Return to Gaschurn, Sixty Years Later. Part Two. Haus in der Sonne

 Continued from Return to Gaschurn, Part One

Up, up, up along the winding road into the mountains, and there we were. The village was nothing like I remembered it; but then, I remembered very little, at the most those quaint solid-wood chalets. I kept an eye out for Haus in der Sonne while driving through, but as I'd suspected it was long gone; yes, I'd looked it up online and no Pension of that name existed. The buildings in the village centre were modern, of brick, with a few chalets in between and on the hillside above. 

I wasn't quite sure what I was doing in Gaschurn. Retracing my steps, yes; but how? I didn't know a single person there, and I didn't have a plan. I needed a plan.  Haus in der Sonne had to be central to that plan. I also needed a hook; how would I explain myself?

On the way up it had all seemed pretty clear. My plan would be to find someone, an older person who remembered Haus in der Sonne, and to have a chat about the old days. The hook would be the photograph. This one, found again after rummaging through a shoebox of old photos.

I remember that pullover well: Mrs Williamson had knitted it for me, and I loved it. Here I am, gazing up into the mountains that so impressed me at the time. It can’t have been cold as I wasn’t wearing a jacket, or gloves, or a cap. To my surprise, up there wasn’t very cold at all.

And so, armed with just a photo, I put my plan into motion. I needed to meet someone, an older Gaschurner, but as we parked the car and stepped out into the street it seemed a vain hope: the street was empty. Not a single person in sight. And so my first reaction was disappointment. Had I come all this way in vain?

I hadn't planned a 2022 return to Gaschurn. It seemed that the stars had all aligned to bring the visit about organically.

My son had been working on a farm just outside the Austrian town of Dornbirn, which is the largest city in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, close to the Swiss border.
Now, in March 2022, he had quit his job and needed to return home to Ireland; which meant packing all his belongings into his car and driving back to Ireland through Switzerland and France. He'd then take the Cherbourg-Dublin Ferry. A very long and exhausting drive, and he'd been ill. Someone to drive back with him, to take the wheel now and again, would be an enormous help.

It was the opportunity I'd been waiting for...

Vorarlberg. Yes, that memory popped up: crisp outline of white mountains against a brilliant blue sky, snow glistening in the sunshine. My son loved Vorarlberg. His reaction to the beauty of those mountains, that sunshine, that sky, was similar to mine: a beauty so intense tears would come to his eyes.

Gaschurn was not even an hour's drive from Dornbirn. The time had come to return. So one sunny morning we did; and here we were. I was back. 

Now, as we left the car. the village seemed deserted. We had parked in front of the Tourist Information office, but even that was closed. We set off to meet someone, anyone.

Walking along the empty main village street: nobody. Not a soul in sight. I knew that in Germany and Austria the Mittagspause, midday pause, is almost a holy thing: the shops close down as people take their precious lunch break; lunch being the biggest meal of the day.

But there was nobody on the street. Strange, I thought. Where is everyone? I thought this was a major tourist resort these days?

Finally we did spot someone, a young man with a backpack. We spoke to him; it turned out he was an English tourist. He pointed us in the direction of a restaurant, down the road that led into the valley. 'That's also where you can get the cable car up to the mountain,'  he said. We parted company, and made our way to the restaurant, a modern pizzeria. Perhaps there I'd meet the "older person" who would answer my questions; questions I hadn't  properly formulated, not even to myself. As usual, I was in ‘play it by ear’ mode, but by now slightly frustrated.

We went into the restaurant and ordered drinks, and while doing so I addressed the staff member behind the bar. 'Do you know of any older person from Gaschurn?' I asked. 'Someone who has lived here a long time?'

The barman, who turned out to be Albanian, pointed to a man sitting alone at a table. 'Talk to him,' he said. So we sat down at that table.

 I pulled out my photo and showed it to him. 

'Do you recognise the place where this photo was taken?' I asked.

