Bad Hofgastein

Sometimes we go places and I know exactly what the itinerary will be including route, hotel name, how many days we'll stay and some of the basic sights I'd like to see.
Sometimes I just get in the car and hope I've packed enough socks and underwear for the boys.

This trip was one of the latter kind.
The whole thing was a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without ever bothering to look at the picture on the box.  Would have been pretty easy to just, oh I don't know, ask, but I didn't and I don't know why except that I have a sneaking suspicion I'm burning out on traveling.  (oh wah, wah, wah you say and you're perfectly justified in your eye-rolling disgust).  In any case, I knew we were meeting the Deaconus some place in Austria.  And that felt like enough information to keep me from losing sleep the night before departure.

I wasn't even aware, until after we'd been in Bad Hofgastein for five days, that this was where Danut used to live.

Danut wasn't with us in Bad Hofgastein, though.  We left him in Vienna with Gabi and Anca which meant we had no one to translate German for us at the hotel.  It wasn't really a problem except for the eggs.
Every morning we asked for eight and got either one or three.  Mihai's German is rusty but he knows enough to say "eight eggs please."  Sure sounded German to me but maybe he was confused and was really saying "another pitcher of hot, frothy milk please."  And I was pretty okay with that, because what beats hot, steamed milk in your morning coffee as you watch the snow fall outside the window?  Not much, let me tell you.
But after a while we just kind of wanted eggs.

Prior to this trip I had believed that when all else fails in attempts at verbal translation, holding up the appropriate number of fingers would always get you through. Apparently that's not the case but I suppose these are the lessons one learns from traveling.
Anyway, the woman serving us was so gregarious and jovial that it made getting upset over something as trivial as the correct number of eggs seem really silly.
In her defense I will tell you that one egg, when it's hard boiled, can be sliced into eight pieces and distributed to eight breakfasters.  When the waitress returned to the dining room and glanced at our table, well, from her vantage point it would seem we all had eggs on our plates.
And it's possible she thought we actually preferred small portions since Americans are notoriously obsessed about cholesterol.  We weren't really a group of Americans but we were speaking English a lot and she can't be blamed for that bit of confusion which was entirely our doing.  It's that ubiquitous English again.  Now you can add not getting enough eggs to the list of ways it will screw you over.

In any case, I realize I've already posted about this trip but there were so many lovely photos I didn't get to share the first time around that it felt wrong not to do another one.  How could I pass up the opportunity to show you more of the beauty in Bad Hofgastein, particularly since I understand California is experiencing a dearth of snowfall this winter.
We got snow and lots of it, sandwiched right between the drive in and the drive out which was perfect.

Bad Hofgastein is a lovely little town.  Shockingly underpopulated considering it was the week between Christmas and New Year.  My kind of place: no crowds, no lines, no waits.
But no eggs either.