Thal

It's the weekend again and that means time for an excursion somewhere. I witnessed a mass exodus Friday morning as Aimsers left town in droves, headed for various places of interest. One of the German diction coaches with whom I have become friendly (there are three coaches for German, one who does French and Italian and one for Russian) organized an outing to the neighboring town of Thal this afternoon. Six of us, four faculty and two students, took a tram then two busses to get there. It has two main attractions, depending on one's interests: one is the church of Sankt Jakobus; the other is the Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum. Thal happens to be his home town and they are very proud of their local boy who became governor of California. Of course, we went to view the church but were also amused by the Schwarzeneggeralia. The church was a small Baroque building which received a modern addition some twenty years ago. I have never seen anything quite like it. The floor is made of stones embedded in concrete, the kind of thing you might find in a seaside grotto; there are various paintings with biblical themes and strange characters. None of it is particularly good, in my opinion. It is unique, it is colorful, but on the whole it is kitsch. As has been the case every day this week, thunderstorms developed. The countryside was lovely, what we could see of it in the rain. Some of our party left to return to Graz and three of us ended up in a local café where we enjoyed some lovely Kaffee und Kuchen. There was a family celebration of some kind on the terrace (the light rain had stopped) and eventually a local guy in Lederhosen brought out his accordian and began serenading the celebrants (and us unavoidably) with his playing. It was the kind of spontaneous local event you often wish to experience in a foreign country. We just witnessed it by accident. And speaking of spontaneous events, a thunderstorm just rolled through as I was writing this, leaving a gorgeous rainbow in its wake (see pic).