I was supposed to be in Milan on Friday. But instead, I ended up spending a night in a tiny Austrian village and having to cancel my meetings in Italy.
I was heading through the Austrian Tyrol on Thursday when after rounding a corner on a descending road, my car started skidding on ice and began spinning uncontrollably, somewhere vaguely near Bischofshofen. After several terrifying seconds I came to rest with a gentle bump against a flimsy metal barrier between me and about a 100 metre drop. And then a few minutes later, while I was still sitting there trying to calm down, a woman in an ancient Skoda with German plates did the same thing and I thought she was going to shunt me over the edge. I jumped out of my car as her slowly spinning vehicle came closer and closer… and I immediately slipped on the icy road and went sprawling. Just to add to the fun, I didn’t even have my shoes or big coat on, just a tee shirt and a little skirt. But like me she just bumped into the barrier, which was obviously stronger than it looked, missing my car by about 2 metres. I have to say I felt my lapsed Catholicism flickering back to life at that moment.
My German is rudimentary and she did not speak any of my languages, but I think we were both trying to calm each other down for a few minutes and I am pleased to say that she burst into tears and not me. Her name was Hanna and while my car had only a teeny little dent on the rear bumper (I hit the barrier backwards), her car was more damaged, with both front lights broken, as she hit the barrier straight on and a bit faster. Additionally, neither her wipers nor one of her rear lights was working and her engine was making alarming spluttering sounds. It was getting dark already, so poor Hanna could not drive her car without headlights and with a questionable motor on a twisting icy mountain road. As a result I did not feel I could just leave her there. Also after what had just happened I was not too keen to keep driving myself but obviously we could not just stay there. It was bitterly cold and windy as well, I am sure it was at least -10 Celsius. Fortunately I was travelling with all my luggage so I loaned Hanna a puffy coat and we waited to see if someone would stop and help us. I tried to call my friend in Vienna to ask what to do and how could I contact the Austrian Police but my phone could not get a signal.
Soon a car drove up, with French plates I think. And kept driving. He also skidded as he went up the road we had both skidded down but the car did not crash… and after a moment he was gone. Then nothing for over half an hour as the last daylight started to fade. Finally I heard the sound of a truck coming from the same direction we had both come from and then headlights… Hanna and I jumped out of our cars. I looked over and from her expression she was probably thinking the same thing I was, wondering if the truck was going to do what we had both done. The thought also crossed my mind that we could at least have moved both cars away from where the next person to come sliding down that road was also going to land. Obviously it was a bit late for that now. There was probably a good reason that the barrier we had bumped into looked suspiciously new.
Fortunately the approaching truck was quite unimpressed by the slippery surface, moving with the authority that only really big industrial things have. As the truck approached, I realised that we had both been so concerned that our cars were about to be shunted over the edge should the approaching monster have skidded, we were not jumping up and down to attract the driver’s attention. We need not have worried however, and he pulled up along side us in a juddering swirl of lights, diesel and vibration. After a moment, out climbed a middle aged Austrian man who asked us if we needed help (I deduced he was probably not asking us for a cigarette). Seeing my Croatian licence plate, he asked me the same in French, Italian and English, the last of which I (obviously) speak.
Quickly assessing our problem, he suggested that we follow him into the nearest small town some 10 kilometres away: Hanna would follow him closely as she had no headlights and only one dim taillight. I would follow Hanna to ensure she was not back-ended. And so off we went. I have always disliked driving near large trucks as they make me nervous, but I have to say that having that big metal beast in front of us slowly growling down the icy road in low gear was very reassuring.
Eventually we arrived at a town and Hanna pulled into a garage that our friendly trucker led us to. He also stopped and got out and we both thanked him for his assistance. I decided I did not want to make the long haul to Milan, still several hours away, given the road conditions and my frayed nerves. I asked the truck driver if he knew of a hotel or inn nearby. He said yes and that I should follow him, whereupon he climbed back into his truck and started off. I followed him for maybe 20 minutes and he pulled up in front of a row of houses in some tiny Tyrolean flea-speck of a village.
Within moments of the truck and my car pulling up, a woman immerged from one of the houses. She and the driver quickly conversed and then they came over to my car, extending their greetings and offering me a bed for the night. Their friendly nature was so clear that I could not really say no. There is something very reassuring about a smiling woman in a dirndl and within moments I was inside and being investigated all over by a large and excessively friendly borzoi dog with a wet nose. Only now did I discover the names of my hosts, Rudi and his wife Anna-Maria… and Strudel the dog.
Although Anna-Maria spoke only a little English and I only speak a little German, we were able to converse in a weird mixture of several languages (English, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian and German), prompting Rudi, who turned out to be an encyclopedic film buff in five fluent languages, to make jokes about a character who conversed with a chaotic multilingual jabber in the film ‘In the Name of the Rose’.
Soon I was gorged on robust Tyrolean food and light headed from far too much of something called Mozart Salzburger, a yummy chocolate flavoured liqueur I have never had before. It seems I was not the first lost soul Rudi had brought home unexpectedly and Anna-Marie showed me post cards and letters from Moscow, Hamburg, Athens and Plovdiv from people who she had met under similar circumstances to my unannounced arrival. Although I do not really speak Bulgarian, I could make out enough of the meaning of the letter from Plovdiv to translate it into English for Rudi, who for over ten years had never actually been able to read it. It was a letter of thanks for assistance rendered to a Bulgarian student he had given a lift to many years ago. I ended up spending the night in the bed of Rudi and Anna-Maria’s son, who was away with his German girlfriend in Poland for a few weeks. I eventually gave up repeatedly ejecting Strudel from the bed and drifted off regardless of canine curiosity.
Next day, I got on the phone and for business related reasons too convoluted to mention, I abandoned all hope of going to Milan and instead managed to bring forward an appointment in Switzerland. So Rudi and Anna-Maria saw me to my car and waved me off, and after another none too easy drive, here I am in Zürich, in a lovely oh so Swiss hotel just a few minutes walk from Paradeplatz, with a pleasant but cold weekend to kill.
So if you ever find yourself in distress on a remote Austrian mountain road and out of the gloom comes Rudi Steiner, rest assured that you are in the hands of a true Austrian gentleman.
And if you ever run into a German woman called Hanna from Leipzig, driving a battered old Skoda, tell her I want my puffy coat back!
