… and no-one knows where you've gone to

in the pagan night.

Peter Hammill, Sign - lyrics taken from Sofa Sound

Wrong drink to order... suspicion grows. Strong situation.... Oh, no-one knows where you've gone to in the pagan night and the neon reflections spread cadmium white. You came here looking for something but this wasn't it, quite. Hey, take a Polaroid, exit, and well you might. Sign the picture, get out of the frame; sign the picture, and throw it away. Sign the picture, sign the picture, throw the picture away. Now she turns her attention and her camera on you: this could be all of the moments that you'll ever live through. Oh, but your heart beats the rhythm of primeval tattoo... I hear you make your excuses as you usually do. Sign the picture, get out of the frame; sign the picture, and throw it away; Sign the picture, sign the picture, throw the picture away... ... although it's going to come back. You've got a certain knack of making of such things auspicious signs.

The song should be heard in the live version mentioned below.

If one took the 'you' in the song as a 'me' it might enlighten why there needs to be silence and darkness in the blog at certain periods of time. Maybe not a 'pagan' night, just silence and black.

It ain't over when it's over

I started this blog with a few posts on a Nazi eagle on a motorway bridge near Salzburg, with just the swastika taken out after the end of the Nazi regime, and its late disappearance.

A comment by mistereggz followed, likening the disappearance of remains to the dying of witnesses and survivors, and to the fading away of memory as a whole.

Here we go … It may have been one of those people who wants the Nazis back, or the formerly oft-cited 'strong man to bring back some order to those degenerate democracies' in Europe. It won't go away as it seems; bringing back the hurt to the sensible and sensitive ones. And it reminds us that dark history has not ended with the liberation from the Nazis.

Fog and freezing

The fog at Intercont Berchtesgaden was in June, now it's freezing cold down here, -8.3° C, and probably -15° up there (1,000m or 3,000ft. above sea level), around one foot of snow, and a bright blue sky to be expected once sun comes up.

Beautiful place to have a hotel built, yet if it were not for the dark past, see below, this is just in the middle of nowhere. Just mountains around and great views, plus the documentation centre at Obersalzberg, and – from May through October – the bus departure to the Eagle's Nest on top of Kehlstein mountain.

Obersalzberg documentation (reportedly the largest permanent exhibition on the Nazi period, and a very good one), in the background Untersberg.

In 1928, when Hitler first rented a chalet not far from here, one of his reasons was the view of Untersberg, a myth-laden mountain. Legend has it that in one of the huge caves of this limestone mountain there is eather emperor Charlemagne or Frederick I, Hohenstaufen emperor in the 12th century, sitting at a stone table in a death-like sleep. Only when the ravens quit circling the mountain and his beard has grown seven times around the stone table the emperor will awake, gather his army and in a huge battle at Walserfeld (a plain in the area around Salzburg airport) will erect a realm of Christ on earth.

A myth that goes back to the late middle ages when Christians were still awaiting a return of Christ and a 1000 year empire on earth before doomsday. It was not a dangerous one before the Nazis grabbed hold of it to legitimate their own "Thousand year empire".

The ice-cold winds of roll-back

'Profil', the Austrian weekly news magazine, founded in the early 1970s and moulded after the model of German Der Spiegel and U.S. Newsweek, has chosen to take a tougher stance in the discussion on the Austrian social security system.

This week's cover, strategically placed in the week of the Austrian National Holiday, Oct. 26, makes a very clear statement: "So ungerecht ist Österreich. ... Hausfrauen, Erben und Untätige werden belohnt." Yours truly has a built-in linguist who reacts very strongly to sentences like this one. There is an equation made; people who do not work because they inherited property (for which they were not taxed properly, thanks to the Austrian taxation system) are put on one level with humans who supposedly are neither working nor willing to work, namely housewives, and, hm, who is an "Untätiger"? Maybe a bum who dropped out of the system of employment and in consequence is no longer even willing to take up regular work. This is the equation; so far so bad.

But the verb 'belohnt' implies that action should be taken; if an unjust system is giving rewards to the 'undeserving' then the implication is that these people should rather be punished. The title also mentions "Leistungswillige"; obviously those should be rewarded. So, money should be taken from the poor, like from mothers who dropped out of employment for lack of child care and decent part time jobs, and be given to the needy WASPs? Well, some of the money for the needy slick urban professionals, like Profil journalists could be coming from wealthy heirs, that's understood. It might not be enough, so some definitely should be taken from workless, maybe homeless people?

Ich glaube, es erübrigt sich jeder weitere Kommentar. Ich habe der Profil-Redaktion in einem Mail, das nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt ist, meine Meinung zur Kenntnis gebracht; als nächstes werde ich mein Abonnement kündigen.

Was bleibt, sind Wut und Enttäuschung, dass ein Medium, das meinen geistigen und politischen Werdegang begleitet hat, nun nicht mehr Zeitgeschehen kommentiert oder Missstände aufdeckt, sondern neoliberale Propaganda betreibt, zur Spaltung der Bevölkerung und zum Hass auf andere, in zwei von drei Fällen auf solche die weniger haben, beiträgt.

Once again, the soundtrack is Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Don't let it bring you down, it's only castles burning. – Sadly so. But there still is 'Heimat' around; und der Geist weht wo er will.

"a gentler, kinder, a machine gun hand"

Neil Young, Rockin' in the free world

This is in memory of Mr. Gaganpreet Singh K. who died in an Austrian prison this morning.

See orf.at.

Mr. K. was not the suspect of a crime, he was an 'unfriendly alien',

he was treated to what the Austrian minister of the interior likes to call aufenthaltsbeendende Massnahmen.

Here I will not speculate on the causes for Mr. K.'s death; these will have to be determined by an Austrian D. A.

Mr. K. is not the first human being whose 'stay' in Austria

ended by death.

Before that, he is reported to have been on a hunger strike.

Like with the suspect of a crime before conviction

in a court his last name is not given in full by the media.

As concerned citizens, and as human beings, let us not forget that

the Declaration of Human Rights is a part of the Austrian constitution.

Remember

Franciscan monastery in Salzburg's old city; Gestapo headquarters 1938 – 1945.

Remember

On the way to Bad Dürrnberg and the salt mines high above Salzach river valley near Hallein; traffic has been halted, rescue workers, representatives of Salzburg province and the British Embassy meet with the relatives of the victims of a terrible traffic accident. Time to mourn and remember.

A local driver, obviously very 'pressed', had overtaken a slow tourist coach from the U. K. Oncoming traffic, the coach driver's attempt to avoid the danger failed and the bus crashed after a 100 meters' fall down a steep slope.

No pictures there of the traces of the impact after the coach had been removed; years later, I carry them with me.

To all you drivers who may feel hurried at times or just enjoy the rush of the adrenaline when overtaking: is it worth these consequences?