You say Almabtrieb, I say Alpabfahrt

R and I escaped for FOUR! WHOLE! DAYS! to a wellness hotel and spa in Austria (Austria - or at least the Tirol - seems to have cornered the market on wellness hotels; when you tell a Swiss person you're going to Austria chances are they'll say "Oh? Wellness?") while Small Boy vacationed at The Farm. It was pretty much heaven, though I missed the Boy a lot more than I expected - and I fully expected to miss him a lot. Small Boy had bouts of homesickness at bed-time, but otherwise he had a good time at The Farm. The grandparents kept the day packed with adventures so he didn't have much time to think about missing us.

I'd love to blog the vacation, but there's not much to it. In a nutshell we slept, ate (breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner were included, and the food was incredible), and spa-ed. Read in quiet rooms. Fell asleep on waterbeds with views of the mountains. Floated in the circular sea-water pool. We went for one leisurely "hike" one day, and on another day, by sheer coincidence, the village we were staying in celebrated their Alpabfahrt.

In Austria, or at least in this village, it's called the Almabtrieb. The other big difference is the head-dresses for the cows. In Switzerland the cows wear flowers and wreaths on top of their head (there are some pictures in the link above); in the Almabtrieb we saw the poor cows had the head gear on their foreheads and muzzles, covering their faces so that they couldn't see; some cows were rebelling and had to be led quite firmly.



The head-gear wasn't just right over the cows' faces, it was large and heavy as well - those pine boughs are mounted on wooden frames. I felt sorry for the poor Austrian cows and prefer the Swiss flowers.