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Faces of Germany, Austria ... From Jessing’s Farragut perspective
Farragutpress employee’s trip details European beauty, history
staff reports - Thu, Aug, 27, 2009
Farragutpress employee Kathy Jessing spent her summer vacation this year exploring ancient castles and beautiful villages and learning about the traditional cultures of Austria and Germany with the Knoxville-based travel group, European Experiences.
Jessing spent her first week in Europe traveling the “The Salzkammergut Experience” in Austria, named for the Salzkammergut mountain region and lakes southeast of Salzburg.
“I flew into Munich first. Then I took a train from there to Salzburg,” Jessing said.
Charley and Kathy Wood, founders of European Experiences, picked her up from there and took her and the rest of the small tour group to a bed and breakfast in St. Gilgen, a little village in Austria.
Jessing, a friend of the Woods’ for years, had gone on the couple’s France experience, and decided she wanted to keep expanding her horizons. “It’s a great way to travel if you are by yourself because once you got there everything was planned out, and you always had people with you.”
Jessing also was happy that it wasn’t one of those “See five cities in seven days” plans. “You only have to pack again when the vacation is over,” she said.
Jessing arrived in the picturesque village of St. Gilgen June 6.
“St. Gilgen in Austria is a small town, very quaint, it’s on a lake. It’s one of, I think, seven or eight lakes that were formed by glaciers, so they were very beautiful.” Jessing described the ferry ride across those lakes as one of her favorite moments.
“One thing they told me to do before I left was to watch ‘The Sound of Music’ because the landscape looks just like it, where she was up on the mountain, and the Alps are in the background and all those grassy areas. Some of the places that we saw were places where that movie was actually filmed.”
Another favorite of her’s was the musical instruments museum in St. Gilgen.
“He had musical instruments from all over the world, some that you’ve never even seen, and he put on a little show where he played all these different instruments,” she said. “Some of them might just be a hunk of wood with a string and some of them were really fancy. He explained everything that he played. That was a lot of fun.”
While in Austria, she and the rest of the group spent a day in Salzburg, birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and traveled by train up a mountain and explored a salt mine.
But on June 13, she and about half of the Austria group traveled to Garmisch, a small village in Germany, to try a week of “The Bavarian Experience.”
Their hotel, Hohe Tannen, and the rest of the village was covered in beautiful murals depicting daily life or religious images. Almost every window had a flower box hanging in it.
“The Austria [part] was probably more scenic. The Bavarian part was scenic too, but I guess I saw more buildings and things,” Jessing said. “We went to three different castles of King Ludwig’s.”
Jessing visited the town of Oberammergau, where the idea of the passion play got its start.
“It’s only a small town of about 2,600 people. This passion play is only put on every 10 years,” she said. “People from all over the world come and see it. But you have to have lived in this town at least 10 years before you can participate. ... If you are an outsider, you can’t be a part of it.
“The whole thing takes about 2,000 people to put on, so it takes about the whole town.”
If you would like to share your summer vacation experience, call farragutpress at 865-675-6397.
The next passion play will be in 2010. Since it’s too late for Jessing to get tickets, she thinks she may try the England experience next time she needs a vacation.
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