Will it all end in tears – either way? Well, that’s what they seem to be predicting. But, hey, I’m still on holiday

Bad Gastein – Day before the Last Day (whichever that is)

And the should we/shouldn't we tell the EU to fuck off and leave our cucumber sandwiches along circus rolls on and on and on, leaving you, me and just about everyone else who doesn’t have a dog in this fight baffled and bewildered and bored. Both sides are predicting an economic holocaust if we don’t follow their cause – both sides. Which leaves me just a teensy bit uncomfortable: things are going tits up whatever happens. Well, great!

I have talked to several people over these past few months about it all – I’m not shy with strangers, just people I am close to – and by a stretch most seem to feel they are in the same schtuck as me, that just because you don't, as I don't, buy into all the Brexit/UKIP/Boris Johnson bollocks doesn't mean you are obliged to accept the other side hook, line and sinker. And it’s a real pain. Most of us

are very familiar with the genesis of what is now the EU, but I suggest it is unfair, perhaps even downright dishonest, to suggest that the original six, then 12, ultimately had their eyes on what might be characterised as a 'United States of Europe'.

What was uppermost in their minds, given that World War II had ended just a decade earlier, to come to some kind of arrangement which might ensure Continental-wide war and the death and destruction that brought with it was as unlikely as possible. The original grouping of six then evolved into an effective and profitable trading body and over the years other states joined. And that was when Britain first became interested (and there's nothing wrong with that). It has been pointed out ad nauseam that when Britain joined and when Britain first voted on whether to remain a member or not, the notion of political union was, at the very least, not a public one and was most certainly not publicly discussed.

It is quite fair to claim that private discussions between the politicians and theoreticians of different member states notwithstanding 'political union' was most certainly not presented to the public as an ultimate goal. And had it been, a certain Mrs Margaret Thatcher who campaigned to remain a member of the then EEC in the first referendum would most certainly not have done so. All that changed with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, and I think when in future historians attempt to trace the seeds of the collapse of the EU, they will pinpoint that treaty.

This was when all the political union bollocks came in. And this was when that and attendant notions of a common currency etc were introduced. In a sense it was all introduced in a rather

underhand fashion. For most member states, especially those which had emerged from totalitarianism or dictatorhip, membership was economically fabulous and they were prospering rather well, and rather sooner than they might have expected to do so. In addition they were benefiting from all kinds of EU projects to build up the infrastructure of their countries.

When gradually the various former Communist Bloc states joined, it was most certainly to be able, to put it bluntly, to get a piece of the action: they wanted good times and good business, and becoming a member of the EU seemed the easy way to get them. I don't doubt that they were also aware of the, by now public, aspirations for 'political union', but nor do I doubt that they didn't fully realise the implications.

Then there was the infamous Lisbon Treaty and the cracks were already beginning to show. And as happens with such cracks in fundamentally flawed organisations, they were papered over as best as was possible with more serious repair work put off until later. But just how - I shall consciuously use the word - corrupt the EU had become was demonstrated by the response by Brussels to the Irish

No vote. It was ignored, the Irish were asked to vote again and this time a slight majority said Yes.

Certainly, there was a bit of tinkering with the Treaty text to ensure a Yes vote, but that was largely legerdemain: the ultimate objectives, arguably which the Irish had initially rejected, were still in place. Corruption doesn't necessarily have to mean backhanders and cronyism. One salient point, I think, is that the post-war idealists and bureaucrats who organised the Coal and Steel Community with time grew older and retired and were replaced with a certain other kind of politician and bureacrats.

By the late 1970s on establishing a career in the EEC/EC/EU was a nice number, a very, very nice number. I also suggest that those men and women who in the 1970/80/90s threw in their lot with 'le projet' as it became and made Brussels their home were the same who 10/20/30 years earlier were part of the 'student revolt' of the 1960s and who came to realise that they might still have their left-liberal ideas adopted Europe-wide by using the mechanisms of the EU. But they, too, in time

and very ironically, came to be seduced by the exercise and trappings of power, the copper-bottomed pensions and the rest. I am pretty convinced the EU will collapse spectacularly and destructively if isn't subjected to a root and branch process of reform. But that is unlikely to happen.

