Yodelling with Hermann

As you can see on this map, Bucharest, Romania and Vienna, Austria, are quite close to each other. Two days after hugging Cris good-bye, I was shaking hands with Hermann in the post office. I was so happy that he met me, because most of the signs are in German, and I don't understand much yet. Hermann seems much more formal than anybody I've stayed with so far, and it scared me just a little bit. First he took me to a cafe for a glass of milk and a slice of apple strudel, and then we took the tram to his apartment here.

Hermann's apartment building is quite close to the Danube River. It's a famous river that flows through ten different countries, including Romania, and there are probably more songs and stories about it than about any other river.

There's a bicycle trail that runs along the river, and Hermann thought that we might go admire the sunset. The trouble is that I don't have a bicycle. Hermann laughed and said, "What is it with girls? They forget to pack the most important things, but never forget to pack as many clothes as they can carry!" I do have an awful lot of clothes, but then I'm visiting an awful lot of different places. Clothes are important.

Hermann turned his bedroom over to me, and made his bed on the couch. He says that it's quite comfortable, and that maybe he should start sleeping there all the time. After all, he says, it's much closer to the television and the refrigerator.

The next morning we passed a group of women wearing dirndls. As soon as I saw them, I asked Hermann for one. He said that he's a better photographer than a dressmaker, but I kept asking ... so he sat down and did his best. I still didn't think that it looked like a dirndl, so Hermann wrote "Austrian Dirndl" on it in red marker. (A dirndl is also a girl, so now I'm a dirndl in a dirndl.) It doesn't stay on very well, but if I wear it over my nightgown it works. Once I was dressed for visiting the countryside, we crossed the Danube and wandered through the Lobau national park.

This park has one of the last remaining European wetlands, and is an important place for birds to rest during their migration. Hermann comes here all the time to take photos of the plants and animals, which he publishes on his blog. He knows the Latin names for everything that lives and grows here, I think. He stopped every few feet to take pictures, while I climbed the trees or watched for otters and water shrews.

We crossed back over the Danube and saw the sunset over the river, just as Hermann promised. You can just see it here, behind a huge hydro-electric station that provides electricity to the city of Vienna. People here use the Danube in all sorts of ways: transport, industry, and recreation, to name just a few. Once upon a time there used to be fishermen along the river, but not many people want to eat the fish from the river nowadays.

The next morning we returned to the Lobau, but this time we explored the heaths. The lowlands are flooded every year, but usually this part isn't affected. As you can see, everything is much drier. I was a bit scared of meeting wild boars, so at first I rode in Hermann's rucksack. The piglets are cute, but the adults can be ferocious! Hermann was sorry that I was so frightened, so he taught me to yodel to scare them off. We yodelled together while we walked, and after that we didn't see any animals at all. I wonder where they all went?

There were even some October flowers in bloom. We carpets of the most beautiful mauve fall crocuses. At home they only bloom in the spring.

At the edge of a marsh, we even saw an egret. It floated over the reeds and then landed, just the way our blue herons do.

It was almost dark when we crossed back over the river, and took the tram back to Hermann's apartment. He made schnitzel for supper, with some vegetables to go with it, and we had a picnic outside his apartment. Dinner was a bit rushed, though, because he wanted to catch a soccer game between Celtic and Rapid. (To be honest, it was a bit boring after watching soccer in Argentina, but Hermann just couldn't find Boca Juniors.) He says that tomorrow we're going to explore downtown Vienna, and hints that horses might be involved. (I wonder whether the people who invented yodelling were trying to sound like horses. What do you think?)

Gutenacht (that means "Goodnight"),

Sally