December 26, 2004
Christmas Eve in St. Johann in Tirol
St. Johann in Tirol. The Lederers live here and invited us to join them for Christmas Eve. We gladly accepted. We piled gaily into their van (packages and baggage and scarves and puffy coats) to drive for an hour east towards Salzburg. It was dark, so I couldn't see much. We were quite pleased to join the Lederers because they are one of our favorite families here in Innsbruck. Briefly, the Lederers are: 1) Irene Lederer: a widow. She's always trying to get us to eat more and makes yummy Christmas cookies. (she also acted as the Christkindl). 2) Kordula: She's about our age, going to school to become an x-ray technician, speaks pretty much perfect English, and is clumsy. 3) Leonora (Lolly): 16, tour-guide, plays the guitar and owns good movies like About a Boy and Emma. 4) Arthur: a student that lives in Graz, so we've only met him twice. He was there with his girlfriend. He told me I had a good German accent, so I like him. Although today, while sitting behind him in church, I was nervous about singing because I wanted him to keep his opinion that my accent is good. 5) Two other children, out and about in the world.
When we arrived in St. Johann, we dined and played a card game. I lost. We crawled into bed around 1:30. I slept well, except I had to get up in the middle of the night to take off my legwarmers because I was too hot.
Christmas Eve
Lolly took us on a tour of the village of St. Johann. Apparently, it's a pretty touristy little village, which allows it to keep its charming exteriors, but also ensures plenty of souvenir shops. It's settled in the valley of two mountain ranges - one of which includes the tallest peak in Austria. However, it was so foggy, that we couldn't see any mountains. Well, later in the afternoon, we saw the outlines and ridges of some.
So here is a virtual tour of St. Johann:
Interior of the church:
And of course, the attached cemetery:
And the expansion of the cemetery:
(I think the way the snow frames this picture makes it kind of look like it's being effaced in some way - pretty perfect when you think of death, huh?)
While we were in the cemetery expansion pack, the bells from the church rang noontime clangs. I love the church bells.
Continuing our tour, these are some facades of houses and other buildings that I saw on our walk back home:
What I like about this last building is the chimney. It's so perfectly distressed with exposed brick, you might think it was fake, but it isn't because, as I have to remind myself, this is Europe and things really are old here, not just made to appear old.
As promised, the mountains peeped through the fog for a moment:
(Okay, so there aren't any mountains really in that last picture, but I like the way the houses are settled up against where the mountains would be if there wasn't so much fog, and I liked that they are the very traditional kind of Tirolean (Austrian?) architecture.)
When we got back, we made merry with decorating the Christmas tree.
And played a boardgame where you contrive to kill little cardboard people by either burning them in the fire, dropping a chandelier on them, making them fall off a bookcase ladder, trip down the stairs, or be crushed by a suit of armor. This time I won.
Later, we went for a walk in the fog, sang carols, and looked at blurry Christmas lights from faraway houses. When we got back, the Christkind had come and laid presents on the table.
We opened them, had dinner, and caught the last train to Innsbruck. When we got back to town, the normal buses had stopped running for the night, so we had to take a Nightliner bus, which dropped us off about a mile from home. We walked down little streets, thick with fog, but illuminated by red, lit candles balanced on windowsills. We had to wind up the base of a large cable bridge and cross over, not only the sleepy Inn River, but the rushing cars of the freeway, and then back down to more familiar streets.
Posted by kea at December 26, 2004 06:36 PM