The trouble is that if Britain does remain a member, the danger is that any long-term reforms will be shunted aside in the interests of short-term advantage and it will all be back to square one. Come June 23, I shall be voting to Remain, but only because it is the lesser of two bloody great evils. But not by much. As for the EU ensuring peace in Europe (a facile claim which could equally be made about the Eurovision Song Contest), that piece of fiction might well come to bite Europe in the bum by 2030.

. . .

Was off again yesterday, to a place called Zell am See. Well, actually, not to the place but to a Gasthof on the side of the mountain overlooking the lake, called Mitterberghof. There I had my first Wienerschnitzel of this holiday and pretty much my first piece of meat. I did have a few slices of smoked ham and salami in a salad of sorts the other night at an Italian place called Angelo’s, but I’ve got to save that although I am most certainly not a vegetarian, I do find increasingly that I don’t eat a lot of meat. The exception will be tonight, however, when I go to a nearby steakhouse which, the owner of the Pension St Leonhard assures me, does a mean steak tartare. And boy do I love steak tartare, especially if it’s a mean one.

Sitting at the Mitterberghof, I was also again messaging a woman the other side of the world who has agreed to let me mention her here, but to please now call her Libz so that she cannot be identified. I did actually mention her in an earlier post by name, but I can’t think that will do much damaged. She isn’t 54 as she first told me, but 34, but I am still 66. (Oh, well, I had my time.)

I must admit there is still a small part of me who wonders whether perhaps he is quietly being lined up for some Nigerian scam and that it has started in Melbourne, Australia, is merely an indication about just how subtle fraudsters are getting. But what the hell: as long as I keep my hand firmly on my wallet in my back pocket – and make it obvious that that is what I am doing and not just feeling up my arse in public – I should be fine.

Here’s a piccy I took from my table on the terrace of the Mitterberghof.

PS Still got the hives, dammit. It comes and goes. It is rather like the prickling I got when I was coming off the codeine addiciton I accidentally landed myself with.

I visit to the set of Where Eagles Dare (or Burg Hohenwerfen as it is known hereabouts in Austria). And an open invitation to my Turkish and Russian visitors to make yourselves known

Bad Gastein - Day Five

Well, I did get off to Burg Hohenwerfen (pictured), and some fortress it turned out to be. First built halfway through 11th century by an archbishop who found himself caught between a rock and a hard place in a battled between the Pope and the then German emperor, who both reckoned they

should be the ones to appoint bishops and archbishops, he decided the safest place for him to be was on top of a very tall, rocky hill in the middle of a valley where he could see who was coming from any side. But rather than go through the whole of its history – which I only learnt today, anyway, so it’s not as though I am some kind of expert – here’s link to its Wikipedia page.

If some of you think it looks familiar (and haven’t actually already been there) you have seen it before it you watched Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood and the usual list of ageing Brit film stars who tended to be rolled out on such occasions. And you’re right, when I eventually got to see the film, it didn’t do much for me, but then I didn’t actually get to see it until about 30 years after it was first released, by which time it had probably dated horribly.

For the record the only James Bond film I rate at all is Skyfall, and I shan’t be watching Spectre because my son tells me it is cack, though he did explain that after the original script was stolen as part of the Sony email scandal, it was scrapped and the producers started afresh which explains why none of it hangs together (he informs me).

The place was about 30 miles due north of where I am staying and I was surprised, and also a bit relieved to get out into the open again in a manner of speaking. I didn’t realise that after only five days of being in Bad Gastein, a pleasant town but which sits in the bottom of a valley with two very high mountains on either side, I had already begun to feel a little claustrophobic. Driving north, the valley opens out and it was like breathing a little better again.

The day had started rather bright so I didn’t wear the thick winter boots I had brought along to ‘walk a little in the mountains’, but wore some leather slips-ons, and that, as I turned out was a big mistake: the day grew cold and windy – and especially bloody cold and windy when the guided tour of the castle I had joined climbed to the highest point of the castle, its bell tower. Christ, was it windy.

So by the time the tour ended all I wanted was a strong cup of tea – and not the shite they tend to serve the far side of the Channel, but I proper mug of good old British rosy lee. Well, some hope. I did the next best thing and stopped off in a town five miles away on the way home – Bischofshofen – where I treated myself to a double-strength latte and brandy. And that was followed by three more brandies when I discovered that, for some reason, smoking is still allowed in Austrian bars (or so they told me).

