Up and down once again

 Day 14: Bad Kleinkirchheim to Arriach

Hours walked: 8:30 - 4:00

Kilometres walked: 16

Quote of the day: “You don’t have a problem with undies hanging off your bag, because you don’t have undies and you don’t have a bag!” - Tamar

Jesuses seen: 3 (all in a church)

Our day started with a large breakfast. Our hotel had a lovely buffet set up, and some of us kept going back for soft-boiled eggs and elderberry jam rolls long after they should have quit. 

With our bellies full, we started walking. In the spirit of keeping our days exciting for the kids, we took the cable car up the steepest bit of the mountain; they enjoyed the ride. We emerged into thick fog, feeling remarkably sprightly for that much elevation gain. We walked up the rest of the mountain, and oohed and aahed at the endless views of white. 

And then we followed a ridge to another slightly lower peak with another cross, and more fog. We were followed closely behind by a trio of older women who dogged our footsteps all day. And then we headed downhill to the very centre of Carinthia, where a webcam took many selfies of us while we ate our corn cakes and tilsitter cheese. Jakob made a halfhearted effort to teach the girls a bit of math, but even five minutes of times tables was enough to put Tova in a funk. Education this month will mostly be about patience and imagination, it seems. 

One of the more exciting parts of our track, apart from the mountaintops, was the Candelabra Tree, which was both an interesting tree and also just a very nice place to relax with its benches, loungers, babbling brook, fountains and homemade pinball-sized labyrinth. 

We walked the last few kilometres into Arriach on a road where we saw about four cars, which felt like a lot. We ducked into the church as we entered town - unusually, it was painted in warm pastel colours with red wooden pews, giving the church a surprisingly cosy feel. We got coffee and iced chocolates at a gasthof, where our fellow hikers were also enjoying their end of the day (and their trip.) Our bill reminded us to always look at the prices on the menu before ordering. 

We completed our tour of town with a stop for tomorrow’s lunch at the grocery store before walking out of town to our guesthouse. Our hostess was very apologetic that the meal on offer was all meat, but the kids enjoyed a hotel-room picnic of yoghurt, bread and cheese.