 He looked at it for a while, and then he said:

 'Yes. This was taken at the Silvretta lake dam.’ He pointed to something in the photo: ‘See: there's the dam wall.'

As soon as he said it, another memory opened up. That word 'Silvretta': it rang a loud bell loud and clear, and suddenly it all came back to me: yes, we had been up to the Silvretta Lake, Mrs Williamson and I. That's where the photo had been taken.

So finally I had my older person; but he wasn’t quite old enough. ‘Do you know of a pension called Haus in der Sonne?’ I asked. ‘That’s where we stayed in 1963.’

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, and whipped out his phone, dialled. ‘Can you come to the pizzeria?’ he said into the phone, and then, ‘now. Right now.’

Within minutes, another man turned up at our table. The first man introduced us; his name was Mr Tschofen.

The first man told the second man of our mission. ‘They are looking for someone who knows Haus in der Sonne!’ he said.

‘My parents used to own that guest house!’ said Mr Tschofen, and my jaw dropped to the floor in the biggest Wow! of the day, of the holiday.

And so I had found my connection. Mr Tschofen could tell us all we wanted to know. His parents had owned the building; before becoming a pension in the early 60s it had been a Kindererholungsheim, a health-restoration home for children needing rest and recovery: Germanic culture is excellent at that sort of thing.

Next, Mr Tschofen whipped out his own phone and, opening his photos, showed us an album full of the pre-pension Haus in der Sonne, complete with the children having their holiday. And so I made the connection to the past. Mr Tschofen is younger than I am so he would not have encountered me on that 1963 trip, but he had stories to tell and he turned out to be the missing link I had come here for. The circle had closed.

There were photos of the children playing outside the house, and getting ready to ski

Mr Tschofen’s photos of Haus in der Sonne brought it all back: yes! That was where we’d stayed, Mrs Williamson and I. I remembered the rack for skis at the side of the house. I remembered the lobby, the stairs, the massive wooden walls, the wood-burning stove…

He even had a photo of the kitchen. It was all there!

 We sat and chatted with the two men for a while and then, on their advice, walked down to the bottom of the valley and that was where we found the people. Not only shops that were open– a supermarket, a tourist shop, a ski-equipment shop – but the cable car office and, most importantly, people, swarms of them, all in their winter-sport gear and many of them carrying skis on their shoulders.

We parked the car in a huge car-park that was so full we had trouble finding an empty slot.                                                                           We bought cable-car tickets and rode the bubble up to the top of the mountain, a journey that seemed endless. All around us snow-covered slopes, people skiing down them, people on skis being dragged up in order to ski down again.

There at the top we found the people, and the party. This was why the village was empty. There’s a  restaurant up there; the outside tables were packed full and loudspeakers blasted out loud, energetic music. The sun shone brilliantly into a cloudless blue sky.

 The view was spectacular:  miles of white fields undulating into the distance, dotted with what looked like moving insects, but was actually people, people on skis, people sidling up and sliding down the slopes.

However, this wasn’t the Silvretta Lake; it was Montafon, the skiing area just above Gaschurn. Silvretta, where I had been as a child and where the photo had been taken, was further down the valley, accessible with a different cable car. 

                                                                  

                                                                        We didn’t stay long up there. 

Not being a fan of loud music, I had no inclination to join the partying guests at the restaurant. I’d have preferred the silence of the mountains; after all, I had come to make peace with the place, and peace is to  be found in silence rather than noise. But I did have my photo taken:

 Gaschurn, Sixty Years Later.

But peace can also be found within. Just being here, meeting two friendly men who could reconnect me with the past, had done the trick. The ghosts of the past were finally dispelled. Who cared what had happened in 1963? That was another time, another culture, another era. This was now, and Gaschurn, the mountains that surrounded it, the vast blue sky and the pristine white of the valley, had done their cleansing work. I was free.

As we drove away I saw the modern day Haus in der Sonne. It is at the entrance to the village, next to the police station. I would have stopped to take a photo, but my camera was out of charge. That seemed somehow right.