Schärding

Obernberg town square
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Tuesday. I’ve added some pictures to yesterday’s report, since I wasn’t able to do that last night.

Today was cool, but no rain and the sun came out for at least part of the afternoon. The bicycling was also more interesting than yesterday, as our bike path often took us away from the river--now the Inn River, which we last saw at Innsbruck. The hills were often steep, but usually short, and we made our way alongside farms and hydroelectric plants and through a number of interesting towns.

Colorful town squares

Scharding town square
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We explored a bit of Braunau, a lovely little town that also happens to be the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. Salzburg to Braunau--Mozart’s birthplace to Hitler’s. That pretty well sums up the extremes of Austria’s contributions to world history. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has created more beauty than the one or caused more misery than the other, and born just 50 miles apart from one another.

Also in Braunau was a war memorial to the local men who died in the two world wars. It was an odd feeling to walk through the memorial and read the plaques dedicated to the Austrians who died at places like Stalingrad. There was also a plaque dedicated to local soldiers who died in Soviet labor camps between 1944 and 1949. There’s a story there that neither of us knows, but I suppose there are lots of stories in war that the victors don’t have in their history books.

Ein saftiger Apfel am Tag und die Welt ist in Ordnung
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Obernberg, where we stopped for lunch, and Schärding, where we’re spending the night, both have extravagantly painted town squares. As we walked through Schärding this evening, with the buildings all lit up, it felt a bit like strolling through a miniature town set up by FAO Schwartz.

We’ve been thinking about the differences between Germany and Austria the past few days as we cross from one to the other, on foot or by train or by bicycle. Before coming here, I’d never really thought about the difference and most likely thought of Austria as just an extension of Germany. But it feels like a very different place, as though we’ve made a shift from western to central Europe. I’ve wondered what an Austrian identity feels like, given that it was part of the Hapsburg Empire for almost 700 years, until the end of World War I. And looking at these town squares, I think of how open Austria has been to other influences--Bohemian, Moravian, Hungarian, Italian,and so forth-- whereas Germany, I think, has always been less resistant to cultural influence from others.