Triggerwarnungen

This blog title is in German. It means ‘trigger warnings’. I initially thought that if I blogged about something as inconsequential and uncontroversial as our recent trip to Austria, I wouldn’t traumatise anyone. Is that naïve of me? Should I anticipate that some malcontents have nothing better to do than waste their time looking to be traumatised? Should I forewarn them of anything that might take them out of their safe spaces and echo chambers in a froth of ire and retribution? Should I, mischievously, satirise the concept of trigger warnings to raise a laugh here and a temper there? Oh, if you insist.

By the way, the promised blog about Plato is still ‘on ice’. This is an apt expression as I’m instead now blogging about the trip to wintry Austria. Hubby and I go there, to this one particular Tyrolean town, almost annually. It was these excursions, plus my BFF living just ‘up the road’ in Munich, and my family-tree research that prompted me to take German lessons some years ago. These stopped abruptly during Covid and I never got round to starting them again.

I mentioned family-tree research. Well, I unearthed a great-great-great-great grandad Johan Jobst Zimmerman who was, according to the 1841 census, living in the East End of London but born in ‘foreign parts’. His religion was recorded elsewhere as ‘Lutheran’. However, his forenames are Germanic derivatives of Hebrew and, according to Wiki, “In 1800, Jews in London likely numbered between 20,000 and 30,000, with a significant presence in the East End. The Jewish community faced challenges, including antisemitism and economic hardship.” From this, plus a photo of my grandmother from the 1920s, I deduce that there’s an outside chance I’m of Jewish descent (Trigger Warning number 1 – TW1).

Coincidentally, I’m typing this on 27th January, Holocaust Memorial Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on 27 January 1945. The genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies between 1933 and 1945 saw six million Jewish men, women and children murdered alongside millions of other individuals. Approximately 300,000 Jews survived the concentration camps, several of whom were caught in the sickening depravity of Palestinians and Hamas terrorists in October 2023. Am Yisrael Chai! (TW2)

Austria was annexed by Germany in March 1938 (der Anschluss), following which an estimated 70,000 Jews (nearly 40%) were murdered and 125,000 fled the country. The current Jewish population, mainly in Vienna, is estimated at approximately 15,000. Hold that thought.

Hubby and I weren’t going to go to Austria this year because of our all-singing, all-dancing, bank-balance burning, carbon-emitting trip to Antarctica scheduled for November/December last year. Cyril put paid to that, so our week in Austria was a consolation sojourn. While we looked at taking the train to the Alps, the timetable just wouldn’t work so we ended up f-f-f-flying (TW3). At least I’d already offset my carbon-footprint sufficiently to cover the Southern Hemisphere.

I managed to avoid missing two choir rehearsals in a row by insisting that we drive down to the airport hotel after the first set of evening rehearsals had finished, and not mid-afternoon which was Hubby’s original plan. His idea of a compromise was to drive to the airport early the next morning, because he thought getting to the hotel room by midnight was ‘uncivilised’. And getting up at 3:45am is civilised?

The next morning, just before leaving the hotel quite a bit later than 3:45am, Hubby noticed that my clear plastic bag full of ‘liquids’, i.e. toiletries, was “too full” and that I should move some to my large suitcase. When I told him not to be such a fusspot, he said, “If we miss the flight because you’re being interrogated by security detail …” As it happens, the airport has stopped checking liquids, relying instead on some super-dooper new scanners that are so sensitive they often record false positives for explosives. This means that totally innocent hand-luggage can be pulled to one side, turned inside out and the owner grilled for what seems like hours, which is what happened to Hubby and his rucksack. I said nothing, apart from reminding him of all the lovely expensive shops in the Tyrol, and the fact that my share dividends had just been paid (TW3).

The flight was uneventful: no turbulence, and no aborted landings or diversions to Munich Airport; shame about the polluting contrails (TW4). Once at Innsbruck Airport, we had to have our photos and fingerprints taken as part of the new post-Brexit regime (TW5). The process was easy. It was quick. There were no problems. Brexit is working (TW6).

