How often have you woken up in commercial lodgings and been enchanted by the light that was illuminating your environment? From tents pitched along rivers or in forests to a cave on a cliffside in New Mexico, yurts on the rocky Oregon coast, and now this farmhouse in the Austrian countryside, they have all allowed Caroline and I to start the day with a flash of inspiration that unequivocally assures us just how lucky we are to see these things firsthand.

Sitting in the garden of this 400-year-old farmhouse here in Hörsching, the sky has fluffy little pillows of clouds to my right and blue skies to the left. Birds of at least a half dozen sorts are all around us. The sheep are yet to stir, but with this being a farm and all, the flies are doing their best to be slightly pesky.

Caroline made us coffee and is working on a pair of socks for me while I try my best to do some writing. Before stepping outside, I was filling in some blanks regarding day 9 of this adventure, which was the day we traveled from Verona to Gorizia via Padua, but as we moved outside, I found myself distracted by the sounds, light, smell of flowers, and slight breeze to such a degree that writing about an 800-year old church became impossible.

Hunger will propel us to leave sooner rather than later, though I’ll go ahead and repeat that a short stay here of just overnight does not do this place justice.

Over the past few days, Caroline was slowly changing our plans, and last night, on the way from Vienna, they were cemented; instead of going to the salt mine, we will deviate from our path and visit the village of Haslach an der Mühl whose claim to fame is an exceptional textile center and weaving museum. The funny thing is that this salt mine was one of the prime reasons for us coming to Austria in the first place. I’d like to say it will be easy enough for us to return someday for that or another salt mine, but we know that we also want to visit the Scottish Highlands, the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, and rural France. Even if we were to do a European-centric trip roughly every other year, this takes me to about 65 years old, where I’m guessing I might be slowing down from walking an average of about 10 miles (16 km) a day as we have on this trip and that travel will be different.

The owner of the farm, with a child that sounds to be about two years old, is tending to the sheep, which has elicited the first baa followed by a quick meh. Listening to them speak German while the birds continue their song lends the perfect soundtrack, driving home the fact that we are on vacation somewhere different than anywhere near home in Arizona.

It’s 8:30 and I run out of things to write about. Writing has been getting increasingly difficult as the trip has entered its third week. Our days have been long, averaging about 17 hours of waking activity, and by now, I’m starting to saturate with impressions. Yet, in a few days, I will start looking forward to reflecting on this amazing journey. The proverbial vacation from the vacation is in sight here during our last week in Europe.

The impressions of our perfect night in Hörsching will hopefully stay with us for the rest of our lives, and when need be, we can return to these blog entries and refresh the experience by bringing forward some of the memories that inevitably fade with time.

Does wheat in the field just look like another field of crops to a person living in the Great Plains? To me, it is exotic, full of history, essential, and beautiful in the way it moves with the wind. It deserves glamour shots as much as any of the churches we visit.

Over Hill and Dale, there is nearly always another village in the distance, and while this makes for amazing sights to those who don’t see this every day, by the time we are back in Arizona, I can fully appreciate the fact that we can drive for hundreds of miles and rarely encounter civilization aside from the needed gas station or little cafe for something to eat.

Here’s one of those random villages along the road; this one is known as Eferding, Austria.

At Cafe Konditorei Weltzer, Caroline takes time to write a couple of postcards as we share a bowl of yogurt with granola and fresh fruit accompanied by a hot pot of coffee.

It’s not a yarn store, but it’s on the same pedestal of must-visitness by Caroline. We are well off the beaten path at the Textile Center and Weaving Museum in Haslach an der Mühl, Austria. The area around Haslach, also known as the Mühlviertel, is known for its linen textile production. The Textile Center hosts an annual conference in Haslach, and there is also a biannual “Weavers’ Market.” Both of these events occur in July, but Caroline thought a visit to Haslach would be her only chance to see a weaving-centric museum in Europe and couldn’t pass the opportunity.

Once we found our way in, we wasted no time and jumped right into the main room with an incredible display of the tools used across time in the making of cloth and yarn. Above in the first part of the box is flax, which, with treatment, will become linen and one of the more sought-after fabrics available, right up there with silk and fine woolen products. Other similar boxes contained cotton, wool, man-made fibers, and yarns. These displays allowed visitors to touch the different fiber sources and the stages they passed through on the way to becoming yarn and textiles.

