Bruce and Elly go to southern Muttiland (day 9: Sunday 13 July): in Kärnten

Today was our travel-to-another-town-in-Kärnten day. The 7-theme museum in Sankt Veit an der Glan (you just know how I want to write that word!) appealed, not least because there were good train connections from Klagenfurt. So a relatively early meander to Klagenfurt West station, followed by the S1 train to Sankt Veit. According to ‘the internet’ the museum was closed between 12 and 2, and we had arrived around 11:30, so we meandered from the station to the centre of town.

The parts we meandered through were almost deserted until we found Unterplatz in the old town centre. I do recommend Erste Kafe-Konditori Hahn because the service was lovely. (We’d arrived a bit too late for breakfast, but this wasn’t a problem for either of us because we only needed caffeine.) The café not only sells the usual range of caffeine but you can also rent chocolate- and cake moulds, so on the off-chance I asked about buying individual Guglhupf moulds. I was recommended to try Interspar in Klagenfurt. (All of this conversation was in German!) Hahn also sells very pretty posh chocolates, and ~~I’ve now found how to order online: https://cr-chocolate.at!~~ Bah – they only ship within Austria ☹☹☹☹

After refreshment, it was museum-time! It’s hard to describe: informative about trains, the town’s creation and changes since 1224. (Last year the town celebrated its 800th anniversary of being a recognised town, rather than a marketplace.) Also quite a bit about the fights over whether this part of Carinthia should be Austrian or Yugoslavian, not that there was an actual Yugoslavia at the time. Oh for a time-machine to go back and understand why people had whatever opinions they had: did people vote along ethnic/linguistic lines, or for which polity might provide for them better, or what? I don’t know – the only thing I do know is I can never really know, so I’m not after a conversation with my readers, because you can’t really know either. There was a train-driving simulator, and so lovely Elly got the staff to switch it on so I could have a go. It was hard to think which gear to use, when to brake to halt at the middle of the platform, even when being instructed. Most of my difficulty probably came from not being used to driving any form of motorised vehicle. Whatever, I know I’m not doing this museum and its staff justice. Go there – that’s an order.

We stopped for more refreshment at another café-pub near the statue for Walter von der Vogelweide-Brunnen, then bimbled to see if we could stick our toes into the Glan, no matter how much contortion this might take. We did get to see it, but there was, at least where we were, no path down to the river from the street. Our vertebrae are probably grateful.

So a rapid-ish walk in boiling heat back to St Veit’s main station, a comfortable short train-trip, then a quick but successful shopping trip to a supermarket in Klagenfurt, then waiting for a bus just outside and speaking in broken English and German with a lady who said the people in the station were so nice they had given her two cigarettes when she only asked for one! She was going to enjoy them, then go home later to do her housework. Meanwhile, I had evil thoughts.

At the time I wrote this (17:47 Central European time), we’d flopped out in our hotel room, letting legs and innards rest while thinking ‘burger!, and waiting for photos to upload.