Vorarlberg

Just to be on the safe side, we'll start this one with another pronounciation guide, it's Forarlberg if you happen to be thinking in english. What is this Forarlberg? Why, it is the province/Bundesland/whatever in the far West of Austria, bordering Switzerland to the South and West and Germany to the North. It mostly consists of Alps. Why did I go there? The previous sentence may give you a clue. More exactly, I had been intending to visit my Erasmus 'buddy' (the standard joke is that we are never friends, just buddies...) Ruth in her homeland for the whole summer, but business and abominable weather meant that I just couldn't manage it in my time in Austria, so I had to go back.

The less said about the boring plane journey from Heathrow to southern Germany (Friedrichshafen, englishly free-dricks-harfen, or fry-drick-shaffen to the shockingly uninformed man at the Lufthansa check in desk) the better.

When Ruth asked how long I wanted to go hiking during my stay, I answered 'as long as possible!' So after driving to her family home, briefly admiring its bewilderingly large size (although it is by no means an unusually large house by Austrian countryside standards) and eating some tasty foods, we set off that very evening through the thick mist to reach after 2 hours the mountain hut at 1744m, where we would stay the night. The translation is rather inadequate, this 'hut' in the Austrian alps resembles the most amazing up market, pine panelled and shiny youth hostel you could imagine. We slept in the big communal sleeping area, and that only cost me €14 a night. The place was packed in the evenings, due to the promise of some halfway decent weather that had apparntly been rather lacking in the area this summer.

After picking up two friendly frenchmen and inviting them to come with us on our hike, in addition to two further Austrian friends, we set off the next day to, well, climb a mountain. The hiking is probably best left to the picture gallery to describe. Needless to say the whole experience was tiring, but completely worth it for the views and just for the knowledge the next morning when I looked up at the peak that 'I was there'. And I saw a mountain goat. The Austrians kept apologising or the poor weather, and I had to explain that for a British walker, clouds above the level of the peaks (especially if said peaks are 2800m high!) is perfect weather, no matter if everything is still a bit grey.

One friendly evening filled with hearty Bergsteigeressen ('mountaineer food'), beer, conversation and a peculiar Vorarlberg card game using a deck of only 36 cards (from 6 to Ace) later, and one restless night due to the snores of the large walking party we were sharing the Lagerraum with that day, we awoke more or less refreshed and embarked on a second hike.

This time part of the route led us up a Klettersteig, better known to the English as a Via Ferrata. If you don't know any of those words, what it is is a long series of cables bolted at intervals to the rock, accompanied by bolted iron rungs on the vertical or near vertical parts of the rockface. You wear a harness and a helmet, and clip onto the safety cable at all times. It is a relatively safe and easy way of climbing a larger and more sheer rockface than you would otherwise be able to without a long rope and lots of climbing gear and experience. This one included a brief jaunt through a cave halfway up! I have enclosed a handy route guide at the end of the photo album for the curious. It was a long way from the top of the Klettersteig to reach the highest peak I have personally ever climbed, a paltry but not insignificant 2817m up. I returned to the hut even more exhausted than before, able only to lose very very very badly in a further spate of Vorarlberg card games that evening.

My final hiking day in Austria dawned rather rainy, so we walked for distance rather than height, winding our way down to the valley floor and back to Ruth's house. That night I was given the opportunity to attempt to polish my poor knowledge of the local dialect by going out to a Spanish bar with the Austrians. Vorarlbergisch is basically Swiss, and thus really really different to your average school german. Even 'ein zwei drei' sounds like 'een zwee dree'... I am still very poor at it but apparently I am better than the Viennese. This strikes me as because the Viennese don't WANT to learn it, not that they are worse at austrian dialect learning than me. Oh those big city people, eh?

In conclusion, Alps are fantastic, and I will undoubtedly be back in them as soon as doing so doesn't require me to be wearing skis.

Der Tom