Flax requires three months of growth before it can be harvested, and while we do this with machines today, those machines are not able to harvest the root with the rest of the plant. For flax to produce the longest (bast type) fibers, the root should be intact during processing. After the plant is harvested, it must go through a “rippling” or “threshing” process where the seeds are removed. This is one such device that has been used for this purpose in the past.

Following this, the flax fibers must be “retted” (the word is related to “rotted,” and the result would smell about the same), which is the process of wetting the fibers and letting them age to allow the cellular structure known as “phloem” and pectin to break down. Water retting (submerging bundles of flax in-stream) takes about five days, while dew retting (spreading the flax out on the ground and spraying water on it repeatedly) can take up to six weeks. Once this action is complete, you must dry the flax before the next step, and this, too, can take a number of weeks.

Once dry, the stalks are ready to be broken. When breaking the woody outer shell, small pieces will fall away, leaving the inner fiber strand; this is the flax that will ultimately become yarn.

There were many methods used over time to break away the woody core, also known as “boon.” This can also be done by hand, but it’s a long and cumbersome process.

Before taking the fibers to the spinning wheel or spinners the various flax fibers are drawn through “hackles” to make finer filaments of flax to make more refined fabrics.

The process of drawing fibers over hackles or combs would be done several times over finer and tighter-packed spikes in order to achieve the thinnest filaments possible. The smaller the diameter of the fiber, the greater the quality of linen cloth that will be produced by this attention to detail.

In the spinning process, individual fibers are twisted and sometimes plied to make yarn. That is the intermediate step for the flax fibers before becoming linen fabric.

Once the long fibers are spun and have taken on the familiar form of yarn, it is time to bring them to the loom, where they will be woven into cloth.

These are “reeds,” which are effectively combs that keep “warp” or vertical threads separated and untangled during weaving. They are also part of the “beater bar,” which pushes the “weft” or horizontal threads into a compact structure that is the basis of the cloth we are making.

The “shuttle” holds our “weft” yarn, and when thrown through the “shed,” it adds the next row of fiber. When that is done thousands of times, we will end up with linen fabric.

Looms come in various sizes, and the type of fabric one is making will dictate what kind of loom should be used. How many “heddles” or eyelets can be manipulated by “shafts” connected to “treadles” that, when moved in particular ways, produce patterns as desired within the fabric.

While the previous loom was likely used for ribbons, decorations, and belts, this loom is better suited to towels, sheets, and yardage for cloth making.

As patterns were getting more complex the demand to automate the weaving process was becoming more important. Back in 1805, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the Jacquard loom seen here on the left; little did he know that the design was going to inspire Charles Babbage in 1837 to propose a general-purpose mechanical analytical machine to automate mathematical computation. These developments are the basis for modern computing. One of the looms to the right of the Jacquard loom is a Broeselmaschine, which is a kind of dobby loom but over a hundred years older than Jaquard’s punch cards. It uses a belt made of wooden sticks or pegs that have bumps that trigger the lifting of shafts. There isn’t a lot of information about this type of loom online; it appears to be specific to this area of Upper Austria. Here is a link to a paper in English about digital weaving that mentions it.

Caroline is getting her first up-close examination of an earlier mechanical loom.

The pattern made by the warp set up in a Jacquard loom is intriguing and complex. Setting this up for the first time must be seriously time-consuming.

Stacks of punch cards ready to be fed through the Jacquard loom, creating complex patterns that would otherwise be incredibly time-consuming, are seen here.

All of the information I shared above and far more is on display right here on the main floor of the Haslach an der Mühl Textile Center and Weaving Museum.

This motif says, “Crest of the old weaver’s market Haslach im Muehlviertel.” One room in the museum is called the Schatzkammer, or treasure chamber. It contains many samples of woven items made in the area.

