between the years

We spent our christmas holidays and new year in Austria. Staying with some friends from Munich at our friend E.'s family "Castle" in the middle of nowhere between many beautiful mountains. It was fantastic. We had "Kaiserwetter" unlimited and perfect snow. The family's property, consisting of a main buidling (the pink one), stables, some barns and an old castle ruin, is more than 900 years old and E's family has owned it for 5 generations. Her mother runs the "Wirtstaverne" (Restaurant), Hotel and Youthhostel and her father used to look after the animals (cows, horses and sheep), which he gave up only 2 years ago. E. has 3 siblings, all of them come back there for the holiday season every year to help out with the kitchen, the guests and everything. Not only that they do an incredible job keeping an unbelievably high quality all over the whole enterprise, they also seem to get on with each other pretty well. I was so impressed by their energy, enthusiasm and composure. Even as young children they had to work with their parents but it doesn't seem like they suffered or anything. They're all very proud of the family's heritage, the history of their grandparents, how brave they were, giving shelter to refugees in the nazi regime and their courage and dedication when the old building burned down in the 40s, when a fire, caused by a broken oven, destroyed half of their property, along with many very old furnitures, relicts of the past that would have been enough material to make it a museum at some point. E's grandfather had to sell two of his alms to rebuild it. Now E's youngest brother, 25, is the chef of the kitchen and he decided to take over the business. He has big plans for the hotel. I hope he will manage to keep the authenticity.

Meeting this family made me think. If I can have only a tiny little slice of their determination i'm fine for 2009.

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my sister a. inspired me to change my header... i haven't found the right one yet, so this is just a placeholder to remind me that i want a new one....