Ischgl by Vitali Vitaliev
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"Gut!" he muttered through clenched teeth and went on.
I always liked Austria: its quirky old towns and friendly people, with their melodious and almost mellifluous German and a peculiar self-deprecating humour. "We are clever people," they say in Vienna. "We turned Hitler into a German and Beethoven into an Austrian."
Austrian Alpine villages behind the squeaky-clean windows of our post bus were less picturesque and more run-down that the Swiss ones. Yet, they were also more colourful in everything, apart from the names of their hotels, which were all called "Edelweiss," "Belvedere" or "Lowen." And, the mountains no longer looked man-made and picture-postcard-ish as they did in Switzerland.
The new passengers on the bus were chatting loudly in what sounded like a Tyrolean dialect of German, possibly Ladin. They were laughing a lot. It was hard to believe that the bus - totally silent minutes ago - was still the same: in Switzerland one doesn't often hear people laugh in public. Can it be that a vehicle - be it a train, a bus, or even a private car - acquires some of the personality or identity of the country it passes through?
The bus arrived at Landeck railway station at precisely 14-21 - as per the timetable! After Switzerland, the station looked pleasantly dirty-ish.
I was met by an obese apoplexic driver who didn't speak a word of English. All the way to Ischgl, he puffed and wheezed behind the wheel, and I was seriously worried he would have a stroke while driving.
Ischgl is a popular Austrian skiing resort. Walking to the tourism office, I saw organised crowds of German skiers marching from cable cars to their hotels and pounding the ground with their ski boots - as if goose-stepping on the snow.
It was dusk. The mountains surrounding Ischgl looked dark and uninviting. Close to the top of one of the peaks, I could discern ant-like dots of skiers descending back into Austria across the imaginary Swiss border, behind which the village of Samnaun was nestled somewhere on the other side of the mountain.
I wondered whether the skiers were stopped by frontier guards and asked to show their passports while coming down the slope and made a mental note to take mine with me tomorrow - just in case.
Near Silverbahn station, a large group of German skiers was crowded outside a beer kiosk. They were swinging and singing a German song in an amazingly synchronic chorus. In their hands, they were clutching plastic cups with beer. Their skis and poles stood next to them in the snow like temporarily discarded halberds while they were getting seriously drunk after the day of skiing. The kiosk was appropriately called "Apres Ski."
Narrow, snow-ridden streets of Ischgl were full of people. In the crowd, I could hear occasional British voices: "Hey, girls! Come with us!" (This came from a group of tipsy British teenagers). I had been dying to hear English speech, but now I wished I hadn’t.
I suddenly realised that 90 percent of the crowd was already very drunk, and it was not yet 6 p.m. German and British holidaymakers had a lot in common when drunk, the only difference being that the Germans, while equally boorish, seemed to be much better organised.
A huge queue, like I hadn't seen since Russia, was snaking in the snow around the town's only supermarket. It reminded me of the seven-mile-long line to Moscow's first McDonald’s on the day of its opening in January 1990. Well, to be honest, the Ischgl queue was a little bit shorter.
Squeezed by dripping skis and boots protruding from all sides, I bought myself some cheese and salami after 30 minutes of queuing at a tiny, yet outrageously expensive, Backerei (deli) before retiring to my Garni Hotel. I had had enough of Ischgl - this Alpine mini-Blackpool - and was looking forward to a quiet solitary evening.
My hotel "suite" consisted of two separate premises: a fairly unremarkable window-less bedroom and a so-called Stube - a spacious room with large ivy-lined bay windows all along the front wall. Apart from a comfy rocking chair and several pots with flowers, the Stube was empty. Rooms like this were often to be found in German and Austrian rural households. I had also seen them in Moldova, where they were called Casa Mare - a room with sea view.
Their sole purpose was quiet contemplation and relaxation at the end of a working day. The Stube’s peculiar layout corresponded to an observation of Bernard van Beurden, a Dutch writer: "The Austrian has a two-roomed house. One room is bright and friendly, a well-furnished room, where he receives his guests. The other room is dark, with the blinds down, locked, inaccessible, completely out of bounds to strangers."
According to Professor Erwin Ringel, an Austrian scholar, this reflected a dichotomy of the Austrian mind - friendly and conformist on the surface, yet angry and jealous underneath - with both anger and jealousy directed primarily at Germans who had allegedly hijacked their culture and were now basking in wealth. Having observed the behaviour of German skiers in Ischgl, I could understand if not the jealousy, then definitely the anger.
Unfortunately, instead of a sea view, my Stube was facing Ischgl's main street with a bright neon "Casino" sign across the road. I lowered the curtains and, having taken a bath, lowered myself into the rocking chair only to realise that relaxation and/or contemplation were going to be hard to achieve.
Drunken din behind the curtained bay windows was growing by the minute. From time to time, piercing human shrieks could be heard. Watching the endless procession of some unsteady human shadows, I wished spring came soon and the screaming skiers melted away with the snow.
Closer to midnight, the noise somewhat died down. I opened the curtains and, soothed by sharp-ish Austrian Riesling chased with stinky Tyrolean cheese, sat in the dark watching. It felt like being in front of a TV screen: no one could see me from the street, but I could see them. If anything, the Stube was a good vantage point for a writer - allowing him to observe without being noticed.
Outside, in the nearly deserted street, an empty bottle was tossed about by the wind. Whenever it hit the curb, it clinked submissively - like wind chimes, disturbed by a passing drunk.