Last Christmas Deb gave me an amazingly thoughtful gift — a weeklong carving school in Austria. In her research she found that in addition to wood and stone carving, they also did clay sculpting (apparently you always start with a clay model before you start carving). I found this intriguing because I had done a bit of carving in college, but also a little intimidating given some of the carvings I saw on the brochure. In any regard, we were off to Elbigenalp, Austria! Several hamlets form the municipal area of Elbigenalp, located between the Lechtal Alps and the Allgäu Alps. Its name derives from the term “elmige Alpe”, which refers to a meadow that is overgrown with green elm trees. The inhabitants, however, call Elbigenalp simply “s’Duarf” (the village). On the first day there we wandered around a bit to get our bearings. It was right out of “Heidi” (yeah, I know Heidi takes place in Switzerland!). Anyway, we were charmed, but also pretty tired after our long journey.
Then it was for class. When we entered the school, there were some stunning carved figures all around. That was a wee bit intimidating! With the exception of Deb and I, the rest of the students were carving wood and were in another classroom. We had another whole classroom to ourselves. Our instructor was a pretty interesting character who had a lot of talent but went to the “tough love” school of instruction. He always looked like he had just gotten out of bed after a previous night’s heavy drinking. Who knows, maybe he had! Deb decided she wasn’t going to thrive in that environment and chose to leave the class for other pursuits in the area. I ended up sticking it out and, despite withering glances and smashing some of my in-progress pieces, he really did teach me a lot. They were actually pretty long days of instruction, but I definitely felt like I came out with a lot of new knowledge.
After the last day of class, I hiked up one of the mountain trails. To say it was bucolic would be an understatement. Of course, one of the highlights was seeing all of the cows with their bells tinkling as they were grazing in some upper meadows. Such a beautiful area and a pretty healthy walk!
As luck would have it, our time at the carving school put us in the right timeframe to attend the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany, and luckily it was only about 30 miles away. The Passion Play was originally performed in 1634 and the local legend is that if God spared the town from the effects of the bubonic plague that was rampant at that time, they would perform the play every 10 years, which they did. The play is now performed in years ending with a zero and, with the exception of 1940 (due to onset of World War II) it has been! About half the local residents (about 2000 people) perform in and/or support the play and they perform it every night between mid-May and early-October. Phew! We knew this was going to be a grind given that it starts at 2:30 pm and ends at 10 pm (leaving time for a meal break so all the performers, etc. can go home for dinner) in 16 acts, but it was really hot that day and sitting on the backless benches made us feel like we were having our own passion play! Having said that, it was truly an amazing production and we had a great time wandering around the town. Much like Elbigenalp, Oberammergau is a wood carving town with its own school. We saw some incredible work there!
I am a traveler and sometimes clay sculptor, following a long career working in consulting. My work allowed me to travel the world extensively and I was hooked. Today, I travel with my wife/best friend to explore new places, meet new people, and learn new things.
