Austrian History on Wikipedia

We were up late last night, reading about Austrian history on Wikipedia and making phone calls to our cousins in Bregenz and Lindau about visiting them this weekend. Since there are five of Jim's cousins and one of mine, it took quite a lot of coordinating to organize the weekend's social program. We will drive to Bregenz tomorrow morning and come back on Monday.

I am totally in awe of what Wikipedia has to offer! First I looked up Austria and read all about the history of Austria. Jim printed out the article about the Austrian Anschluss in 1938. Then I read about Ötzi the Iceman, who was found near here. Jim and I are thinking of going to the Museum where he is, it's in Bolzano, one and a half hours south of here by car, just over the border into the Italian Dolomites (near where we were hiking this summer.) Also a gorgeous area. You just don't run out of gorgeousness around here.

Then I read about the dialects here - how fascinating! There are actually sites written in what they call the "Alemannic" language, which is the dialect family that is spoken in western Austria, including Vorarlberg where Jim's cousins live, and includes Swiss German and some parts of southern Germany, as well as Alsatian. Frau Balogh told me that this dialect is very different from the one that is spoken here. I found that hard to believe, because they sound the same to me - a strange form of German that is hard to understand. Well it turns out, I learned from Wikipedia, that 1500 years ago, the local Celto-Romanic population was overrun in the west by the Alemannic German tribes who came down from the Rhine in what is now Germany (and Alsace in France) but Tyrol and further east was settled by the Bavarians. The Alemanni and the Bavarians spoke different kinds of German languages and the dialect here in Tyrol is descended from Bavarian. Wikipedia has posts in both of these languages, as well as many other obscure German dialects such as Frisian. Makes for very interesting reading!!!! So that explains why Frau Balogh said that people from Tyrol cannot understand the dialect of the people from Voralberg. After all, she said, it is 200 kilometers away!!!!

Jim and I went into Innsbruck to pick up my hiking boots. The shoemaker/bootfitter put inserts around the heel, let's see if that helps. Then we drove through the old part of town, Hötting, and up to the Hungerburg, the mountain just at the north part of Innsbruck. This is the view looking down at Innsbruck from the Hungerburg. There is then a cable car that goes up to near the very top of the mountain where the good snow is now and that is where people were skiing. On the way down we stopped at a Konditorei and bought cake to eat at home. I chose a meringue-nut cake (sound familiar, Karen?) But both Jim and I were disappointed, they weren't all that good. The cake that Karen and George made me for my birthday was MUCH better!!!!! I guess we are jaded. Or maybe there really IS bad cake in Austria and we were unlucky enough to find it. Hard to believe.

Fasching is approaching, they sell costumes and masks in the stores, just like we do at Halloween. We are going to a "Maschgerabend" tonight here in Oberperfuss, will tell you all about that afterwards.