Folks in a town that was quite remote (heard)

I spent much of our week in Austria singing the Lonely Goatherd song from The Sound of Music. This earworm might easily be explained by the fact that we began our Austrian adventure in Salzburg, a city which bears the dubious distinction of being the home of The Sound of Music. It might further be explained by the fact that this song was the encore for a fantastic Sound of Music marionette performance which we caught at one of the world's oldest marionette theatres while we were in town. Regardless of how the song got into my brain in the first place, once we left Salzburg and ventured into gorgeous Zell Am See, I kept gazing up at the unbelievable sights of the Austrian Alps and the only words that came to mind were "lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo." Oh, how my family must have loved having me around last week. (Oh, how much you must all be loving me right now.)

Don't you just see him there, the lonely goatherd, a little off to the left?

The Alps may have inspired me to yodel (What can I say? There were lots of things high on hills. One could easily have been a lonely goatherd...), but they also took my breath away. The resort town of Zell Am See, where we spent the majority of our Austrian holiday, was stunning; tremendous mountains, a crystal clear lake, and even -- due the the well-placed, though completely accidental timing of a summer festival one of the days that we were there -- folks in lederhosen and Bavarian dresses drinking copious amounts of beer long before the pretty bell tower had even struck noon. This was our kind of town.

We've been champions of the city break up until this point, pushing our children ahead through one urban landscape after another. This trip, our "interlude between lives" holiday, was nothing like our previous travels. After a quick visit to Salzburg, we spent the majority of our time at an all-inclusive "kinderhotel" in Zell Am See. We climbed a few mountains. We forded a few streams. But quite frankly, we spent the majority of our time with our asses plonked down on lounge chairs while our children ran and played with the other kids in the resort. It took us a few days to relax and unwind, but by the end of the week, I was starting to remember what a "vacation" truly feels like. We have traveled a lot in the past 2 years. But we haven't taken a single vacation. It turns out that I really like vacations. And my kids? They really seem to like vacations, too.


We returned to London rested, somewhat relaxed (What can I say? We're pretty tightly wound...) and just a bit detached from our lives here. As our minicab slipped through the streets of London, I found myself thinking what a good idea this trip had been and congratulating myself for a such well planned, strategically placed vacation. And then we got back into our flat and dropped our bags on the floor and Paul heaved an enormous sigh of relief. "It's not your fault, because you didn't know how it would all feel," he told me. "But we're not ever traveling so close to an impending move ever again. That was an impossible situation."

Huh. So, uh, I take it all back. Perhaps we weren't all so rested and relaxed after all. Except... I kind of think we were.

King of the mountain