Beautiful Austria

June 20, 2010 – Part II
In the evening, we decided to drive to Castel Firmiano to the Reinhold Messner museum. He is the “first” person to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen. It was a very eclectic museum about mountaineering, Eastern religion, and our footprint as humans on the planet. We enjoyed it very much – but only had about one hour until they closed.

After visiting the museum, we stopped by the neighbor’s house that knew the Oss-Emer family. To make a wonderfully long story a bit shorter – Andy is the brother of Karl (Kari). Kari, Wetty and I hung out a lot together during the summer of 1977. Andy and his wife, Marlene, called Kari and he remembered me as “Hoots” and that I lived in Middleburg Hts., Ohio. I asked for Wetty’s contact information. He said that he had it at home and that if I called Andy in 1-2 hours he could give it to me.

Andy and Marlene asked us if we would like to go on a driving tour and to get some ice-cream. “Yes!” We drive to a small town where Marlene has a framing shop and everyone (but me due to lactose difficulties) had a delicious dessert of fresh strawberries, ice-cream, and real whipped cream – yummy.

We enjoyed talking through Marlene (Andy knew only German) to get to know each of them as well as catching up on 33 years of history. On our way back to Bozen we drove to Lago Caldaro. This is where Wetty and I would go swimming. Very beautiful!

Kari eventually called his brother with Wetty’s contact information. We said our thank yous (tanti grazie!) and returned to the camp ground. Actually, Andy and Marlene came to the camp ground with us because they had just read an article about the “Learning Loo” and wanted to see if for themselves.

After they left, I got on Skype and called and talked to Wetty. All is well. I will write her a long letter when we return to the USA. Mission accomplished! Yeah!


June 21, 2010
After breaking camp, we had a awesome drive to Lienz, Austria. The Alps are gorgeous. After taking a nap in the car on a side street, we learned how to navigate the Austrian public phone system and gave Laura a call. We sat in a mall and had a coffee and she met us there. It was wonderful seeing her.

She lead us to the Seewiese Campground (as Laura likes to call it – the most beautiful campground in the world). It is very nice – on a lake – and surrounded by the alps. We set up camp and then drove into town to have supper at her mother’s apartment. We had veiner snitzel, potato salad, lettuce salad, peaches with cranberry, wine, and finally Oma’s delicious apfel strudel. We had a nice evening with Sabrina (mother) and Julian (brother). It does the heart good to know that there are so many nice people in the world!


June 22, 2010
It has rained on most of the days of our vacation. Not today! Today it snowed! We met Laura in town and then drove to a near by town to make connections with her mother’s boyfriend, Gerry. He then drove us to the base of the tallest dolomitic mountain in Austria – Gross … I’ll need to look up the name.

He drove a very powerful Audi. . . very quickly. The roads were VERY twisty! I am glad that I am here to write this blog. I chose not to look out my side window – for I was on the side of the car which would hit first if we went over the edge! I was scared. After driving to 2214 meters we got out of the car and started to climb up at least another significant amount to a restaurant. We were still very far from the top of the mountain – but the view was fantastic. It was on the way up that it snowed very lightly. Laura and I made a snowman from some of the older snow.

This evening we had pizza at one of Laura’s favorite Italian pizza shops. After returning to the campground Phil and I walked around the lake by our camp ground.

Tomorrow we are renting bikes, taking a train to Italy and riding on a trail back to Austria. Fun. Fun!