Fusch in the Alps

Friday

The weekend before last, I took a trip with two other Fulbrighters, Vikki and Amelia, to the rural town of Fusch in western Austria. We met bright and early Friday morning at 7:30 in the train station. We had reserved a passenger cabin on the train, which had six seats and storage space for luggage. We rode for four hours total, passing through the now infamous town of Amstetten, transferring twice, and otherwise reading or sleeping along the way.

Around noon, we arrived at the train station Bruck-Fusch, where we took the “Post Bus” to the hotel. (The post office runs everything in Austria. You could potentially have your bank account, telephone service, and cable all run through the post office. Yet Austrians claim to be tough on monopolies?!) The bus, which is the only bus of Fusch, runs twice per day, so we were extremely lucky that our train was on time and we made the transfer in time. We boarded the bus without tickets, but the bus driver didn’t even ask us for them. Since I know there can be a heavy fine for “schwarzfahren”--literally “riding black”, or riding without a ticket--I walked to the front of the bus to ask the driver how much tickets cost. Instead of telling me the price, he asked me “Seid Ihr drei nette Damen?” (Are you three nice women?) I cautiously answered “Yes.” He then said, “Don’t worry about it.” We got to ride for free.

Along the way to the hotel, we passed fields, farms, mountains, and a couple of cars here and there. The bus seemed to be the excitement of the day. When we finally arrived at the hotel, we checked in and went to our rooms. We had reserved the hotel rooms online—one double and one single for three people. When we checked into the hotel, we were surprised to find that the double room did not have two beds, like most doubles in Austria, but rather four—two singles and one set of bunks! We immediately canceled the single room and split the double. We thought the receptionist would give us a hard time about canceling a room, but she just told us “Kein Problem”. It must be the Alpine air that makes everyone so easygoing in Fusch; everything was “no problem”.

After working out the room situation, we went to a typical Austrian restaurant for lunch. After lunch, we put on our hiking shoes and wandered for the rest of the day. We met two other groups of hikers, but most of the area was strangely empty. Fusch is definitely a tourist town, but we seem to have come at the wrong (or right!) time of the year. We saw no more than 100 people during the entire weekend--not counting a parade of motorcycles that zipped through town Saturday morning.


Saturday

Saturday morning, we rented bikes and spent the day exploring the area. The scenery grew more and more idyllic with every mile. Most of the time, we were traveling alongside farmers’ fields. Even though we were riding at a reasonable pace, there were still countless “professional” bikers who passed us along the way. They were probably heading into the more mountainous terrain of the Alps, where we only dared to hike.

In the mid-afternoon, we returned to our hotel, tired and hungry. After a short rest, we started to look for food. The problem was, it was past lunchtime and not yet dinnertime, so the restaurants weren’t serving food and there were no places within walking distance to get food. However, we knew there was a Billa supermarket on the other side of town, which we had passed on the bus the previous day. I was interested in an adventure, so I offered to bike to Billa while Amelia and Vikki stayed in the hotel. The goal of the mission? Fresh fruit. We couldn’t figure out why we were all craving fruit until we thought about what we had eaten in the past day or so: everything breaded and fried and drenched in cream sauces. This is of course typical for Austrian cuisine, which has a valuable tradition in its own right, but the emphasis on extensively prepared food leaves one craving something simple.

When I walked into the supermarket, I felt like I was the only outsider among a group of locals. This was the smallest Billa I had ever been in and I’m pretty sure the cashier knew every customer ahead of me in line. Interestingly, she greeted each person with the expression “Grüß Dich” as opposed to the more formal “Grüß Gott” used in Vienna. The hotel receptionist and the restaurant hostess used the same expression, so the cashier wasn't just using the informal speech to greet people she knew. Translated literally, “Grüß Dich” means “Hi / Hey. How are you?”, whereas “Grüß Gott” means “Hello. God bless you.” (Even though Austria is a Catholic country, the religiousness of the “official” greeting may seem a bit exaggerated. However, one can also see similar influence in English greetings. The expression “good bye”, after all, originates from the expression “God be with you.”) When comparing the greetings, it is important to understand that Fusch is in the state of Upper Austria while Vienna is in the state of Lower Austria. The Upper Austrian dialect is generally more colloquial than even the Viennese dialect. It has a “lazy” feel to it, which fits well with the people’s (generally) more laid-back approach to life. (That would be an interesting research topic: how the various dialects of a language reflect, and are reflected in, the people’s way of life.)

