Day 1 Ostrava - Weingut Schwarzl, Austria

I took the train from Warsaw to Ostrava on Sunday and got there at about 2 pm. My two friends, Reni and Lucy picked me up at the train station. We drove about 15 min to Reni’s house. It was very hot and we spent the afternoon sitting outside, eating and drinling wine until a big thinderstorm came and we had to take shelter inside.

On Monday morning we got up, had breakfast outside under the big walnut tree, packed the car and embarked on our adventure. First we drove to Olomouc to pay a short visit to Reni’s daughter, Kami. We spent about an hour in Kam’s house playing with her little daughter Anicka who is 2.5 years old. From there we drove towards Brno, Vienna, Gratz until we reached the Sudostereische Weinstrasse, a wine growing area on the border of Austria and Slovenia. Kami’s husband recommended that we spent a night there and walk the wine path between the lovely rolling hills. We drove up and down several hills, through picturesque little villages until we finally decided to stop and ask about a room for the night. The first place we stopped had guest rooms, but they were all rented. They sent us to a house down the road and we were able to rent two rooms for the night there. We were lucky because it turned out to be a great place, a little winery called Schwarzl that not only had great wine, but also very personable fairly young owners who made us a lovely dinner of home made sausages, ham, vegetables, cheeses and pork fat (schmaltz) with fantastic dark bread from the village bakery. All this and a bottle of their wine and we were in heaven. A couple of Austrians from Linz were also staying there (for the 5th time), a man and a woman. When we finished our supper, he invited us to sit with them outside. Then he confessed that he loved to sing and wanted to sing some songs to us of an Austrian singer Reinhart Fendrich. He brought his car from the parking area and parked it close to the table, put on a CD and started serenading. Once he started, he couldn’t stop and the singing went on and on. The owners joined us at the table and we tried to converse in a mixture of English, German, Czech, Polish, and whatever else. It was dark, we were getting sleepy, the Austrian wanted to treat us to another bottle of wine, but we politely excused ourselves and went upstairs to our rooms and called it a night. It was an eventful first day.