der Föhn

The word Föhn means hairdryer in English, but in the Alps and in Salzburg, it has an alternate meaning: warm winds (usually unseasonably warm) that come over the mountains. People here believe that the Föhn causes headaches and irritability. That may or may not be true, but the Föhn is indeed warm, and it is a welcome break from the chills of winter.

Today we had a marvelous Föhn day, with a warm breeze and brilliant sun bringing the temperatures into the mid-fifties in the afternoon. I went out for a run and was finally inspired to write about the animals that I see when I'm out running or biking to class that I find so completely marvelous. I'm not talking about squirrels and cats and dogs, like you see in New Jersey or Illinois, although I do see plenty of dogs, usually off leash and completely well-behaved. The animals that I mean are sheep and goats and horses.

In the past month there are two houses on my route that have brought their animals home from the mountains for the winter. They are pretty ordinary houses, perhaps with a larger plot of land than most, and both now have sheds with side pastures, one housing a flock of half a dozen sheep, the other with five long-haired goats. It's pretty common in Salzburg for farmers to summer their animals in the mountains and bring them into the city for the winter, but I mostly know of that in the area near the international school where there are quite a number of farms. I love that just down the road from the busy-ness of Alpenstrasse, farm animals are grazing.

And as for horses, in the last two weeks, I have seen people out with their horses seven times. Hellbrunner Allee is a walking, cycling, and horse riding path dating back to the 1600s and was used in The Sound of Music when Maria arrives at the Von Trapp's house for the first time, dancing down what looks like a country lane. At times the horses share the same path as you, and where it gets narrower, signs direct the horses to the edge of the bordering grassy fields. Today as I was running, two horses with riders came galloping along, thundering past me in an all out race. It was a busy day on Hellbrunner Allee, and the path was very busy, mostly with Sunday walkers. As the horses charged by, everyone stopped to watch this amazing sight, something, I suppose, that has happened on Hellbrunner Allee for more than four hundred years.