While I was there the TV was on and the final result of the Austrian presidential election was announced: it wasn’t the fearful closet Nazi our Brit newspapers feared it would be but some yoghurt-knitting Green. Christ, they don’t do things by halves here, do they: from one extreme to the other.

The figures were tighter than a duck’s arse – 49.99 for the closet jackbooted Herbert and 50.01 for the gentle, planet-saving vegan 80-something former professor of I don’t know what. It will be interesting to see how this one is played in the media: alarm bells ring as a new Nazi would-be dictator with 10,000 storm troops at his beck and call is narrowly defeated in Austria – be afraid, cos he ain’t going away. Or Austrian have finally grown up and see sense to put paid to a pseudo-democratic Putsch by a new Nazi would-be dictator with 10,000 storm troops at his beck. It is such a a shame that all our papers, and not just the Brit ones tend to treat news as an episode in the Beano’s Desperate Dan or Minny the Minx.

Right, I’m off to have supper somewhere. Pip, pip. But not before I query who the nice Turk is – or the nice Turks – for whom over the past few months this blog has proved oddly fascinating. In the past month he/she or they have visited it an astounding 1,064 times, 575 times more than a Russian or several Russian visitor – their interest is also rather intriguing – and 844 more times than Brit visitors. I am intrigued so could you in Turkey (and Russia) drop me a line and tell me a little more about yourselves?

This is me high (up - 2,230m above sea level – oh, and the sequence of writing might confused, so get a grip). Then I give a well-deserved plug to my most recent favourite TV series – give it a crack, ‘cos you will not be disappointed

 

Like the original kid with a new you, I'm using my new app to wish you well from 2,230 high (1.38 miles apparently) above sea level. More later. I'd now prefer to enjoy the air and sun.

The cable car to the top of Stubnerkogel is on the hour and I had the choice of going up at 11am or waiting till 12 noon, and as I don’t believe in rushing things at the best of times and certainly not when I am on holiday, 12 noon it shall be. Full report to come. (NB A fellow guest here at the Pension St Leionhard who introduced himself as James Moriarty has assured me from the top you get a marvellous view of the Reichenbach Falls which is not to be missed. He’s even offered to take me to them sometime. Worth the trip, he says. Nice chap, seems like a likeable sort.)

. . .

(This was written earlier, before the above)

As for the mountain, well I took the cable car up, but walked halfway down to the cable car middle station. That took the best part of an hour, although to be honest it didn’t feel half as long. I was

going to walk the rest of the way, but I found out that I can’t use my ticket again, so I took the cable car down, and next time I’ll just get a single and walk all the way down. I was also rather put off by reading a sign that the rest of the way was another hour and a half. Well, what with bursting for a pee twice, I thought I would put off the heroics to another day (but I shall – walking down was the first time where everything was beautifully quiet, the kind of quiet I have been craving).

I like castles and I’m told there’s rather a splendid one about two-thirds of the way to Salzburg, about 40 miles away. I was initially planning also to go to Salzburg, but what the hell. Might, and might not. Let’s see. Here are a few piccies taken up the mountain.

. . .

In the meantime, I thought I might advocate everyone here catching a British TV series which, to my mind, stands head and shoulders above almost any other TV series which has come out of Britain and is as good as the best produced by the US and the rest of the world. And as it is available on Netflix, maybe be you can get hold of it. It’s called Peaky Blinders.

I was rather late coming to it, in fact, though not for any particular reason. It’s just I tuned into the first episode of the first series when it was first broadcast on the BBC and for some reason or other went off to do something else after a few minutes.

The same happened with Breaking Bad, which I have still yet to see. I should say that what I find outstanding about Peaky Blinders is not necessarily just ‘the story’, but that its production values, cinematography, acting, dialogue, directing and, almost above all, its soundtrack are simply the best. No corners have been cut, but nor is there a sense of throwing money at a project and showing off. (Producing ‘the biggest’, ‘the longest’, ‘the highest’, ‘the most expensive’ and all the rest of anything is not the Brit way. If that’s your bag, check out any number of US folk and companies who are under the illusion that sort of thing gains them kudos. We Brits like everything, especially our humour, to be understated.)

To write that Peaky Blinders is ‘about gangsters in Birmingham just after World War I – known to those who took part in it or were affected by it at the time as The Great War (they obviously couldn’t have known that the sequel was already in development)’ – risks being misleading. It is about so much more: the brutalisation of men by WWI comes into it, as does the consequences of the Easter Rising in Dublin and the consequences of the Russian Revolution, the disruption to the British class system and to the balance of the sexes by the war and much else.

