Day 7 – Schneealpenhaus to Neuberg an der Mürz

Daily Distance – 28km
Daily Ascent – 628m
Daily Descent – 1673m
Total Distance – 137km
Distance Remaining – 914km

First out of the gate this morning was leaving the cosiness of Schneealpenhaus (Snow Alps house), while others were still eating breakfast, to ascend Windberg (Wind mountain). At 1903m, it lived up to its name admirably. Beautiful, sunny, but woe betide the foolhardy who try to wear a hat!

Other than this lovely section, the Nordalpenweg guide was less than complimentary about much of this section. The final 9km to Krampen (just down the road from Neuberg a.d. Mürz), it described as “thoroughly not recommended”, and advised to flag down a passing driver and hitchhike to town! While forest roads are not my favourite terrain, although the frequent hunting hides do make for good lunch seating, I don’t share the author’s almost pathological distaste for them, so I walked the 9km. Also, the cars I saw numbered only four, all of which were heading in the other direction.

While walking through the hamlet of Krampen to reach Neuberg an der Mürz, where I will stay for the next two nights, I couldn’t help but reflect that travelling in a group is sometimes beneficial. When walking through streets where every house is an immaculate, rustic, but beautifully styled, semi-mansion, it’s easy to feel out of place in ones sweat encrusted shirt and faded shorts. Not to mention a cap deployed in full Lawrence of Arabia mode by this point. When traveling in a group the stares of disapproval are at least diluted. Fortunately Neuberg seems a more relaxed place. If the bar from Cheers gave birth to a town, it would be called Neuberg. Everyone seems to know everyone else, but the true locals can be identified by the fact that they speak… something. Given that I can mostly interact with them, but can barely understand overheard conversations they have among themselves, I assume there must be a heavy use of dialect in these parts Europe is a funny old place sometimes.

Dinner has come alive this evening at the guest house. They have an accordion player who has drawn quite the crowd of folk-dressed townsfolk. Some are eating, some drinking, and I think some just came to get dressed up on a Saturday night and have a chat. Maybe this is a way of mitigating the decline of the English pub tradition. Restaurants in Austria and Germany seem much more jovial and communal places than in England. It’s curious and quite charming that as soon as food and beer is put in front of a German speaker their default volume and good cheer raises by a good 25%. With folk music add other 10-15%. I assume it’s some sort of Pavlovian reaction that flicks a switch from “work” to “relax”. One word than comes up a lot is “Feierabend”, with the closest I can translate being “Celebration evening”. This is the after work part of the evening, where I suppose one is supposed to celebrate after a long day working hard.

I wonder if I could learn to play the accordion during this walk..