats, cows, goats. And the insects they bring along. Flies, fleas, mites, I don't want to go into the details, my back starts to itch already … oh, and of course – as mentioned before – all this goes very well with the matching odour, escaping from the stable door, leading into the vestibule and the kitchen. Also these traditional houses are rather damp and dark with their low ceilings and tiny windows, so that there is a certain musty smell on everything.

It reminds me very much of my aunt's farm in the north of Germany where I loved to spend my holidays as a child … a peculiar smell that takes me back to the days of my childhood, playing in a kitchen that was also connected to a stable, with the same amount of flies everywhere around. It's the very same feeling, torn between a certain temporary disgust and a warm feeling of coziness … pure nostalgia …!