A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I’m the queen…
In April of 2020, I was back at home in Denver after a whirlwind of packing and a two weeks quarantine. I posted on the app Nextdoor that I was available for Elsa appearances at online birthday parties. I twisted my hair into a big braid, did purple eyeshadow up to my eyebrows, wore my performance jewelry, and zoomed into a six year old’s birthday party to sing “Let It Go” and “Into the Unknown” and lead twelve tiny screens in Happy Birthday.
I told them I was in Arendelle, and also in quarantine, and princesses have to lead by example. We’re all being strong together. It was a great bit, and it paid well. My Zoom background was a photo I found of the real city Arendelle is based on: Hallstatt, Austria.
I’ve been living in Austria (barring a long pandemic summer) since 2019. And the one place I needed to visit before my Fulbright was up was Hallstatt. I could not leave the country without seeing Arendelle with my own eyes. So this weekend, I did.
Hallstatt is a tiny town on a tiny lake in the backwoods of a stretch of Austria that’s called the Saltzkammergut. It’s a string of lake towns that were built around the salt mines and have since transitioned their major industry to tourism. It’s where the Austrians go for a weekend, renting a Pension (B&B), hiking, swimming, and eating on boardwalks.
Hallstatt is pretty far into the Salzkammergut, and not particularly remarkable, save that a few years ago China decided to recreate it in Guangdong Province next to a Chinese mining town. In 2012, Hallstatt, China officially opened, and the bemused Austrians were tentatively hopeful that this may result in a bump in tourism.
In 2013, Frozen was released.
There’s a BBC video from 2019 titled, “Hallstatt: A town of 800 people that gets a million tourists a year.” I worked at a theme park and I know the signs. Flashing parking lot indicators two miles out. Directions in five languages. Clear delineation between public and private property. This town gets 100 tour busses a day during peak season. Hallstatt, a small lakeside town where humans have been mining salt since 5,000 BC, has been rebuilt to accommodate hundreds of foreign tourists each day. Except that right now… no one is allowed to enter the country.
What happened on Sunday was a combination of good timing and a sheer force of will to keep the precipitation tucked in the clouds. It was supposed to rain all day. I planned the day trip with Gina, a teacher at the PH where I work. We decided that we’d go no matter what. We’d sit in a café and drink coffee and look at the lake. We’d make it work.
The minute we parked, magic started happening.
As if guided by providence, we walked from the parking lot and onto a boat that left the exact minute we arrived at the water, utterly unplanned. We set out onto the lake. I ran to the stern to grab a few photos of the city as we pulled away. I was alone in the back, staring at the most remarkable scene of mountains and water, stunned in my soul and the sheer expanse of it. These are the liminal moments when grace slips in, I suppose. I stood there in a buzz of awe at the Creator/my life/timing/the still, small voice of God, and it dawned on me that Austria has held me through the worst season of my life.
I went through a summer of tragedy and miracles and then returned to Austria to, in some way, lick my wounds. Then Austria shut down for the winter, along with the world. I sat here in solitude and grief for half a year. My apartment became my whole world. My neighborhood was an adventure. And the woods were my escape.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come back. Maybe I should have stayed in Denver with my dad and my dog and shared the grief and silence with them. Maybe the solitude of my foreign apartment was an unnecessary layer of loneliness. Maybe I didn’t have to spend nights crying myself to sleep, knowing I’m not the first priority in anyone’s life but my own, and these feelings have nowhere to go but into prayer and the air.
But this winter of life found me housed in a small, tender place, where I could lick my wounds. I taught online, I worked with my voice teachers, and I tended to projects like this blog. I started Soul Singing, which has morphed into a space where I get to both teach and accompany others. I explored every possible rivulet of a career as a singer on two continents, taking into account that my mentor and current life-guide didn't get her first big break till she was four years older than I am now. I stared down the long haul and made the decision to stay in it, and stand ready to catch the opportunities on the inevitable upswing for live art that is coming for the post-pandemic world.
