On any vacation there are things you are never likely to forget. When you pay out the money you anticipate (perhaps over optimistically) that the thing(s) you will never forget will be good. The reality of vacations: long distance travel, unfamiliar food, different climates, different insect life etc. suggest that this optimism needs qualifying.
One thing I will never forget from this vacation was an announcement.
It is probably true that there have been several Church Services in which an announcement has stolen the show, notwithstanding the preparatory efforts of the musicians, the preacher and other participants. That day the announcement somewhat stole the show. The Eisreisenwelt are lauded as one of Austria's most spectacular places. That is quite something in an alpine nation that is filled with amazing landscapes and an enormous historical significance over many centuries of culture, politics and the arts.
Certainly these ice caves are amazing - though possibly less so than the hype and world recognition suggest. A cave is, after all, a cave. And every cave I have ever visited has shapes and clever lighting shows them up. Whatever.
The announcement that my daughter and I will not forget was memorable for its context as well as its content.
The caves are high, high up the mountain. There was a bus to start with which (together with its amazingly grumpy driver - isn't it strange how you can tell that someone is grumpy and swearing at every passing car even when you can't speak his language?) took us to the car park. The car park is itself a steep slope, then a facility building, and another uphill walk of some minutes to the cable car.
The caves are high, high up the mountain. There was a bus to start with which (together with its amazingly grumpy driver - isn't it strange how you can tell that someone is grumpy and swearing at every passing car even when you can't speak his language?) took us to the car park. The car park is itself a steep slope, then a facility building, and another uphill walk of some minutes to the cable car.
I mentally associate cable cars with going up mountains from bottom to top but this one turned out to go up from about 6/10ths of the way up to 7/10ths. It left us with a further climb, the following photo being taken about a third of the way up that last climb. You can see the entrance to the cave in the middle.
Even at the cave entrance the temperature, on the day we climbed, was in the mid 20s. The English language has several words available for how we felt on getting to the entrance (how everyone arriving at the entrance seemed to feel). I'll choose this one: knackered.
That was the context of the announcement.
The content of the announcement? At the entrance tired climbers were offered a Deutsch or Englisch queue each with fit-looking young guides in very warm-looking coats. And ours, in decent English, made this announcement;
"I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that there are 700 steps up and 700 steps down. The good news is that although it is freezing you will not feel cold with all those steps to climb!" On the cheerful delivery of which he led us to light our lamps and on into the caves.
My inadequacy of language means I cannot accurately convey the experience of arriving with exhausted relief at a destination to find that the destination is a 1400 step climb. The best I can do is that it felt like my body remained at several thousand feet up but my heart sank back to the shuttle bus stop at the valley bottom.
I wonder how many people climb their way through life without realising what they are climbing towards. I wonder whether they would so climb if they knew. I wonder if there is a whole different Way that ends with rest?
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