45 in Oberlech

It’s an hour and 20 to Zurich, a two hour drive to Lech and then a gondola into Oberlech where cars are forbidden and only hotels and skiers reside.  It’s half term break.

Austria was not on my bucket list.  But during the first week of school a friend said that if we want a ski vacation, this is where everybody goes and you better reserve your room.  And so if you view this year as an adventure you jump in and rationalize that if you can spend Passover in Dubai, then Austria is part of the ride.

Oberlech is in the Arlberg region, the home of Alpine skiing and a grouping of small towns, many of which are abandoned in Summer, only open for a few snowy months a year.

It’s very Austrian, with big busted bar maids who look like St. Pauli Girl, plenty of Wiener schnitzel, Goulash and Almdudler.

Our 21 year old ski guide is Austrian, she lives in Zurich, she speaks German, Austrian-German, English and she’s very wise.  When the children order chicken nuggets and hot chocolate from the Fraulein I lament about American kids.  She shares that the Turkish and Russian kids are the worst.  “It’s new money.”

Her most astute comment is about the time she was refused a beer in a New York bar.  "I had been drinking beer and wine at my parents’ dinner table since I was 16.  We have no drinking and driving problems in Austria.  We learn to drink long before we learn to drive.  Once we start driving we already know how to handle alcohol.”

Another ski instructor, a well-spoken 33 year old kept making Schwarzenegger references as if he were the only Austrian I would know.  I’ve heard of the Von Tropps and Kurt Waldheim for G-d sakes.

The specter of the war is here, however.  Two ski instructors got into it because one of them had a German mother.  The Austrian was bragging that Hitler had to go to Germany to get people to follow him, the Austrians were too smart.  It may not be fair, but all the American tourists wonder aloud what the old people in the town were doing during the War.

An odd place to celebrate 45.  With half the family in London, bad internet connections and the rest of our life in the US, it has a distinctly distant Austrian feel.  Forty five has no great appeal.  It is not the beginning, middle or end of anything.  But for some reason when you see your birth date up there on a newspaper it still screams, YOUR DAY.  Even if that paper is the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten.