After my ascent of Hafelekar with Peter, the weather went downhill just as fast as we did (we took the cable car and train). The rain started at the peak and continued the rest of that day, and on into the next.
Needless to say, my shoes had seen better days. I went back to my hostel and was very glad that I had brought a pair of sandals with me. While not providing any warmth, at least I had an alternative to my hiking shoes for the couple of days it took for them to dry out.
That night, I met up with Patricia to see an Austrailian folk band touring around Europe called Wishing Well. I was exhausted, having been up since 7am to go hiking, and this band did not do a particularly good job in keeping me awake.
As my composition teacher, Norman Sherman, once told me . . . it's ok not to like something, but you have to know why. Well, here's why.
Wishing Well, which consists of a singer/acoustic guitar player, drummer, cellist and two violinists, is basically a singer/song-writer who got 3 good looking women to wear bustiers and skirts while playing extremely boring and sappy lines on their instruments for songs that are pretty slow to begin with. Oh, and the drummer plays behind the beat, sucking whatever other energy these songs might have had.
I actually feel a little bit sorry for the string players. I mean, most people who play a string instrument at a high level (and these players didn't display any tuning issues common to weak players) can actually play difficult material. Having to tour for months, only playing these slow, long lines must get tiresome for these three ladies.
The actual arrangements of the songs involved one of the string instruments playing a pretty little melody line, and then revert to playing long slow notes. It was fundamentally like "(Insert popular band name here) with strings" . . . except these guys aren't a popular band.
Enough of my musical snobbism. The next morning I travelled to Zell am See, which, if it hadn't been raining the entire time I was there, would have been delightful. I was hoping to do more hiking, and Zell has more than enough to do. However, my shoes hadn't dried yet (although there was a hair dryer in my Penzion), so I wasn't about to go traipsing around the mountains to have wet, soggy shoes for as long as it took them to dry in Vienna.
I was very pleased with the place I stayed at in Zell -- Haus Haffner.
This is a little B&B (although in Germany and Austria, they're called Penzions) run by a carpenter and his family. It was very comfortable, with a nice soft, warm bed, a sink in the room, and even a TV. For my first TV watching in over a month, I chose to flip between American films dubbed into German.
Observations about Zell am See: It seems like a resort town. There's not much to do if the weather is shitty. I found a movie theatre, but just about everything else was geared towards the outdoors - skiing in the winter, and hiking and climbing in the summer. However, I'll have to come back another time in the hopes of finding better weather! For now, these will have to w(h)et your appetite...
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