Wrong Country

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time, What Country Are We In?

By Tara Miller

September 2004

One thing I have learned from traveling with my family is that no matter how extensively we plan, things change…and that was most certainly the case with our last trip. The rainy weather was the catalyst of our change in plans which led to the biggest Griswold moment of Miller history. We cut our original plan of staying in Grunau, Austria for four days of canyoning, rafting, hiking, and biking because of the weather. Instead, we decided to make the best of it and head to Hallstatt, Austria where there was city life to explore in case the rain did not subside. The rain also convinced us that our hot air ballooning on Sunday in Berchtesgaden would be canceled and therefore we would not need our rental car…the rental which we were supposed to pick up Friday in Salzburg and then drive to Berchtesgaden on Saturday.

Hallstatt was as picturesque a city as one can imagine, set between the mountains and Lake Hallstatt, home to the world’s oldest salt mines (over 7000 years old). When we finally arrived Thursday evening, after getting on the train heading in the wrong direction and missing the ferry from the train station to the town, it was still raining. Finally, Friday we saw something we hadn’t seen in six days, the sun. With that, Kim, the activity coordinator of our trip, started planning: mountain biking, hiking, paragliding, you name it and she planned it. We were not going to waste one minute of the sunshine!

For Saturday morning Kim scheduled paragliding and hiking before we had to catch the ferry and train to Ramsau, our next destination. Originally our plan was to drive to Ramsau, but because we never picked up our rental car we had to stick with the trains. In conversation on the way to paragliding, Kim mentioned to Jamie (our paragliding guide) that we were heading to Ramsau in Berchtesgaden that afternoon. To our surprise Jamie and his crew were taking a group paragliding that afternoon in Ramsau and nicely offered us a ride. According to Jamie, Ramsau was only about one hour away by car, but we had planned on at least a three hour train ride. It sounded too good to be true.

While we were paragliding Jamie received a call canceling his afternoon engagement in Ramsau, but not wanting to disappoint us, he offered to drive us anyway for a small fee. He said we could leave right away or wait until 4 pm. We opted for the 4 p.m. option because we all needed to pack and we wanted some time to spend hiking around Hallstatt.

We met up with Jamie and crew again at 4 p.m. in the town center ready to head to our next destination. Since the weather had cleared up, Ramsau was the first place where we could go canyoning and white water rafting…the adventure and excitement we had all been longing for. Little did we know that the trip to Ramsau would be the biggest adventure yet! Mom and Dad looked over the map with Jamie and Chris (the other driver) before we departed—Mom seemed a bit confused. Having originally planned on driving herself, their route seemed somewhat strange, almost exactly opposite of the way she had planned on driving. Assuming the locals knew the back roads and shortcuts, we loaded up into the cars anyway and embarked on our hour long journey.

Kim and I rode in Jamie’s car and Mom, Dad and Jennifer followed in the van with our stuff and Chris. Jamie entertained us with music by Europe’s most popular boy band—exactly what a 29 and 31-year old likes to listen to. One would think that driving through Austria into Germany would be scenic, but if there was scenery, then I missed it. Highway, highway, highway was all we saw…okay it wasn’t that bad, there was the occasional mountain or tree, but for the most part it was a pretty long hour.

Jamie and Chris were right on when they said it was an hour drive and we arrived in Ramsau just after 5 p.m. Seeing as how Hallstatt is in Austria and Ramsau is in Germany, when we reached Ramsau we were baffled that we hadn’t seen a border crossing. Since the creation of the European Union, crossing borders between countries usually doesn’t involve a passport check or anything, but there is still a sign, like when we cross from state to state, but we hadn’t seen any sign, so had we crossed any borders?

“Ramsau, Germany?” Jamie said, “but we’re in Ramsau, Austria!” No wonder their route seemed so off! So much for their back roads and shortcuts! So there we were in Ramsau, Austria with these two poor Austrian guys who had just spent an hour driving us completely in the wrong direction to the wrong Ramsau…who would have know? Fortunately for the Miller-Griswolds, Jamie and Chris were very nice and agreed to drive us all the way, now four hours instead of three, through yet another rain storm, to the other Ramsau.