It is a farm whose owners started to rent out rooms to holiday makes in the 1960s and when I was nine years old, my family and I went there for the first time. It was an adventure: strange smells, strange language, no wash basin in our rooms, the only tap was in the kitchen. They have come a long way from there, today there are apartments with cable TV.
I came here as a child and teenager with my parents, alone as a student, with my boy-friend and then with husband and child. I met a lot of other people who had been here as a child and came back with their own children. The friendship to the farmer's family grew - the older generation died and we "youngsters " are now in our 50s.
I had not been at this place for 10 years, but when I entered the kitchen, it was like coming home. And I spent a week remembering things my late mother had done or said - and thinking of the happy times of my marriage and the time when my son was little. It was like re-living my life, but at the end of the week I had arrived in the present and could look ahead to new adventures.
However, like a real home, the farm in Carinthia will remain with me wherever I go.
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| Some things never change: a new-born calf |