When I returned from Billa with blueberries, peaches, and pears, we had a mini fruit-feast, relaxed by the stream right outside our hotel room, and simply enjoyed the rest of the day. At night, we watched the stars until we were too sleepy to keep our eyes open any longer. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more stars in my life. Without any city pollution or outside lights, I felt like I could see every star in the sky.

Sunday

We needed to leave the hotel by 8:30 Sunday morning to catch our train, but when we went to the front desk to check out and call a taxi, there was nobody there to help us. This was nothing unusual; there was rarely ever anyone at the front desk because the hotel is run by a family of four people and only one person, aside from the kitchen staff, ever seems to be on duty at any given time. On Sunday morning, it was the grandmother’s (Oma’s) turn to work and I had to disturb her from setting up the tables at the restaurant to come check us out and call a taxi. The check-out went smoothly and the taxi, which was actually a van, arrived within fifteen minutes.

Along the entire way to the train station, the taxi driver was answering his two cell phones, arranging pick-up times for the entire town. One person wanted to arrange a taxi a week in advance! I’m pretty sure this one man operates the town’s entire taxi service. He is the call center, the driver, the customer service department, and everything in between.

When we arrived at the station and boarded the train back to Vienna, we were surprised to find people already sitting in the seats we had reserved. Even though we showed them our reservation ticket, they refused to move, so we found other seats in a cabin with one other person. This cabin had the typical six seats, three on each side, and a nice big window to look at the scenery passing by. The scenery would have been more enjoyable if the one other woman in the cabin wasn’t so annoying. Probably unbeknownst to her, she was kicking a plastic shopping bag to the beat of the music on her iPod. After ten minutes of non-stop plastic bag sounds, I couldn’t stand it any more and got up to take a walk through the train. When I came back, she was still there and still kicking the bag. Thankfully, she left within the next half hour before we all lost our sanity. (It’s the little things that can be so annoying sometimes!) She said bye to us all before leaving, completely oblivious to the situation. Once she left, we had the cabin to ourselves, so for the rest of the three-hour journey, we pulled out the seats to make one big “bed” and had an impromptu slumber party, complete with stretching out, sharing snacks, and telling stories. (Yes, we’re all twenty-something-year-olds, I promise ;-) The train conductor who came by for our tickets a few minutes later was highly amused.

About a half hour outside of Vienna, an older couple asked if they could sit with us, so we pushed the seats back up to their normal positions to make some room. The two of them were talking in a language that I couldn’t quite identify, but definitely recognized. Vikki, Amelia, and I were fairly quiet by this point, each absorbed in our reading. I could tell the woman was trying to figure out how much German we spoke. She glanced at the Austrian student newspaper I was reading and started speaking to us in German. She wanted to know where we were from, where we had been, why we were living in Vienna, and what we thought of the city. We each took turns telling our stories. In exchange, the woman told us she and her husband were originally from Serbia and had been living in Vienna for the past 25 years. I wanted to ask them why they came to Vienna, but didn’t know how to formulate the question without seeming too nosy. Something about the way they spoke only of Vienna and not more than a word about Serbia made me think they might have come to Vienna for political reasons or other difficult circumstances, though I could be completely wrong. The couple left the train about 20 minutes later, just before our stop, and wished us well.

When we stepped off the train in Vienna, we were greeted by bright station lights and loud traffic, both of which served as confirmation that we were no longer in Fusch. We had left the quiet--almost too quiet--Alpine town behind us and had returned to the familiarity of the urban city. As we stood for a moment on the platform, I turned to Amelia and Vikki: “Endlich sind wir wieder zu Hause,” I said to them. We’ve finally made it back home again. Home sweet home.