. . . .

Tomorrow, it’s off to Burg Hohenwerfen wherever that might be. It is said to look something like this. Bet that cost a bob or two. Or three or four...
 

Just trying out. Later - seems to have worked, though I can't see yet how to add pictures on the app. And I make a new acquaintance, just by chance, a 54-year-old Bangladeshi Australian from Melbourne

Bad Gastein - Day Three: Cup Final day when Louis van Hopeless's fate is decided.

I have downloaded some kind of app which allows me to blog on the move and I'm trying it out. Why blog on the move, which involves - quite literally - one-finger typing? Well, as the Irish say just for the craic. I've just taken a photo of my lunch to be (as it were) to see whether I can also add photos. Well! Can life get any more exciting? I didn't think so!

Think on it: I'm sitting jn the back if Austrian beyond in a Gasthof with a large beer and a Gasteiner Bauernsalat and I can still burble on about fuck-all to my heart's content. Here's the photo (No, it isn’t. Ed), then I shall get on with lunch. Can life get any better? Well, yes, quite probably, but first I'll have lunch. If you are reading this now, more follows later. If you are reading this later, more followed.

. . .

Well, here’s later, I’m back at base killing time before the Cup Final starts at 5.30pm (18.30 local time) and perhaps – perhaps – bloody Manchester United don’t play like a kindergarten scratch side and will beat the shit out of Crystal Palace. I have already made the mistake of laying a fiver on them to win, and as I almost always lose my bets, that would seem Palace have it in the bag. Maybe I should put twice as much on Palace to win, but no doubt Sod’s Law will apply and I will find myself in the clover.

The first bit of this blog was written one-finger style on my iPhone using an app linked to Blogger. I just wanted to see whether it was any cop. I went for the £2.29 ‘pro’ version, which might seem like a waste of dosh to you, but as you can’t even scratch yourself in West London these days for less than a fiver what the hell. While I was sitting at the Salzburgerhof Hotel in Bad Hofgastein, just three/four miles down the road from here, I finally got around to contacting a Liblu Hossain who had Facebook messaged me a few weeks ago querying whether we had any friends in common.

Well, I didn’t recognise the name (and it was similar to a Skype scam I once came across in which someone would ask me to add her – always a her – to my address book, so I was cautious. As it turned out, so was she. It seems that somehow I had sent her a message asking whether she wanted to be Facebook friends. I can’t remember doing so, but these things can happen by chance, so earlier on I messaged her asking her why she had originally asked me whether we had common friends. I thought she might, perhaps, be a friend of my sister’s, who once live in Istanbul and has a lot of different friends, but that wasn’t the case.

To cut a long story short, it was just a fluke. But we chatted for a while and I said I would mention her in this ‘ere blog. So: hello Liblu, I hope you are well, and perhaps we can chat again, though the next time I shall do so at a laptop keyboard as I find typing with all my fingers a damn sight faster than with just the one. So that’s what I did today: got in the car, drove the few miles to Bad Hofgastein, found a bar/café/restaurant, had Gasteiner Bauernsalat for lunch, chatted with Liblu, then came back to watch the Cup Final,

I hope on one of the cable channels on the TV in my room or else on BBC courtesy of Zenmate which allows me to pretend I am in Britain. But I can’t leave without mentioning these bloody sodding hives. Today they were worse again and I am at my wits end. It’s all very well the medical bods informing me that it is ‘idiopathic’ i.e. they don’t know the cause, but that basically your immune system is pumping out histamine – which leads to the itching and thus scratching – in response to ‘an allergy’ of some kind. But what bloody allergy can it bloody be in my case?

If I remember it more or less started when I was visiting Seth last September in Spain, or a little after, although if the truth be told for several years now I have woken to feel a little itchy all over, though by no means as it is now. It isn’t quite as bad as it was in Spain because I am popping anti-histamine tabs as though there were no tomorrow, but that is just sticking a plaster on it all: I want to find out what is causing it in my case and see if I can’t sort it out from that end. My two suspicions have been sugar and alcohol.

Well, I’ve since knocked sugar on the head and sweet things and I have never been a big drinker anyway. But when I get back home, I shall knock booze on the head, too, to see whether for some insane reason I have become allergic to alcohol.

