In keeping with this unexpected and slightly incongruous international theme, tomorrow we set off by train to go to Austria. We'll be calling to see an old friend - she came to us as an au pair when our children were small, and helped us move to Kent in 1987. The beautiful and kind young lady we loved so much is now a granny in her own right. It seems scarcely credible, but there it is. She lives in a tiny railway junction town called Attnang-Puchheim about halfway between Salzburg and Linz and we will stay with her for a couple of days.
The decision to go by train was partly curiosity, partly for a quieter journey, definitely an increasing dislike of the experience of airports, partly a green feeling, and partly to stick two fingers up to the whole Brexit process. The plan when we booked was to be in Europe when the Brexit debacle happened, although the date has changed now. We bought our tickets from the astonishingly well-informed team at the train shop called Rail Canterbury - how they keep all that info in their heads is a mystery. For instance, without looking anything up, and in answer to a random enquiry I made, the lady said you can't go to Copenhagen by train in a day - you have to spend a night in Hamburg. Oh well, that's that then. Anyway, we'll set off from home about 4am tomorrow via Eurostar to Brussels and then on to Frankfurt and Munich, and we should get to Salzburg by night-time. One night in a hotel and four nights in a self-catering apartment in the city centre.
The website for Salzburg mostly promotes Mozart tours, or Sound-of-Music tours, and there are the mountains, the salt mine, and the bier kellars to explore. It's a shame the sun has come out here and things are looking so beautiful and springlike at home, because the temperature in Austria is several degrees colder, but never mind. We're leaving the house and goldfish and pot plants in the care of a friend who's staying - I suppose everything will look different when we come back in a few days.
Our Austrian friend Edith wants us to bring what she calls 'black tee' with us, so we'll do that. I think tee is an infinitely preferable say of spelling it.
There is so much going on at the moment, with the chaos at Westminster, the huge march in London on Saturday (2 million said the police later on) and the Revoke Article 50 petition well over 5.5million, and the Leavers being so brutal and negative, and the Remain side being awfully polite about it all... while the country goes down the pan, as far as we can see. Money haemorrhaging out of the city, jobs evaporating, and austerity biting down into every aspect of life: hospitals, schools, roads, care homes, emergency services, housing, childhood, etc etc. The press spouts unexpurgated fascist and racist toxins. It's quite depressing. Yet while the millions marched in London I was at the Juice Plus conference in Brighton - all rah rah rah! The company forges ahead (thank god). On the way home from supper at the Brighton Hilton on Friday night, walking along the seafront, we were set on by a very aggressive beggar who stampeded John (our retired eye-surgeon friend), who is well over 6' but in his eighties. The beggar was frightening and we three women moved in to shout at him and get between him and John who is not as nimble on his pins as he was. Glamour at one moment, and frightening street attack at the next. This is the world we live in now. I hope Salzburg offers something more peaceful!
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