Once at the hotel we unpacked, and I donned my stylish shoulder-bag made from seal-skin (TW7) that I bought in Greenland (TW8). I call the bag ‘Sammy’ (the seal!), and give him a stroke every now and again (TW9).

The next day, Hubby went off langlaufing and I donned my hiking boots for a gentle first day on the trails … my a£rse! on which I fell a few times. No-recent snow meant that all the trails bore stretches of ice, mostly on the steep sections of course. To make progress, I waded through piles of crusty old snow either side of the trails, gripping onto saplings and branches, sometimes to no avail. One particular bum-plant saw my Chanel sunglasses (TW10) shoot off my head and slide down the hill. The quickest way to chase after them was to slide after them on my tummy, Sammy-like, and stretch out my walking pole so that I caught the glasses just before they disappeared into a ravine. I then sat up quickly, undid my jacket and lifted up my fleece and thermals to check my second belly button.

Ya see, although dear old Cyril was sliced and diced, he had one more ace to play. One of the surgical wounds, above my (first) belly button, would not heal. Then it got infected and ate further into the wound, creating what looked like a second belly button. Antibiotics were only partially effective, so the GP deferred to the nurses who cleaned it and re-dressed it twice a week. Firstly they applied Manuka honey to draw out the remaining bad stuff, then they switched to silver to speed the healing process. No wonder the NHS is financially distressed. But it worked, and my second belly button has nicely filled in to look like a penny-sized birthmark. However, it’s still vulnerable to trauma (it had better not read this blog then) and I have to keep cleaning it with sterile wipes and smothering it with Vaseline to protect it. Vaseline is an indispensable tool of everyday life and a byproduct of petroleum (TW11). Fortunately, my seal-impression didn’t seem to have caused the wound any harm. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and set off all over again.

It snowed quite heavily overnight. The next day I hiked with greater traction and confidence and climbed up the side of a mountain to another valley, around a lake and back down again, further and faster than I’d walked the day before. The day after that, I yomped over to yet another valley, planning to return by a shorter route. Said route wasn’t open so I had to retrace my steps. I had to get a move on otherwise I’d have been too late for my mid-afternoon Champagne-treat (TW12). I can confidently say that I am now fitter than I was in June last year, when I tackled the Southwest Coast Path (in Cornwall, not Austria), 15 miles each day, while Cyril was beating up on my internal organs, particularly my diaphragm.

The common feature of all my Austrian hikes is that I’m on my own and rarely see another soul, which is glorious! Can’t abide people. They can’t abide me either so God's in his heaven. However, is such isolation dangerous? I mean physically not psychologically! I’d say not. Should I come across a group of Islamic terrorists hiding out in the woods, say, I’d claim to live in Islington and they’d kiss my hiking boots (TW13). 

Which leads me straight into TW14. While strolling through our Tyrolean town one afternoon, I passed a young lady waiting for a bus and assumed she was Muslim. She was darker skinned than your typical Germanic and wearing a hijab. I also assumed for various reasons that she was a resident, not a tourist. I couldn’t remember seeing many or even any non-Germanic-looking residents around here in, what, 20 years. This despite there being, for example, approximately 400,000 Muslims currently living in Austria (compared with 15,000 Jews and almost 6.3 million Christians). I began to wonder whether this little town was missing out by not being host to an ethnically diverse population that at least reflected the national demographic. Conversely, are they somehow benefitting by being so homogenous? Nationally, is Austria comparatively more welcoming / tolerant of Muslims than they were of Jews because they want to atone for their ready participation in the Holocaust? How might Blighty learn from Austria's contemporary successes and failures, and vice versa?

What’s important in the context of this blog is not whether I’ve got my stats accurate, or whether my questions are intelligent and insightful, but whether I’ll be labelled a racist by the malcontents for simply proffering them in the interests of didactic discourse (TW15).