Pip, pip.

Not doing a lot, except spending some time with naked pensioners of both sexes (this is Austria, remember). And I give Peaky Blinders a plug

Bad Gastein - Day Two

I call it Day Two, but actually it is my third day here in that I arrived at Wednesday lunchtime, so really it is Day Three. However, I am discounting Wednesday because after getting up at 4.30am to get to Stansted airport and arriving here at just after one to be confronted by a surly Austrian workmen doing some kind of repair work to the drive to Pension St Leonhard where I am staying, I retired to the nearest bar I could find for a glass or two of wheat beer. He told me - actually, he swore at me - that he needed at least another hour to get done what he wanted but I gave him two so as not to cross paths with him again.

Trouble was that at my late age in life, two steins (or whatever) of wheat beer at what was pretty much lunchtime knock me sidways and then some. So within minutes of checking in and unpacking, I was crashed out on my bed and sleeping intermittenlty till 7pm. That's when I got undressed and made a night of it. Hence there wasn't much left of Wednesday to qualify as Day One. And that makes yesterday Day One and today Day Two.

Yesterday I went explore around town, although 'town' really does misprepresent Bad Gastein thoroughly. In many ways it reminds me of the towns which established themselves in the South Wales valleys - I lived and worked in a place called Abertillery for a while - and given that space is at a premium, unlike I should imagine from what I've seen in pictures of your average Mid-West town, the folk became adept at somehow utilising every last metre there was. Pension St Leonhard is up a slight hill just of the Bundesstraβe 167 (one for the nerds that, the ‘road buffs’), which is the main road. But almost all of Bad Gastein lies, if you are heading due south, off to your left, but you don’t really see it when you drive past. That’s where I went exploring, and I discovered that nine-tenths of the town is made up of hotels. Here are a few pictures to try to convey what I mean, Oh, and that's not smoke but clouds - the weather hasn't been great.

. . .

I said yesterday that there wasn’t much going on. Well, that is something of an understatement: there’s nothing going on. About 90pc of everywhere is closed to give staff some time off between the end of the winter skiing season and the beginning of the summer walking season. I’m told it all gets slowly back into gear next week. As I said, I don’t mind because all I want to do is exactly fuck all and that is what I am doing. Fuck all. Loads of sleeping, a bit of reading, a bit of watching films and series on Netflix (of which a little more below) and basically chilling out.

Today, for example, I patronised the Felsentherme, a complex of a swimming pool, saunas, Turkish baths and whatever, all based on the apparently healthy giving waters coming down from the mountain. Bad Gastein – the Bad is the giveaway – began life as a spa town with folk coming to take and bath in the waters. Franz Schubert came here apparently, and it was here that he wrote to of his Winterreise songs as well as a Gasteiner Symphonie, which has apparently been lost. (Maybe he just told folk he had written a symphony.)

The notable thing for we buttoned up Brits is that once you get to the sauna area it is nudity all the way – everyone of all ages (though when I was there it was mainly elderly folk) is in their birthday suits and not just in the sauna. And it is suprising just how quickly you get used to it. I have been in a sauna once or twice before (and wore bathing trunks on those occasion) but it is something you can get used to easily and I shall go again. I’m not too sure quite what the health benefits are, but, hey, who gives a fuck?

. . .

As for watching stuff on Netflix, I have been catching up on Peaky Blinders and I have to say it bowled me over. There are some very good TV drama series out there, notably The Sopranos (which more or less set the standard) and Breaking Bad (which I have seen very little of), Boardwalk Empire, Homeland and The Wire. There’s also some real cobblers – can’t say I cared much for Suits. But all were notably US productions and as they seem to have the money, the production values are usually far higher. Our Brit productions, although sometimes reasonable, though often pretty bloody awful, just paled by comparison. But Peaky Blinders has changed all that.

It can stand head and shoulders with the best of them, and, I have to say is perhaps even better than many. It is a gangster series set in Twenties Birmingham and London and convinces at every turn. And one of its most notable features is its soundtrack: it uses contemporary music but they tracks are all of a piece with what is going on. I can highly recommend it. The third series is now being shown on television here in Britain, but I’ve decided to wait until the series is finished and goes to Netflix so I can gorge on it as I have been gorging on the first two series. But now, as they say in other diaries, to bed.