The Weaver as King
Come ye, who so poorly regard the weavers
that so far, you have barely looked at their work and beings.
Here, you can see how every weaver
can be considered a king.
He sits at his loom as on a king’s throne;
although he does not live in a palace like a prince,
he is the only ruler in his realm.
There, great and small, defer to him.
Down from his throne, he looks at his estates,
rules, and governs his citizens and soldiers.
Because without his hands and treadlings,
nothing at all will move in his kingdom. See, that is royal!
However, when the power, the scepter, rises,
then everything alive in the realm awakens.
As in a parade with rifles
his military marches to and fro.
In beautiful order, his business dealings are done
and set his armies in motion,
which are at his beck and call by the thousand,
whom he can oversee at any time.
He always lives in peace, although his shooters have to
be always on their post and courageous.
And what is even more marvelous about this is
that the king does all the work himself.

Motto: By Weaver’s hands, you are provided with diaper and shroud.

An early mechanized weaving machine from 1880 is still in operation. The gentleman who showed us this loom at work (it is LOUD!) demonstrated a few other looms for us, too. This entire experience has been well worth our deviation from our plans and in any case, the salt mine will always be there, as where who knows if funding will keep such a treasure as this open in the years to come?

Just as we were finishing up in the museum, one of the ladies who works at the museum asked if we’d like a tour of the upstairs workshop area; of course, we wholeheartedly said yes. More than a dozen looms of all sorts and sizes are available. Adjacent to the looms are half a dozen or more computers for working out patterns prior to setting up the looms when workshops are underway. Other than during special events I can’t say I know of such a well-endowed permanent space in all of the United States that is working to keep alive such an important craft as weaving.

This is why Haslach an der Mühl is known as such, as it is on the Mühl river. Flowing water is what often drove the machinery of mills and was needed for retting flax, so Haslach proved to be a perfect location for establishing a weaving center.

You never really know how many beetle species live in your environment until you try to identify a particular species. After scanning images of more than 300 varieties native to Germany and Austria, I’m no closer to knowing just which beetle family this girl belongs to. I’m guessing girl, as it doesn’t have horns. I’ll bet a dollar that Caroline, upon editing this, will have the answer, and there will be a note right here telling you what it is. – Indeed! This is a may bug, also known as a cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha). I had never seen one, even though they are memorialized in a popular German children’s rhyme. The beetles emerge from the ground in spring, lay lots of eggs in the ground, and die. Their offspring live underground for four years until they metamorphose into the final beetle stage, crawl up to mate, and start another generation of bugs.

We’ve been vigilant up to now, demanding and getting Old Country meals, often the more old-fashioned traditional cooking of days gone by at that. This afternoon though, we are making an exception and visiting a McDonalds. With our trip to the Golden Arches, we were also hoping there were some regional specialties, but alas, it was the standard fare. Although I should point out that their McCafe was extraordinary with choices we’d never see in America. Five years after my last visit to Europe we are yet to see this type of ordering in the States.

Proof that we didn’t just visit for the photo op and another chance for me to bitch about some of the backward practices and services still found in my country of birth. Look at the table behind Caroline, and you’ll see a real coffee cup and water glass.

We had to turn around for this one but who wouldn’t want to capture a couple of rotten eggs in Rottenegg?

Picked fresh roadside strawberries are certainly the taste of summer and a welcome treat.

We are in the realm of heaven or maybe the kingdom of heaven; it depends on how you want to translate the German word “Reich?” While I looked up places to stay in Salzburg, I came up with a nice farmhouse in the suburb of Himmelreich just next to Salzburg airport.

While the view is spectacular and the vacation just as much so, when I was getting our bags out of the car, I used my right knee as a deflection device for a suitcase that hit it in just such a way that the pain I started suffering was worse than when I fell on it. As I limped away from our lodging for the night to walk over to Hotel Laschenskyhof for dinner, which was just a mile away (1.7 km), I started having second thoughts about walking. The problem was that I had parked about 2 inches away from a wall because I was asked to leave as much room as possible so that a contractor showing up early in the morning would be able to pull a truck in, and our rental was a manual transmission that Caroline hasn’t driven in over 20 years. Slowly, we made it over and enjoyed our dinner, and by the time we were ready to walk back, the pain had started to subside.

