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| Alps on the left and Alps on the right and nothing but road up ahead. |
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| The Austrian alps and the A12/E45 |
So
many things in life are ruined by advertising's highlight reel. Think of the last comedy you saw – one you bothered to see in the
theater. How many good laughs were left out of the trailer? That same idea follows to other parts of life, and it's why
I was less than bonkers to drive from our former home in Munich to the
Alps, then spend a couple of days bombing around in the mountains. I
figured, hey, I've already seen the Rockies, the Bighorns, the Blue
Ridge, (and on and on)... what's to see? Nothing but variations on a
theme. Plus I'd already seen
the highlights every time I passed a box of Swiss Miss or bought a
gallon of milk. If you've ever seen a postcard with a young lady
dressed like Heidi or The Sound of Music,
you might think the same thing – Nice view! (And
not just on account of the associated ladies), but, Why in
God's name would I need to go half way around the world? I've been
force fed images for years. What more could I possibly get?
This
time, a lot. Because for once
the advertised product far exceeds the snippet. Alpine peaks are so dramatic that they stick to your retinas to days, and the towns are so
quaint you'll want to buy a felt jacket, herd of cows, and give up whatever life you have. And then
there's the roads. They've got
curves tighter than an Olympic sprinter's ass – and just as capable
of making your blood pump.
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| More from the top |
It's
like this: when I was a just thigh-high little man in elementary
school, I loved gluing. (Non sequitur? Hold on.) I would hold a
bottle of Elmer's three feet above a piece of green construction
paper and let a long, white strand needle down. Invariably – no
matter how steady my hands – the glue would sway and dance to form
ribbon curls while I, as creator, would burble motor noises. In-tense.
The point? Any of those young Steffl creations could have been a map,
or blueprint, of Alpine driving.
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| I lied, not all the houses are white but this is the level of variation that you get. |
We rolled south, out of the fatherland and entered
on the A12/E45 – which is a real-deal highway that moves between
Germany and Austria. That's about the time I warmed to this unplanned cruise. This kind of A-Road experience usually
translates into distilled dull in the US, (at least for us Midwestern folk), but the this particular
strip of highway not only took us from country to country, it split
chains of mountains on either side, playing the role of referee at a
cage fight – as if it were just there to keep peaks apart. The
views captivated – sprawling swaths of country club green at the
foot of bone-sided mountains dusted in white. We had to get onto
B-roads.
Smaller
roads – as in many mountain regions – often don't go
anywhere in particular. These wander, they vagabond through villages
with white stucco faces and rusty clay roofs. Places quainter than
the syrupiest Hallmark postcard, beautiful and very
European.
In
a way, each of those quaint villages is akin to a US planned community...
you know, where the height of your mailbox is a big thing. Those
places where you could never build a Frank Lloyd Wright clone or dare to use purple paint. These are places where homogeneity reigns supreme. Strange? Sure, by our
standards. But that kind of smooth uniformity is what really seals the
deal. These communities
have the charm and elegance that US planned communities search for,
but never find. Part of it is a complete absence of vinyl siding - but really, it's not in anything so 'skin deep.' It's something found in the people, too, and found in their culture. These are places
where tiny cars fill the roads and average people bicycle to and from
the grocery store, complete with baskets of produce.
But, as quaint as they are, as
'upstanding' and... formulaic as these places might seem, there's one
more piece to know. They love the motorcycle.
This part of the world in
love with motorräder,
which (like so many things, again by our standards)
are regulated and deregulated in an odd mix. The houses may look as if they reproduce asexually, limiting
variation, but remember that in Austria where prostitution is legal. It seems an anathema to their whole system, but it works. In a different vein, riders take gear and licensing very seriously, but the
biggest rule for riders on the road is If you can do it,
you can do it.
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| Up top, you can still get fine dining with one hell of a view. |
That
rule might not jive entirely with the law, but often enough –
particularly with motorcycles – that's the way it goes. Quite often
as we wheeled toward the tiny burg of Pill, clusters of 2 or three
bikes came from behind, and sometimes with as little as a two-second
gap, they shot ahead like diving falcons. Our
trip, however, was built for gawking and overcoming a Midwestern fear
of heights, so we let this happen without any fuss, muss, or rev of
exasperation.
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| Bodensee, the Alps |
The quaint grew as we climbed, became exaggerated – (if it wasn't already) flourishes occurred. Stove-length wood was stacked in perfect rows
next to houses. Wildflowers graced the hills with yellow and
purple, a treat, I suppose, for the cattle -- which was surreal in its own right. On the hills, cows grazed,
and clanked with (I'm not even lying) bells.
Then,
the curves tightened so that mirrors became necessary across from the
apexes of most corners - where we held our breaths at every one
(Midwesterners, remember) while the natives passed us, fearlessly, flogging their four cylinders from their seats or saddles for all they were worth. We, on the other hand, were only able to pass trunk-thighed bicyclists, if only just barely.
We
climbed and gawked. We drank in the road, and wondered what life would be like in the Alps in winter. What it would be like to wake to a view of highway in the valley - the A12/E45 - and see people packed in cars headed to their lives (or what they called life) far from where they lived. We climbed until we felt overwhelmed... by the roads, and country, and scenery of unspeakable beauty – and then, eventually, unfortunately, we met the end of that particular road, but not
disappointed by what we found. A
kind of top-of-the-world B&B with the world's best (there are a
lot of "world's best," I think) view. Amazing. And the people? Just as
amazing. So, yeah. Maybe I wasn't bonkers to get on the road, but Austrian Alps changed my mind, they made it into my book, or onto the ever-expanding 'short list,' because as we sat at that little B&B at the top of the world, I realized that this was just just one of many curving ribbons cut into the countryside, and that put me in my place.
