SPRING CLOUDS AND OTHER THINGS

It seems only right to start with our only shrub that's blooming right now:  our variegated forsythia. Suburbs have many more ornamental bloomers than Vermont, in case you wondered!

Looming over the Adirondacks to the west is a menacing range of clouds.  Opposite, to the east, are equally dark masses of cloud.  In between there is blue sky and sun.  And wind.  This sense of what is happening in the sky is so intimate, so much a part of our experience here, that I find it hard to remember all the years of unawareness, of not-caring, not-seeing.  It surprises me that there can be a day of snow, or rain, over the mountains, and spring sunshine here, all within my view.  When I stop to think about it, of course, there were all too many times that we left Boston on a perfect fair day to hike in the White Mountains in New Hampshire only to say “Uh-oh,” as Franconia Notch came into sight, and we could see ahead to the high peaks covered by leaden clouds.  The mountains have fooled us plenty of times.  One spring (or was it fall?) hiking season I remember starting on out on promising mornings about five times only to end up each time in fog and rain and, worst of all, no view at the top for a reward. 

Sugarbush ski area closed over a week ago, but don’t imagine the skiing was anything to brag about near the end.  The Snow Bowl and Rikerts cross-country gave up earlier.  It was a winter that was on the edge of being not-winter.  Yet below is a photo that a die-hard skier took yesterday (yesterday!) at Stowe where they had 24 inches of new snow.

And this, at Mad River Glen, taken–not by me!–on April 12:

In a few days we'll be leaving this behind, flying over the clouds headed for Vienna and St. Petersburg.

So, why Vienna?

My father was from Vienna.  I was last there, my only visit, when I was 17,  traveling with my parents.  It was then I first met my aunt Irma, one of my father’s original three sisters.  (His favorite sister was shot and killed during the war.)  We met Irma at her apartment in Paniglgasse, today a trendy hotspot, a place my father had bought for his mother after World War II.  It had been in the Russian Zone where living was especially lean in those days.  Tante Irma had a son, Gernod, my cousin, who was somewhere else when we visited, away at school maybe.  I was curious about him, but I guess not curious enough, as I never made any effort afterward to get in touch.  I imagine he was indifferent too, because I never heard anything from him. For instance, I never heard he was sorry to have missed meeting me.  His mother, according to my father, enjoyed living the good life, having fun, maybe a little too much. From the time we spent with her on that short visit, I thought he may have had a point.

Led by Irma, we spent a raucous evening that first night in Vienna––my mother, my father, Aunt Irma, assorted friends of hers whose names I probably never knew, my best friend Diana who was traveling with us, and me––visiting what I learned later are called “heuriger,” traditional wine bars serving Austrian wines in the Vienna Woods outside the city.  As the night wore on, our group, I remember well, grew louder and larger as we moved from one heuriger to another.  My parents didn’t seem to notice when not-so-young race car driver (so he said) from Argentina sidled up to Diana and me and started making passes at both of us. I figured they had forgotten we were there.

I never met Gernod, but I was to hear things about him years later, suggestions of drinking and gambling in different countries.  He had some sort of job connected with airlines, so he traveled a lot.    Nothing was ever very specific.  Again, I was uncurious.  He was, after all, someone I had never even met.   With his wife, Lieselotte, Gernod visited our mutual Australian connection, my cousin George and his wife Nelly, as we did.  So we heard a little about him, discreet stories that didn’t exactly burnish his reputation, one occasion beyond mentioning in polite company.   After his mysterious death some years ago (suicide in the Rhine, I heard) Lieselotte continued to visit Nelly, a widow herself now, on her own.  More than once we were in Australia just before or just after one of her visits.  

So it came about that a desire to see Vienna again began to grow.  I wondered if I could find that apartment on Paniglgasse.  I wondered if I shouldn't try to meet Lieselotte.  It turned out to be incredibly easy.  We rented an apartment in the general area that by chance happened to be steps away from Paniglgasse.  Finding Lieselotte was even simpler.  I found her address more quickly on the internet than I got it from Australia. She lives in the very apartment I visited those many years ago.  We have been in touch and plan to meet.

Why St. Petersburg?

Before we had any idea we were going to move to Vermont we had come up with the idea for an interesting trip.  We would get on a train in Poland or someplace in eastern Europe and head for Moscow where we would board the Transsiberian Express.  We would opt for the Beijing train, ferry to Japan, and fly home from there.  It still sounds interesting, but all that time on a train…hmmm.  It lost its lure.  The whole thing sounds a little tiring.  (How could we leave Vermont for so long?  And our dogs?)  A visit to St. Petersburg is the remnant of that imagined trip.