All quiet on the Western Front

If you cast your memory way, way back to late summer (when one could be forgiven for imagining that the whole Covid thing might actually be on its way out of our lives), and if you happen to be a regular reader of this particular forum, you might recollect some two posts ago the Pemulis Family's planned two-week trip to Austria that was recounted in a story entitled Bad Gastein to the Emergency Doctor. If you do recall such a thing, or if you have just come from re-reading the story now, you'll remember / have just learned that while the trip was planned for two weeks, due to forces beyond our control (force majeur as some call it, and if you're so inclined, you might find yourself reading Threoux & Grosse's interpretation of force majeur in Canadian law conveniently available right here and determine for yourself whether or not in this particular case the fact pattern -- namely Heinrich having become violently ill -- would actually constitute force majeur in a legal sense but then you'd remember that the whole thing took place in Austria which is far outside of the legal jurisdiction of Canada and you would probably start wondering why you were wasting your time), we were forced to abandon the second week and retreat safely to the shores of the Isar. Shortly after our return home, however, we made the astute decision to immediately book the "make up" vacation to ensure that it would indeed take place at some point in the future. Perusing the children's school schedules, it became clear that about the only possible week would be the first week of November and thus we made it official.

Before we get to the ins and outs of Kaprun and the famed nearby Kitzsteinhorn glaciers, let's come back to the present to marvel at the miraculousness of this vacation make up actually having taken place. Not only did the entire week pass by without any incidents of malady from either child, but this week was the first week that the hotel was opened again after their between summer and winter pause. Further, with Covid reasserting its dominance over all things especially in the former land of Emperor Franz Josef, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, et al., all hotels in Austria have been forced to close their doors as of last week for a pre-winter lockdown. So if the holiday had gone horribly awry, like for example we had gotten ourselves all tangled up in a fatal cable car accident or some such thing, one might look back and curse the Gods at the sheer unfairness of it all that we just happened to sneak in during this limited time window where the whole thing could have taken place and it must have been destiny and all that. But, since the holiday went surprisingly quite well, I will instead argue that God must have decided that we deserved it. Or the universe is simply a series of coincidences and people love trying to impose some meaning on top of its chaos. The reader may decide as he, she, or they see fit.

We arrived in Kaprun on a warm fall day with temperatures hitting the environs of I believe 17 or 18 degrees. Upon our arrival we learned that while the hotel was basically empty, in addition to our table and maybe one or two others filled at breakfast and dinner, there was also the Swiss Freestyle Snowboard team and the Japanese Freestyle Ski team in attendance. This place was very different from the family/kid hotel in Bad Gastein. It's more like a party hotel for skiers. Or something like that. But it was great. The food was good, the surrounding mountains were nice, and there was almost nobody there. On our first full day we walked through the Sigmund Thun Klamm: a massive gorge cut through the mountain with a wooden pathway built through.

The next day we took two long cable car rides up to the glacier where skiing happens year-round. We did a long hike with Helga walking the whole way and Heinrich sleeping in the backpack. We walked through the snow which seemed like a novelty at the time but Kaprun had more tricks up its sleeve in the ensuing days...

A day or two later, I can't remember exactly which, we woke up -- in the town -- to snow. Not just a little snow in the air but real snow that stayed on the ground and in some spots just a little ways up the mountain could reach just about to your knees. This is the same town that just days earlier had greeted us with near-20 degree sunny temperatures. Helga loved the idea of swimming in the pool (outdoor, heated) while it snowed on us from above, and it was kind of cool, but the novelty wore out quickly as her lips became blue and her teeth chattered, and we ran through the snow back to the sauna-like warmth of our room.

We did some mountain trail running (only the parents, that is), some more hikes, we visited some Austrian bakeries, drank the local beer (again, just the parents), picked up some lunch pizza from the restaurant down the street, watched some télé (the kids), and even one night went out to the hotel bar after the kids had been safely put to bed.

All in all, although the hotel is not really designed for kids (it's not adults only, of course, but it's not like some of the places that we've been where there's kids programs and kids running around everywhere screaming and yelling and carrying on) but it was really quite pleasant and to paraphrase my older brother, because it fits so well here, the kids were 50% well-behaved, which was double the expected rate.

THE END