The horses on the property we were staying at were friendly and curious, as were the donkeys.

Sunset over the Alps as seen from the Kingdom of Heaven. We called it an early night and skipped out on driving into Salzburg proper. We are either getting old, growing tired, or suffering from wounds that are slowing us down, but whatever this is, it better be temporary.

It’s about time for another selfie of both of us, which has been few and far between on this trip, and there is a reason for that. The auto-focus on my lens was broken even before we left the United States, so there was that. Then, there was the image stabilization on that lens that was broken, too. Those issues weren’t the reason, though, that I’ve been held back from taking selfies; something new broke while we were here in Europe. Of course, I have my phone, and that’s what captured this image while my Samsung S9+ shoots raw images, it’s a fully manual process that is not conducive to taking selfies, so I have to shoot them as JPGs and run into problems with lighting, color temperature, and lost data in the images which are inherent to the format.

Back to my lens. I am still shooting the majority of my photos with an 8-year-old Canon T2i 18MP DSLR. My favorite lens is my “walking around lens,” an equally old Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8, and the other day, it appeared a metal piece that locks the zoom ring to the lens mechanism broke. Actually, it is more than simply broken because that metal piece has been rattling around inside the lens assembly as it shifts about. To zoom the lens, I have to pull the lens forward manually by grasping the outer ring, and to get it back to full wide-angle, I have to push it back in. The problem here is that the metal floater occasionally gets in the way, and the lens stops going in at around the 28mm mark, stopping me from returning to 17mm without some vigorous shaking of the camera.

Next up, while we’ve been here, the body, too is producing some errors by not registering changes in the f-stop readout. If I shot automatic mode, I wouldn’t care, but you can’t shoot a photo in a church using automatic settings (unless you are using a flash or like blurry photos), so I set the aperture by pointing the lens in full zoom towards a bright light source, locking it in, and then try to pull the lens back to its widest position while maintaining my desired f-stop and exposure time until I get a properly lit and focused image in the poorly lit confines of an altar in the front of the church. The f-stop readout and attempts to change it when stuck require me not to just turn off the camera; I have to remove the battery.

In bright daylight, I used to be able to set the camera to f/11, focus to infinity, and usually get a decent shot of Caroline and me, but there’s too much going wrong with my camera right now. Initially, panic with the misbehaving lens had me consider trying to find a camera shop (not a chance) or having a replacement lens sent overnight to where we were staying, but then, with European tax and shipping, that would have been just over $1000: nope. So I hoped and prayed that I could hobble through this without adding such a large expense in the middle of our trip for a lens that hopefully could be repaired once I returned to the United States.

One more wrinkle in this fabric I should share. Last night, when I fell, my camera was in my right hand, and took a hard jolt as my knuckles were sacrificed to offer a small amount of protection to the all-important camera. Funny enough, no further damage was done to the aging camera that has now shot well more than 100,000 images faithfully for me on water, in snow, in searing heat, and on two continents more than once.

On our way to the Austrian National Library, we spotted the Minoritenkirche and, of course, had to pay a visit. The church was started in 1276 and was completed by 1350.

There was more to this church than a five-minute visit was going to allow being seen, but not only do we have a couple of intentional stops to make today, but we are also driving to Krems an der Donau before spending the night near Linz, Austria.

Two other things of note about this church, though. First, it was the subject of a watercolor painting by Adolf Hitler back in 1910, and second, that painting was referenced by Kurt Vonnegut in “Deadeye Dick” several times. I’d never seen the watercolor before learning about it after our vacation had ended, and found it strange that Hitler and I had chosen nearly identical perspectives to capture the image.

From the Minoritenkirche, we walked over to Café Central for a snack and a coffee just as Freud, Tito, Stalin, Trotsky, and Hitler did back in January 1913 (though not all at the same time and probably not just after visiting the Minoritenkirche).

I should have thrown my broken camera to the ground and finished the job as no photograph I can take will ever do justice to this incredible interior of the Austrian National Library. While nowhere near the scale of the U.S. Library of Congress, it is one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever been in. Hmmm, I’m starting to think of a vacation during which we’d focus on libraries instead of so many churches.

