Sunday, April 22, 2012

Aggstein - Wachau







Took a little trip to Aggstein castle on a beautiful spring day. Perfect blue skies, and fresh green all around us. The trees on the mountains are especially beautiful in their greens. There is the dark green of the evergreens, contrasted with the fresh almost neon green of the newly sprouted leaves. You can see a little of this in the photos, but the sparkling clarity that was the reality is hard to represent in a photo. And down the middle of this is the at times deep green, at other times sparkling blue of the Donau swiftly running its course through the mountains.

Mountain High










The week before Easter we made a car trip through Austria to Switzerland (to visit friends), then back into Germany (Heidelberg, to visit friends), and on through Bavaria (to visit friends). On the way to Switzerland we overnighted in Innsbruck. The city is all about mountains. Down every street you see snow capped mountains. Before we left we took a Gondola to the top of one of the mountains. Wow!! First, there is still plenty of snow, way up top, even in April. Second, it was a perfectly sunny day. Third, it's like you are in heaven way up on top of the mountain. You can see forever, over three or more distant snow capped mountain ranges. In fact you feel like you are above the mountain ranges looking down! It's as if you were standing on a cloud! A small airplane flew past us standing on the mountain edge, and it was BELOW us!

Not much was going on this late in the season, but that added to the pleasure as we were not in any crowds. A bar, and ice cave were open behind us, and the bar was pumping out chill trance music. The sun was so bright and warm you could sun bath in the snow!

As an added pleasure we played with a big black dog. We threw him snow balls to fetch, and in general chased each other around. The dog was pitch black, and if it wasn't for his playful mood I would have taken him as some kind of evil mountain spirit.

We want to go back to the mountains this summer. It's such a mind blowing experience standing up there. So peaceful, so free. Gotta do it again.