Most of all, Austria is the small nest where I came to grieve. I curled into a ball in my bed on Barichgasse in Landstraße in Wien in Österreich. I sat on my couch with tea, watching the leaves come back. I spent hours upon hours on my yoga mat, falling back in love with my body, just as it is. I threw that body into the woods and walked around till my heart calmed down.
I read twenty books.
Maybe this is a result of the natural ability we all have to adapt, and I'm not particularly interesting or notable in this regard. But despite my lukewarm opinion of Vienna, and my milquetoast opinion of its lack of satisfying weird-artsy-underground (let's call it "LA-ness"), I have come to love this country, this city, and this corner of the world. And I didn't know it till I was standing on that boat in Hallstatt, feeling that true Chestertonian sense of awe.
Hallstatt has a salt theme park.
I mean, a theme park based on salt. I mean, Salt World. If the biggest industry you’ve got is salt, and you need to theme… well, why not?
In true Austrian fashion, you get to Salt World via a gondola and a hike. My gobsmacked wonder continued up the mountain, where we entered the mine.
Salt World is where the lack of tourists became truly apparent. Theme Park Vet here, and I could see the length of lines that usually snake around the space. I could see the outline where a hundred people could stand under an awning. I noticed the fifty chairs with lots of space in between for families to put things down. Once we suited up in hazmat suits to protect our clothing from salt, we walked straight through a three-story visual guide of the formation of the earth, and I realized that it was a good, old fashioned attraction pre-show, Universal/Disney style.
Our tour group was seven people total, plus our guide. We sat in carved amphitheaters made for upwards of sixty guests. There were light shows and projections set to a synthesizer orchestra, telling us the story of the preserved Neanderthal found here (salt, you know) and the tools they used. We saw the oldest staircase in the world. And we slid down a slide.
If you’re going to make a theme park based on a condiment, this is about as good as it’s going to get. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I do not like Group Outdoor Adventures, but the slide was fine. (Where is my medical release? Where are the signs telling me I slide at my own risk? Where is the E-Cord?)
Once we’d shed the salt-proof jumpsuits, our guide gave us tiny, dollhouse sized shakers of pure Austrian salt. Then Gina and I headed back down the mountain to do some Kitschy Shopping. (Chinese tourists leave China, come to Austria, and buy items branded with Austrian cities and logos, that were made in China, and then take them back to China. What a world!)
We gaped at the lake for a few moments and decided to Have a Sit. (Austrians are wonderful at Having a Sit.) We got a table on the waterfront. And that’s when the swans appeared.
After dinner, we walked along the lake. Well, I floated. I could not believe this was real: this place, this weather, and in a way, this regard for my time in Austria, and the complete gratitude that filled me. Plus, the swans were vogueing.
This year of pandemic, hospice, death, grief, and transition could have gone many ways. But it went this way. And it was a good way, I think. God continues to love me, despite myself. Grace continues to find me, even when I've buried myself in anger and flipped it the bird.
My life broke down. It got ripped and shredded. Everything bled out. I created calluses and walls. And still, beauty slipped in and knocked my heart over. The expanse of a Benevolent Creator, dappled in the work of human hands, the houses and chimneys and the sky, made me feel something. And that something was gratitude.
It is such a simple thing, and yet, it is everything.
I want to tell Mommy everything. I want to describe Hallstatt and talk about plans for next year and share how excited I am. I want her to tell me how proud she is and how much she loves watching my journey. When I remember that I can’t call her, I still panic. My breath gets short, my heart seizes. My throat starts to burn. Life suddenly looks unbearably long. I worry that my dad doesn't know she's gone and how do I tell him. This type of moment has not dulled.
But I'm building new context for moments like this, brick by brick, dream by dream. Context shaped by beauty. The kind of beauty that stops my heart.
Maybe if I can grab enough moments of beauty I can keep them on hand, ready to pop like Advil, but instead of fighting headaches, they'll fight heartaches.
"The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder." G.K.C.
Here's to filling life with wonder, big and small, forceful and delicate, new or with new eyes.
Thank you, Austria, for holding me this year, and filling it with beauty, even when it was hard for me to see.