Stille Nacht — Silent Night
My heart thudded along with the engine as the last houses disappeared. All we could see from the bus windows were frosty fields on either side.
This wasn’t on our Christmas Eve itinerary.
I was with an old school friend. Antipodean orphans together, far from home. L and I were working in the UK. And so we’d come to Austria, seeking to walk into the world on the Christmas cards we used to write while sitting on the beach.
We’d completed the obligatory Sound of Music tour, stuffed ourselves with apple strudel and thought we’d just got on a bus to the Hohensalzburg Fortress.
Armed with the ‘Useful Phrases’ section at the back of our guidebook, I turned around to face the man in the seat behind us.
“Where are we going?” I asked in German.
Or thought I did.
He tilted his ear towards me, his tone apologetic.
“No English.”
L spread out our map of Salzburg city centre on the back of the seat and put her finger on the drawing of the castle in the middle.
Our fellow passenger shook his head and smiled.
“Sankt Gilgen,” he said, pointing to the road ahead.
I turned to L who shrugged and folded up the map.
“Maybe we should we get off at the next stop,” I suggested.
“It’s freezing outside,” she said, sitting on her hands. “What if we have to wait ages for the next bus?”
What if there isn’t a next bus?
Neither of us wanted to be the one to say it, but it was already mid-afternoon.
I took the map from her, flattened it out and studied it again. Wherever we were going, it clearly wasn’t anywhere in the city centre. I refolded the map, pulling each crease between my thumb and finger until it resembled a piece of origami.
The decision was made for us. The bus stopped and we followed the rest of the passengers out into a village. The timetable told us it was going to be a long wait.
We bought coffee, cradling the cups to our chests as we stepped out of the bus station. We walked past painted shutters and festive windows. Fir trees flanked the footpaths and lanterns glowed by shopfront doorways. Above the rooftops, red and yellow cable cars glided up a mountain — a string of coloured baubles, fading into the mist.
At the end of the village, a lake nudged at cottage doors. Wolfgangsee, one of Austria’s bigger lakes, although we didn’t know that at the time. We only knew we couldn’t see its other shore, its surface obscured like breath on a mirror.
On the way back we came across a bright yellow house with white window frames. The egg house. Mozarthaus Sankt Gilgen. The birthplace of Mozart’s mother and later the home of his sister.
The composer never made it to Sankt Gilgen, but if he had, no doubt there would have been an extra symphony.
Darkness had descended by the time we arrived back at the bus station. No one else was in sight.
What if the timetable was out-of-date?
I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. The cafe had closed, so we took turns jumping up and down next to the hand dryer in the public toilet.
I later read that Sankt Gilgen is part of a historic pilgrimage trail. It certainly seemed miraculous when the bus showed up on time.
One by one, the other passengers abandoned us for family festivities. We sat in silence, slowly defrosting with only the driver and the radio for company. Clusters of chalets broke up the shadows, fairy lights clinging like vines to their balconies. Smoke rose in thick coils from the chimneys. On the radio, someone was singing Silent Night in German:
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Cupping her chin in one hand, L gazed into the distance. I leaned back in my seat and rested my head against the window. Before my breath fogged up the pane, I caught a last glimpse of our faces, our lips just visible over the tops of our scarves.
We were both smiling.
***
Photos and text by Linda Alley © 2019