It’s near impossible to take landscape formatted photos in here and I’m stuck with portrait framing to try and capture a feel of the interior. There are also books behind books as a “secret” panel that is propped open shows visitors who peer within.

Tycho Brahe was a Dutch astronomer whose theory back in the 16th century was still quite popular. Contrary to Copernicus, Tycho believed that the sun revolved around the heavier and slowly spinning Earth. This book from 1661 attempts to diagram his theory. Notice that the Earth is not flat!

This is a facsimile copy of the very rare book and founding codex of the Austrian National Library known as “Gospels of John of Opava.“ The book is also known by the name “Evangeliar des Johann von Troppau.” The original was written in pure gold ink back in 1368 in the Czech Republic. It has a metal book cover, and the only known surviving copy is stored out of public view.

The Augustinerkirche, or Augustinian Church, was another surprise on our way this morning. Started back in 1327, it has played host to the marriages of Emperor Franz Joseph, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and Empress Maria Theresia. On Sunday High Mass, the church often features a full orchestra and choir, should you be so lucky to be there on one of those weekends.

The Jewish Museum of Vienna is our last scheduled visit of the day before heading west. According to Wikipedia, “The first Jewish Museum in Vienna and the world was founded in 1896. It was supported and run by the Society for the Collection and Preservation of Artistic and Historical Memorials of Jewry. The museum focused on the culture and history of the Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially in Vienna and Galicia.”

During World War II, about 6,400 objects of art were confiscated from the existing Jewish museum, and the old facility was shuttered. Starting in the 1950s, those objects were instituted, and then in the early 1990s, the current location of the museum was established.

Max Berger, who was born in 1924 and was the only survivor of the death camps from his family, is the person largely responsible for the collection on display today. He amassed more than 10,000 pieces of Judaica, and upon his death, his widow donated another 3,200 pieces to the museum.

Without the museum and the efforts of those who have supported the creation and protection of this rich history, a large part of the story and cultural contribution to central Europe would be lost. One of the current exhibits explains the importance of salons (cultural gatherings in people’s homes), which were often hosted by Jewish women in Vienna from the late 18th century on.

The Pestsäule or Plague Column stands in recognition of the approximate 76,000 residents of Vienna that died in the plague of 1679 killing nearly a third of the population. On the other days, when we were passing this monument, it was wrapped around its base with hordes of tourists, so seeing it this way and not in shadow was a lucky break.

This is the other part of the Jewish Museum known as Museum Judenplatz, which, in addition to an exhibit, features some unearthed foundations of a medieval synagogue nearly 5 feet below the current street level. With this, it was time to leave Vienna.

The first church we came upon after arriving in Krems an der Donau was the Parish Church of St. Vitus. The original church that sat here was built back in 1014, or 1004 years ago. It and others made way for the current church over the centuries.

In 1975 the organ that was about 300 years old received a renovation, while the church would have to wait until 2009 for its major renovation. That work was finally done in 2016.

As part of a traveler’s experience, I vote for churches featuring organ music, choirs, and bell-ringing seven days a week and multiple times a day to fit everyone else’s schedule. If only there was enough demand for experiential travel that could make my request financially viable.

Around every corner is another church, and the one up the hill is our next stop: the Piaristenkirche. Krems is not built on flat land and these stairways up and down the hills are instantly attracting my curiosity. Caroline took the path on the left through the tunnel, and I took the right with open stairs.

The Piaristenkirche is the oldest church in Krems and dates from 1475, though an older church has stood here since 1284.

In these towns that escaped devastation from the countless wars that have wracked Europe, there is still that sense of what the medieval village might have looked like with winding streets prior to consideration being made for automobiles.

This is part of the perfect layout for a city I want to live in. A city where we wouldn’t need cars in the town center but with enough population density to support a vibrant shopping main street. Museums, music venues, and salons for learning and art exhibitions would also play a key role. My social network of synthesists, gourmet chefs, writers, filmmakers, and photographers would be part of this community. To me, the virtual world we should be building is the face of the next social space, but our obsession with sports and violence and lack of clear direction for the intellectual progress of humanity has us staring at our own belly buttons instead of honestly trying to make a better world. Sometimes, I hate being an idealist.

