St. Gilgen and a Cable Car Ride

During breakfast, the manager of our hotel told us how the Salzburg area was experiencing bizarre weather this summer: super high humidity resulting in heavy showers every afternoon (usually around 4:00pm). Salzburg has received 7 times more rain than they received at this point last year. We would need to plan around the rain to the best of our abilities.

David picked the kids up from the youth hostel and they seemed much happier to see us this morning. We heard about their week: kayaking, tubing, banana boating, exploring the largest ice caves in the world, karaoke, cliff jumping, hiking in the mountains, swimming, visiting the village, sailing, windsurfing, etc. Not a bad week.

We spent the day exploring St. Gilgen and just as we exited our hotel, the church bells were calling people to Mass. Almost everyone who passed us on their way to church was wearing traditional Austrian clothing: dirndl on the women and lederhosen on the men. I wanted so badly to take a picture of the churchgoers, but didn't want to be disrespectful. It was my mission during the day to convertly take pictures of people dressed in dirndl and lederhosen.

Lederhosen means leather trousers and were traditionally worn by Germanic men of the Alpine and surrounding regions, including Austria, the mountains of Southern Germany, the German-speaking part of Italy's province of Bolzano-Bozen, but not Switzerland.

Lederhosen have remained regionally popular and are commonly associated with virility and brawn. Some men enjoy wearing them when hiking, working outdoors, on a stag night, or attending folk festivals and beer gardens; they are rarely seen elsewhere. Lederhosen have remained a symbol of regional pride. Their role in Bavaria, Germany is comparable to that of the kilt in Scotland or the cowboy hat in the United States.

A dirndl is a type of traditional dress worn in southern Germany, Liechtenstein and Austria, based on the historical costume of Alpine peasants. The dirndl consists of a bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron. Shoes should only be worn in cold weather, but I did not see anyone barefoot today.

The placement of the knot on the apron is sometimes an indicator of the woman's marital status. A knot tied on the woman's left side indicates she is single, a knot tied on the right means she is married, engaged or otherwise "taken", and a knot tied in back means the woman is widowed. Originally, each village had its own dirndl style and crest. The Austrian upper classes adopted the dirndl as high fashion in the 1870 and today, they vary from simple styles to exquisitely crafted, very expensive models.

The dirndl is mostly worn in Bavaria and Austria. Although not an everyday dress, many women may wear it at formal occasions (much like a Scotsman wearing a kilt) and during certain traditional events. It is hugely popular also among young women at the time of the Oktoberfest in Munich and similar festivals in southern Germany and Austria.

Popular designs are often much brightly colored, with more ornamentation and decorative trim, and much more revealing and provocative. The true dirndl will be softer in color (as traditional vegetable dyes were not able to make bright colors), less revealing, and less gaudy in style.

A billboard sign featuring a garden gnome, a common backyard decoration in Germany and Austria. I will admit to having spied 5 different gnomes in our backyard.

Micaela and Rebecca in our cable car taking a ride up Zwölferhorn Mountain.

David, James and Emilie's cable car

Plenty of people were hiking up the mountain

Emilie and Rebecca and I enjoyed the view for well over an hour and got too much sun. David, Micaela and James hiked a few kilometers down the mountain in search of a geocache. Micael and James were in good spirits descending the mountain, all the while doing imitations of Bear Grylls from the TV show Man vs. Wild. James strikes what he says is a Bear pose in this photo.

View of St. Gilgen village with a paraglider in the distance

Finding the cache. Geocaching is a type of treasure hunt using modern technology. You look up locations of caches on the internet (there are over 800,000 all over the world maintained by private people who love geocaching), where coordinates of the cache and clues to its exact location are given to you. Using a GPS and sharp eyes, you find the hidden cache which is usually some kind of box, log in your name and the date you found it in a notebook and then back home, log in your info on the internet.

Back in Georgia, we often went geocaching near where we lived as well as when we went camping. David even found a geocache (a Sucrets tin) in a stairwell light fixture of an office building across the street from where he worked. Caches will often contain trinkets for children, but if you take something from the cache, you should leave something behind as well.

James and cows with traditional cow bells around their necks

The kids' mood changed when they realized they now had to make the several kilometer hike back up the mountain.

In this great photo, James was actually completely miserable and furious with his father. Micaela took no break hiking back up, not wanting to prolong her agony. She arrived at the top of the mountain red-faced and teary from the effort.

Mostly recovered now and ready to ride the cable car back down the mountain.