Wednesday 8 July 1998

Slideshow Pictures

After having lunch in Tarviso, where I had stopped by train on a previous visit to Italy in 1974, we headed for Preding. We arrived in Graz at around 4:00 p.m.. Filled the car at a gas station and asked for directions to Preding. The young attendant was very helpful. He looked on a map but couldn’t find Preding on it. He said that he had been through Preding and kind of remembered where it was. So he gave us the map he was looking at, for free, and drew a map, of where he thought Preding would be, with written instructions on how to get there.

Of course we got lost. We stopped at several places and asked people on the street. "Ich weist nicht" (I don’t know) is all we heard, even though we were only a few kilometers from the town. We finally found a road sign with Preding on it, and found the town. All the old landmarks, that I remembered, were gone. The pub, where we had celebrated new year in 1957, with the other Hungarian refugees, and the stationary store where I was given a red ball point pen, that my mother couldn’t afford to buy me, were all gone. We drove down one road after another, looking for the castle that the refugees had stayed in, but couldn’t find the place.

Asked directions from a local, and drove quite a way out of town. I knew that the castle was just outside of town, since we used to walk there, so we turned around.

Drove back to Preding, and decided to try one more road. We drove up the road and saw a gateway hidden by foliage near a farmhouse. The castle was not nearly as big as I had remembered, and at that time there was a pasture down to a small lake at the bottom of the hill. Now it was all overgrown. Drove up to the castle and met a couple who were renting and renovating the old place. They spoke English quite well. Talked about the history of the castle, how the Turks had burned it down in the 16th century. I told him of the kindness of the people in the town towards the refugees. He said things had changed, the people are different and not nearly as friendly as they had been in the old days.

We had noticed a nice Gasthaus on our way to Preding, and decided to backtrack, to see if they had accommodation. No luck in finding it. It was starting to get dark by this time, and I put on the headlights of the car. We had, up till now, never driven in the dark in Europe. We had been travelling by day. The Policei, parked on the side of the road, in a town called St. Stefan, flagged us down. I immediately forgot what little German I knew, and acted ignorant (not much to forget, no great act.). Let’s just say I was acting normal. The police wanted a driver’s license, so gave my international driver’s license to the policeman. After looking at it, and looking quite puzzled, he handed it back to me I turned to the last page where my picture was. The policeman explained that we were driving with only our daylight lights on, and that was illegal in Austria. I handed him the registration which showed that the car was rented, and tried to explain that I didn’t know which knob turned the headlights on. It wasn’t dark enough yet to see the lights from the car. Tried all the settings and finally he was satisfied. While we were stopped, I had noticed a Gasthaus just up the road, and asked the policeman about it. After telling us that the Gasthaus wasn’t all that good (the doughnuts were stale?), he recommended another, which we never did find.

It was getting late and very dark when we arrived at a Gasthaus just outside of St. Stefan. I went in to the restaurant to ask if they had accommodation. I was told that they were full, however the waitress’s father had a Gasthaus in the mountains. He was coming down the mountain to pick her up in a few minutes, or they would give us directions on how to find the place. After our experiences in Preding, we decided to wait

Good thing we did. We followed him up and down the mountainside and finally arrived at Haus Langmann. Wow what a beautiful building. We were taken upstairs, where we were ushered into our suite. Rachel also had her own suite with balcony and all other amenities

Woke up early in the morning. Wow, what a view.

The balcony from our suite looked down into a valley. Vineyards everywhere. Small vineyards were scattered all over the valley and it was dotted with beautiful farmhouses.

We had breakfast at the gasthaus and then checked out. $104 CAN for the two beautiful suites, and breakfast.

Besides the the two purses in Venice, this was, by far, the best deal we had in Europe.