life2gether.nl

Already more than 2 moths ago I promised to write the next post in German as well…in honour of our holiday in Tscheltsch (Austria)… I have to say…it was harder than I thought! But in the end I managed to do it. And why did I really have to write a post in German? Well, haven’t I tried it once in Hebrew as well? So, for our German speaking friends, there’s this time also a German version.
So…Tscheltsch… As a kid I used to go on holiday there 4 to 5 weeks every year with my parents and my brother. Although most kids of our age, when thinking of their holiday, were thinking of sun, sea and beach, we had weeks of daily hikes to look forward to. And I like to say that as if it were a punishment, but everyone who knows me, knows that we enjoyed it a lot every year. Every hike was a new adventure. Whether it was Steineckenalm with its ‚Speckplatte’ and the knives Menno loved to collect, or the Gail with its ice cold water where we played for days, or the many mountain tops where at the cross we could always expect to find a stamp that would bring us a new pin at the end of the holiday, we always enjoyed it a lot.
But for years now Menno and I don’t go on holiday together with our parents anymore. I was there for the last time in 2004 and that was only for two days and even then it was the first time in years. Now however, we could look forward to celebrating my father’s birthday with 10 days of holiday, together with Mum and Dad Wijckmans, Menno and Lian, Emanuel and Aukje, all together in Tscheltsch.
On Thursday morning 21st May Emanuel and I left for the airport. Our flight brought us to Klagenfurt, where Paul and Wil where waiting for us. We’d left England, expecting no more than 20 degrees Celsius…were met however with temperatures of more than 30! Great!
Just in time for dinner we arrived in Tscheltsch, where Menno and Lian had arrived as well maybe half an hour earlier.
Usually things that impress us when we’re kids, fail to do so again…for the adult everything seems smaller, more normal. But not in Tscheltsch. Somehow it never really impressed me as a child anyway, Tscheltsch just was Tscheltsch. Now the mountains seemed higher, the food seemed better, the weather more beautiful and the people friendlier.
This year the area had suffered unusual amounts of snow, so not all hikes were accessible. Most important was Steineckenalm. Menno had been talking about his ‘Brettl Jause’ for weeks now, so he was going to get one! And so Elfriede (our hostess) called the hosts with the request to open up for the Dutch people!! Eventually we ended up going back a second time!
And like with all that’s good in life, the 10 days were over far too soon. A few hikes, a visit to Lienz and it was already time to go home again. Menno and Lian left on the morning of the 30th of May. Paul and Wil brought us to Klagenfurt later that same day. But we had one last visit planned: to Andrea! For us as kids the best thing about our holidays in Tscheltsch had always been the fact that we had friends there. Every year we played for days with the Unterweger kids (from the guesthouse). This year we’d already seen Martin and Thomas in Tscheltsch, but not Andrea. Andrea and her husband live near Klagenfurt, with their 2 kids. And of course we wanted to pay them a quick visit!
But after that it was really over…