The trip to Heinzi’s house was very nice. I say Heinzi as everyone seems to have nicknames. Giki, for example, is Angelika. Her other brother, who went along with us, is named Putzi, which means baby. His actual name is Gerhart, which was also his father’s name. It is all too cute, or should I say “cuti.”
At any rate, Heinz’s vacation home is in lower Austria, set in a meadow under an 11th century castle. The home is part of a vacation home subdivision in that there are about 60 other bungalows there, but each backs up to one of the large meadow, so you never see the other houses and you feel like you are in the midst of nature. The house itself was small (or better said, energy efficient in comparison to the oversized houses that we have in the States), but charming. We walked up to the castle, which overlooked the valley. It was absolutely stunning, but had just closed for the day. Well, we will just have to come back. I will see if I can attach a photo of the castle to this email to give you an idea.
In a few moments, we have to go off to see if we can find an open grocery store. It seems that almost all of the shops are closed on Sunday. The real drama is that we are out of coffee.
We are hoping that at least some of the restaurants are open, as we have to feed ourselves lunch today. There is a fast food schnitzel place next door that we hope to try if in fact it is open. Then we are off to visit Eva, another cousin, who lives with her three children in the countryside. Her husband is managing the operations of Cannon in Turkey and commutes back and forth from in Istanbul.
