Strass Chapel, Austria

Maria Brettfall, a pilgrimage church above the village of Strass im Zillertal,Tirol.

Goodnight, Ladies

The old girl was gimpy, you could see it in her walk. When the farmer let her out of the barn, she deferred to the grassy places along the outbuildings, avoiding the gravel drive and maybe stopping for a mouthful of grass along the way. Her two little ones were springy like puppies, black and …


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Guest Post: Night Train to Salzburg

My friend Ciaran put himself through all kinds of crappy travel so he could hang out with me in central Austria for about 36 hours. He sent me this email about the train portion of his return trip and I liked it so much I asked him if I could share it with you. He …


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Observations with Linzer Augen

The cookie was a Linzer Auge. I was eating it with a tiny pastry fork at the Linzer Bakery on the main plaza in Schaerding. A Linzer Auge is a sandwich cookie, two crenellated pieces of shortbread filled with red current jam. This was quite a good one, the shortbread was buttery and crumbly, the …


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America, Interpreted

Around 7 pm on July 4th — or maybe it was later, it’s hard to know for sure, it gets dark quite late in our alpine town — there was a blast of fireworks and firecrackers. It didn’t last long, 15 minutes, maybe 20. Then it was all over and I went back to reading …


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