MoVie Stars

Last weekend (half of) the Book Club went on a girly weekend in the Mostviertel (get it? MoVie?). This district of Lower Austria is famous for its beautiful landscape, largely dominated by apple and pear trees, hence the name (most = cider). We were lucky enough to be there when the trees were in glorious bloom. To be honest, I'd probably never have discovered that area if it hadn't been for K. whose job required her to do intensive research of the b&bs, sights and culinary attractions of the area last year.

We stayed at a nice b&b specialising in farm holidays. It was spotlessly clean and the loving arrangement of our not really lady-like flannel pyjamas was reminiscent of more exotic places where male "maids" try to wheedle a greater tip out of guests by arranging clothes and towels into swans and the like.

The weekend was quite action-packed and included sight-seeing, shopping (each of us, I hasten to add, not just ME) and hiking. Oh, and a schnaps tasting extravaganza at an award-winning distiller's. The latter lasted from 9 p.m. until well after midnight and, being the designated driver and more than paranoid on account of two occasions of deer running across the road right in front of me already on the way there, a good half-hour drive from our b&b (and twice on the way back, but I didn't know that then, just as well) it was a purely second-hand-experience for me. I just smelled the 32 samples, ranging from more traditional flavours like apricot and apple to rather bizarre ingredients like beetroot or coffee.

On Sunday, we went on a hike not devoid of Camel-Trophy-esque elements. Think: fences of the barbed and electrical variety to climb over or limbo-dance under, cows to circumnavigate, rivulets to wade through. On a bench in front of a little church in the middle of nowhere, I discovered Mrs. K., my elderly neighbour whose flowers I water a good 4 months every year while she spends time at her weekend house not that far from where I bumped into her. It's a small world. She'd been trying to get me to visit her there ever since I took on my flower-watering and post-box-emptying duty and when I introduced my lovely friends from my book club, she must have decided that they didn't look like serial killers and invited the whole lot to her house ("I have 11 spare beds!"). When I told the girls that her cakes were legendary, the deal was sealed...