Betty
(Bvsteenwyk)
Last summer my youngest daughter Gretchen and I traveled to Austria to collect my oldest daughter who was an exchange student in Lustenau for the year. We landed in Zürich and took the train to St. Gallen, where we were met by my daughter Elizabeth and her Host Family. I am very impressed by the train system. We were able to purchase tickets at the airport and directly board a train to our destination. Except for getting into the wrong train car and having to navigate through a lot of impatient people to the correct car, the experience was very pleasant. Lustenau is on the Swiss-Austrian border with quaint buildings and super friendly people. Elizabeth’s host family lives a block from the town center, which has a super fresh fruit market that I attended the day after I arrived. There is something special about getting to know the people who grow your food- they can tell you all about it and it is extremely fresh and tasty. A local organic farm that I visited had wonderful fresh herbs and made their own vinegar and oil combinations. They were very proud of their meat and poultry, which came from “happy” cows and chickens. Elizabeth’s family was very concerned with environmental and health issues, as was most of the people I met in Lustenau. Upon returning to the United States, Elizabeth was very concerned that we only buy meat and produce from farms that had “happy” livestock. Apparently there were a lot of information given out on cramped slaughter house conditions of mass produced produce and meat farms in the US and all were suspicious of US grown food. During the past year, Elizabeth had attended school in a near by town called Dornbirn.
She gave us a tour of the village, along with showing us her school. There is a building near the center of town that she was especially interested in showing me. The color was sort of a burnt red and there were scenes depicted on the upper areas around the roof. Apparently they used blood as paint and time had aged it to the present color. Considering the quantity of paint that must have been necessary, I wonder how many animals died to produce the required amount.
Another place we visited near Lustenau was a town called Bregenz. It is on the Bodensee and a gateway to the Alps that stand above the town.
We took a cable car up to a restaurant above the town where on a clear night, you can see all the way to Italy.
The boats on the lake at night were a sight with their lights twinkling in the distance. While we were there, they
were getting ready for the festival seasons of the summer and already evidence of future events were displayed
in and around the water and boardwalk. We had a lovely meal at a restaurant on the water and watched the sun set
while dining on the local cuisine.
Since my daughter was still in school, Gretchen and I took a 2 week drive around Germany, visiting friends and
former exchange students who have lived with us in the past. We rented our car in Bregenz at an office that turned
out to be in the Turkish embassy. It was through Budget rentals and the little Opel Astra we rented proved its
worth in gold as it took us easily all over Germany and back. We left Lusteanu on a Monday morning and drove all
the way to Jänschwalde which is a little town northeast of Cottbus in the eastern part of Germany. The Polish
border is 13 miles from where our friends lived.
On our trip to Jänschwalde (in the Spreewald) we canoed through the waterways and canals. On the canals, there is a series of locks which we had to manually operate in order to continue on our way.
Our friend, being a former East German fighter pilot, showed us also areas where military operations during the cold war used to be. It was all very interesting and we gained a new perspective of that era in our life.
After dining with the neighbors at a BBQ, we retired early in anticipation of our trip the next day to Berlin. Our friends took us to see Körper Welten, which is a display of human bodies and parts, preserved through a special plastinization process that results in the specimens appearing like manufactured replicas. The exhibit showed all different body parts that were healthy and then their counterparts that were diseased. We saw complete bodies with only their muscular system displayed, as well as cross sections of the brain and other parts.
The exhibit was fascinating, if not a bit horrifying. I was mesmerized and spent several hours reading about each exhibit. The most amazing exhibit was of a man riding a horse, both totally preserved in their muscular state. I recommend seeing this to anyone who has an interest in how our bodies would look without our skin. This is an exhibit that travels around, so it is possible that it will come to the US sometime. This is a must see.
After leaving Berlin, we traveled on the
autobahn to Bremen. Bremen is in northern Germany and the farthest north that we got on this trip. Our newest exchange
student and his family live there, and we spent a delightful night meeting them and our new son to be. We traveled
the next day to Oldenburg, which is to the west of Bremen and where we met up with other friends. On a day trip
to Bad Zwischenahn, our friends drove us through the middle of this small town, which had colorfully painted, full
size statuary of cows, a reminder of a festival in the recent past. There were at least 30 differently painted
cows along the sidewalks between the shops and on the corners. They were very well done and added unique color
to the already famous area known for its healing baths.
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After visiting there for a few days, we traveled south to a little village called Losheim am See, which is a bit
north of Saarbrücken and near the French border. A former exchange student of ours, Eva lived there and we
were treated to a wonderful tour around her village and a visit to the local Knippe Anlage near the lake. A Kneippanlagen
is a place where they have very cold water, and patrons are supposed to walk through knee deep icy water three
times in order to increase circulation and invigorate the body.
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This treatment is also done by dipping your forearms into a trough like apparatus in order to invigorate the upper arms. It was very cold, but I have to say that my circulation did increase, especially since I took a short jog afterwards to warm my body back up.
Our trip concluded with the drive back to Lustenau to finally pick up my daughter and drive to Vienna where our planes left for the states. The drive through Austria to Vienna was beautiful, the mountains all that I had expected from pictures.
Vienna is an amazing place, to which I will have to return to visit properly sometime. This trip was so very exciting
that I am taking my husband back with me in February when we meet our friends from Oldenburg in Mainz for Fasching.
Tschüs,
Betty VanSteenwyk