Feeling sorrowful? Drown that negativity at Café-Konditorei Hagmann with a Marilleneisknoedel mit Marillensauce und Schlagobers! It’s apricot season in Europe, and these crumb-covered ice cream balls stuffed with fresh apricot and sides of apricot compote and whipped cream are the perfect antidote to the heat, foot pain, or the blues should you be suffering from that or any other ailment. Add a cappuccino and some sparkling water and you’ll have entered travelers paradise.

This is our last view of the Danube while on this particular journey across Europe. I hope to see it again someday.

As in all river valleys across Europe, you will find grapes growing on the hillsides because other than great desserts, baked goods, exquisite art, and other luxuries for the soul, wine is as essential as water and air.

Our apartment for the night is not just an apartment; it is an old farmhouse. We are in Hörsching, Austria, outside of Linz, and while the intention was to visit Linz while we were in this corner of the world, we will not make it. Being out in the countryside spoke to us in an instant and warmly greeted us with recommendations to go slow tonight and stop rushing around.

The first thing we learned here was that one night was not going to be enough, but due to our schedule, we would not be able to extend our visit.

Peter and Greti were our hosts for this Airbnb (which you can find by clicking right here), and it was Peter who gave us a couple of recommendations for dinner just down the road. We pulled into the Gasthof Mandorfer, and maybe because it was still relatively early, the restaurant was mostly empty, except for a side room where about a dozen people were sitting with maybe six accordions on top of the tables or in people’s laps. Everyone else was out on the patio enjoying the great weather. With five days to go before the World Wide Knit in Public Day, there were four women on one of the other tables practicing for the global event, so Caroline went back to the car to grab her yarn because nothing is quite as good as a beer, knitting, dinner, and sunset all at the same time.

Closing thoughts for the day:

Between churches, food, and photos, we enjoy simply walking through the city and, in part, doing some window shopping, people watching and talking about what we’ve seen interspersed with fragments of history Caroline is pulling off the internet or taking from her memory.

In the early morning, before breakfast, while on vacation, I try to prep some photos should I get the opportunity during the day to sit in a coffee shop and write, although this hasn’t been possible since we were in Italy. Caroline, on the other hand, tends to read about places we’ll be going, where we’ve been, or the people and history we learned of when visiting a place.

Once we get underway, it’s time to find some breakfast, which we hope will be some bread, butter, jam, a boiled egg, and coffee. An outdoor breakfast while people-watching remains my all-time favorite way of starting the day.

Where we go next sometimes depends on where we ate and what is relatively nearby, or we might have to take into consideration what opens where and when. In any case, there is some amount of travel, and as much as possible, we will try to walk a street we’ve not yet traveled. An app that draws highlights over the streets we’ve already walked would be ideal for this so we could easily see the streets we’d still like to explore; you never know what you might find down some random way.

As we walk along, we are looking at chipped and aged wood doors and window frames, curtains, cobblestones, roofs, signage, facades, people, dog poop, trees, moss, graffiti, old gates, keyholes, how cars park, bicycles including rusted hulks of bikes missing parts, occasionally I’ll ring a bike bell (maybe too often), glance at musty books in windows, names on door buzzers, and birds scurrying about.

Stickers on poles and electricity boxes get extra scrutiny. Antennas on roofs, while rarer these days, spark my imagination into thinking of the old guy in some apartment upstairs who’s lived there for 60 years and never felt the need to get cable and now is one of the last people to get poor reception on his TV as he tunes in the World Cup. Occasionally, an item left next to the trash will invite me to have a closer look and wonder why the person was getting rid of this particular thing.

Menus on the outside of restaurants is an absolute luxury, though with the internet I suppose I could look up a menu online. Passing by a place and checking out their menu without someone asking if I want a table allows me to find inspiration or lack of interest, and should I find the menu inviting, I put a virtual bookmark in my spatial memory to remember that this eatery might offer me a meal someday.

Soon, the day is coming to an end, and I can’t believe all the impressions that were made; this is the luxury of wandering around.

Walking stats: 17,650 steps for 8.25 miles or 13.4 km and 28 floors climbed.