Smaller text Larger text

Reutte

Posted on

Boys and Castles

Sir Rick, the first knight of Ehrenberg
Enlarge photo
The sword of Sir Rick in its museum display case, Reutte, Austria
Enlarge photo
Architect Armin and guidebook writer Rick celebrate atop newly excavated and restored castle ruins
Enlarge photo
The Ehrenberg castle ensemble once guarded the Tirolians from the Bavarians
Enlarge photo

I was in Hohenschwangau. It was “Mad” King Ludwig’s dad’s castle — Ludwig’s boyhood home. The walls were all painted in 1835 by a single artist, giving the place a Tolkien-romance-fantasy feel. Ludwig became king as a boy. And rather than live with the frustrations of a modern constitution and feisty parliament reigning him in, he spent his years lost in romantic literature and operas…chillin’ with Wagner as only a gay young king could.

Nymphs lounged on his circa 1835 walls. Stars twinkled from the ceiling over his bed. A telescope was set up in Ludwig’s bedroom, trained on a pinnacle on a distant ridge where he could watch Neuschwanstein, his castle fantasy, as it was being constructed.

On my last visit, I peered through that telescope at Neuschwanstein– the castle that inspired another boy named Disney. I could relate to this busy boy king. Bound by schoolwork and house rules, and with a stretched-out turtleneck and zits rather than crowns and composer friends, I, too, built a castle.

What I had that Ludwig lacked was a father who imported pianos. They came from Germany, encased in tongue-in-groove pine, sealed in a thick envelope of zinc sheeting. My treehouse was my castle: no parents reining me in, walls decorated with romantic circa 1968 magazines, nails sticking down through the ceiling just long enough to keep out bullies taller than me. With my sliding tongue-in-groove panels, I could see who was coming. With a shiny zinc roof, it was the envy of other little kings. There was no tree house like it.

On my first independent trip to Europe, I was 18. It was just after someone had purchased the vacant lot next to our house, and I had to tear down my tree house (epic bad day). I toured “Mad” King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein — a medieval castle dream. Then, just over the border in Austria, I found the Ehrenberg ruins–a medieval castle reality.

Just a mile outside of Reutte, Austria, are the brooding ruins of four castles that once made up the largest fort in Tirol — Ehrenberg. This impressive castle ensemble was built to defend against the Bavarians and to bottle up the strategic “Via Claudia” trade route that cut through the Alps here as it connected Italy and Germany.

One castle crowned its mountain like an ornery barnacle. The others were lost in a thick forest. I hiked up into the misty mountain of meaningless chunks of castle wall pinned down by pixie-stix trees and mossy with sword ferns. It inspired yet confused me. The barnacle castle was below. The ruins were on the bluff above. Like a big, hungry starfish sits on its food, this rotten military fantasy was being eaten by the forest.

A decade ago I met Armin Walch — a Reutte man with a vision. He was born the same year as me and pursued his project like the Indiana Jones of castle archeologists. Today — with European Union funding — he’s cut away the hungry forest, revealed and renovated what he calls the castle ensemble, created an interactive museum, and is open for business as countless children with medieval fantasies can, in turn, leap from rampart to rampart…sword ferns swinging. (See www.ehrenberg.at for details and photos.)

With my 2008 visit, we celebrated. The Reutte hoteliers and tourism folks gathered in the castle like some old-time city council. We ate rustic cheese and smoked game with coarse bread. We swilled wine and clinked pewter mugs.

I was honored for bringing so many visitors to this remote corner of Austria, and gave a magnanimous impromptu speech about the wonders of Americans climbing through history far from home. I knelt before a man in a coat of mail who drew a shiny sword with my name etched upon it and was knighted — Sir Rick, first knight of Ehrenberg. (With uncharacteristic modesty and characteristic insistence on packing light, I requested that my sword stay in the museum as a special exhibit to the former castle-loving boy who brought American tourism to Reutte with his guidebooks.)

On the way back to my hotel, Armin begged me to stop by his house for a drink. Behind his humble old town facade, this dynamic architect hid a sleek, futuristic, and creative pad. It was a royal domain for Armin and his family — two kids cozy on the carpet and a strikingly beautiful wife who Armin bedazzled at the university in Vienna and took to remote Reutte with promises of a princely life and a bitchin’ castle.

With a schnapps from local herbs — unique to Reutte — in hand, we climbed boyishly to his rooftop, where Armin had designed and built a viewing perch. The floodlighting was on. The mountain overlooking his town was crowned by a castle that, in his youth, almost no one knew even existed. With his pretty blond wife suddenly romantic wallpaper, Armin took me to his telescope. We marveled at his castle ensemble.

Posted on

Can I cook you a good fish?

I discovered many of my favorite “back doors” thirty years ago. Back in the 1970s, places like Hallstatt (south of Salzburg, the gem town on the gem lake in a region of Austria where lakes and Alps are shuffled together like a game of 52 card pick up) were truly “Back Doors” – untouristed. Today, many have become not only touristy…but economically addicted to tourism. I’ve noticed, more than ever, they appreciate the business my guidebooks generate. In Paris, the mayor of my favorite Rue Cler neighborhood threw me a party in the local palace – all the hoteliers, restaurateurs, and shop keepers were there…best macaroons ever. In the Cinque Terre this spring, I was hanging out on the Vernazza harbor-front listening to the town troubadour sing a folk song – not knowing I was in the lyrics. When my name came around he turned to me and cranked up the volume. In Reutte, just over the border from Bavaria’s fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein, I was recently invited into the local knighthood. (You must be present to be knighted…so it’ll have to wait.) And yesterday, here in little Hallstatt, another of my headliner “discoveries,” my friend who runs a restaurant there welcomed me with Hallstatt’s standard “let me cook you a fish” greeting.

I sat under his wall full of big fish heads mounted like deer – gills spread like antlers. I stared at a tour group from Yokohama which filled a restaurant that once fed only locals. As the group headed out (they’ll be in Vienna in 4 hours), the waiter – in his ancient lederhosen – (which always remind me of a permanent wedgie) said “Japanese groups are very big this year.”

My challenge these days, along with finding untouristed places, is to find vivid cultural traditions that survive in places now well-discovered…like Hallstatt.

The next morning, as the sun rose late over the Alps towering above Hallstatt, the guy in the nearly rotten leather shorts took me for a spin in his classic boat. It was a ‘fuhr,’ a centuries-old boat design – made wide and flat for shipping heavy bushels of salt mined here across shallow waters. As he lunged rhythmically on the single oar, he said “an hour on the lake is like a day of vacation.” I asked about the oar lock, which looked like a skinny dog chew doughnut. He said “it’s made of the gut of a bull…not of cow…but a bull.”

Returning to the weathered timber boat house, we passed a teenage boy rhythmically grabbing trout from the fishermen’s pen and killing them one by one with a stern whack to the noggin. Another guy carried them to the tiny fishery where they were gutted by a guy who, forty years ago, did the stern whacking. A cat waits outside the door, confident his breakfast will be a good one. And restaurateurs and home-makers alike – whose dining rooms are decorated with trophies of big ones that didn’t get away – line up to buy fresh trout to feed the hungry tourists, and a good fish to cook for a special friend.