Escape 5: To Austria
Lake Fusine was really beautiful. We moved the tent to
higher ground and decided to stay for a few days. After the Italian campers
left we were there alone. Franta’s knee was still sore so I went to explore and
look for place to change Yugoslavian dinars for Italian liras. A small village
with a country store was less than an hour from our camp. I waited till there
were no customers inside and then, holding a wad of dinars, I went in and asked
the woman behind the counter for “wechsel geld”. That meant “to exchange money” in German. She
fired a barrage of Italian at me which I understood to mean she didn’t want
dinars. Well, we still had food for two more days.
The next day, Franta, who spoke passable German, was going
to try his luck. He returned carrying a bag of groceries and showed me a bundle
of Italian liras. “I went to the same store,” he said. “The woman spoke German
and she sent me to a house in the village where they changed the money”. So that was the barrage of Italian she fired
at the day before!
Two days later we were ready to continue our trip to
Austria. Tarvisio is a picturesque town that left great impressions on us, it
was our first encounter with the Western world. Streets full of cars and
tourists, street vendors selling everything that a tourist might want, from
fruits and souvenirs to trinkets. We bought postcards and found a small street
restaurant, it was time to let everyone know where we were and why the group returned
without us.
To my co-workers I wrote “Greetings from a side trip to
Italy” and signed “The Shuffler”. That would get their imagination working
overtime when I didn’t show up for work. Also it was my revenge on them for
messing up my flash cards.
When I was leaving on our trip I told my mother as a hint “If
I am late coming back, don’t worry, we probably got lost and we are somewhere
in Italy. “ She took it as one of my jokes. “Just don’t do anything stupid, I
will have enough worries that you don’t get killed in those mountains.”
 |
| The postcard I sent home. |
So I wrote “Greetings from a trip to Italy. All is well. Details to follow in a letter”. I probably wrote the same to Vlasta.
The town of Tarvisio is located in a valley near a point where the Italian, Yugoslavian and Austrian borders meet. On one side of the valley is a mountain ridge where the Austrian border runs and there we could see a hotel that must have been right on the border. Where there is a hotel, there must be a road leading to it. Fortified with two liters of strong wine we started off, looking for the road and soon we came to a sign pointing to the hotel. The road climbed in sharp curves and then came a fork, one heading left, another right. I had a gut feeling we should take the left road but Franta who was slightly ahead of me took the one to the right. “Why are you going that way?” I asked him. “Because” he answered curtly and I had no choice but to follow him. After a while the road changed to a dirt, climbing steeply, and finally it ended in a big, logged out area. We had followed a logging road.
The day was late, we had to hurry. Nearby was a creek with
just a little water trickling down, so we decided to follow it. It was a
mistake. Suddenly we were in a gully climbing over small waterfalls. It was
getting dark, we had to get out. In one place the gully wall was broken and Franta
started to climb up the side. He got over the top and I followed him. Loose
rocks were falling down and a few times I started to slide down. The gully was
not very high, maybe 4 meters but I was scared. What would happen if I fell and
broke my leg? When I got to the top I was shaky and my nerves were shot. The
stress of the last few weeks was starting to show.
 |
| Austrian border |
There was no sense to go further at night. We found some flat
ground and tried to sleep. The night was cold and the mosquitoes had a
feast. We got up at the first sign of light and
continued to scramble to the border. Early in the morning we got above the tree
line, to find that we were quite near to the hotel we saw from Tarvisio. If we had stayed on the road leading to it, it
would have been a nice hike to the border. I had to bite my tongue. I was
getting fed up with stubborn Franta, but this was not the time to have a fight.
The dawn was absolutely beautiful, clouds filling the valleys, mountains rising
above the clouds, all illuminated by a red sun.
My first impression
of Austria was slightly disappointing. We descended into a farmland valley
crisscrossed with small fields and a few villages. On the other side of the
valley was a river where we wanted to camp. Getting to the river turned out to
be difficult- every field was enclosed with wire fence, some barbed. Nobody was
seen working in the fields so we decided to go directly over the fences to the
river. We climbed many fences and gates to get to a road only to find later that
it was taking us in the wrong direction. Climbing barbed wire fences with a
heavy knapsack was no fun and we were cursing the Austrians, remembering with
some nostalgia that the country we escaped from had no fences around fields and
we could camp pretty well anywhere. The river was in flood and it took us a
while before we found a sheltered spot.
The difficult part was behind us, or so we thought. Our
clothing was in rough shape and it took some washing and mending to get it
ready for next stage of our trip. We were going to take a train to Feldkirch
where one of our Austrian climbing friends had left our baggage with his
mother. The tooting of a train whistle told us that the nearby village of Arnoldstein
had a railway station so we went to investigate. The railway schedules were
posted on big boards and they were identical to the schedules we had in
Czechoslovakia. We should not have been surprised by that, our country used to
be part of the Austrian Empire.
 |
| Inspecting my possessions. My weight fully dressed was 138 lbs. |
 |
| Franta doing his laundry. |
The local train took us to Villach where we caught another train to Feldkirch. Mrs. Reiter was surprised when we knocked on her door. She made us feel at home and we enjoyed her cooking. Her son Tony, came later and we spoke in a German- English mix into late night. Tony told us that the best place to cross the border to Germany would be near the town of Bregenz on Lake Constance, known in German as Bodensee. Tony asked, “Why do you want to go to Germany? There is a refugee camp in Austria, in Vienna.” It was a good question and we didn’t have any real answer. Our excuse was to see Franta’s “auntie” in Munich that he last saw when he was twelve. The main reason to keep going was the freedom, the sense of adventure we felt and we didn’t want it to end too early.
NEXT CHAPTER #6: Destination Germany
 |
| Picturesque Austria scenery near Villach |
No comments:
Post a Comment