My dad has traveled extensively to Vienna over the past decade for business, and his business partners there have become family friends. I had been trying to meet up with one couple, Richard and Erika, since my arrival in Vienna but the timing never quite worked out (the fact that I was traveling for four-five days and only in Vienna for 2-3 days at a time during my last 1.5 months there didn’t help). Finally we set a date to meet and it turned out to be when Caitlin was in town.
Caitlin and I took the train 1.5 hours outside Vienna to a little town called Simmering, which in the late 1800s and early 1900s was where the elite of Vienna vacationed during the winter to get out of the city and enjoy the mountains’ fresh air. The train ride from Vienna is spectacular, with gorgeous mountain scenery, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site because of the feat of engineering that it was to create the railroad back in the 1800s. Richard and Erika (and their car) were there to meet us, and after a quick look around the Simmering Railway Museum (all of two rooms in the train station) we were on our way.
Our first stop was a quick one – we stopped to snap a picture in front of the historic hotel my dad always stays in when he is in Austria for business, and then walked down the street to see a quaint church that is 200 years old. We then drove for about an hour through more gorgeous mountain scenery (I think the German/Austrian alps are my favorite place in Europe). Richard explained to me that many of the houses dotting the landscape have been passed down from generation to generation (starting from back in the late 1800s when it was fashionable to have a house in that part of the country) but today many are being sold because it is too hard for Viennese families to get there often enough to maintain the houses or the cost of maintain them is too high.
Our destination after the scenic drive was a vehicular which would take us to the top of the mountain, upon which Richard and Erika planned to take us hiking for a few hours. While we were waiting for the vehicular, we saw the cutest little old couple who we found out were 90 years old. The husband, who had worked in a mountain rescue unit in his younger days and was now a volunteer who monitored and tracked the alpine flora and fauna in the area, was decked out in hiking clothes befitting an old-fashioned Austrian mountaineer. His wife was wearing more modern clothes but was so old she hunched over when she walked. They took the vehicular up and hiked a few times per week. Once we were in the vehicular, the old man whipped out his harmonica and played for us the entire way up. It was the cutest thing I have ever seen.
The area where the vehicular dropped us off was a base to hike to different peaks of the surrounding mountains. Richard and Erika regularly hike the peaks (and they don’t take the vehicular up, they HIKE up) but decided to go easy on us and take us on a more leisurely hike that lasted about two hours. We made it to the top of the lowest peak and decided against hiking for another five hours to a different peak (although Richard was all for it, Erika suggested that Caitlin and I may not exactly have planned to hike for 7+ hours that day). Along the way we learned all about alpine flowers, that doing mountain-type sports is becoming extremely popular with younger Austrians, and that the land as far as the eye had seen had once been owned by the Hapsburgs but was broken up and sold off when the empire was dismantled after WWI.
After our hike we had lunch in one of the mountain houses which also dot the landscape of the area. These houses were once hunting lodges and weekend homes for the royal Hapsburgs, but have since been turned into hotels, restaurants, and overnight accommodations for hikers.
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