I am back from Budapest since a few weeks now. I only made one hike there and I forgot to put back the SD card into my camera so I had to take photos with my smartphone. I went up to the Hárshegy from Hüvösvölgy. Nice and easy hike, not very long either. Mostly an afternoon hike.

I think it is possible to see the parliament building on the second pic.

After I had returned to Vienna, I wanted to go for a hike in Hainfeld, but again, no luck: after 4 kilometers or so, the trail was closed. I took a few photos but I did not post them on Pixelfed yet. This is one of them:

Finally, last week I went up to the Hermannskogel. Again no luck with the Habsburgwarte, because it is only open on weekend, but at this season, it doen't matter anyway. I posted one pic of a frozen leaf that I took during that hike and it was quite successful so I won't post it here.

I think I was quite close to the Habsburgwarte when I took this photo. This hike (Stadtwanderweg 2) is marked as "intermediate" in some books but it is defintely easy. It must be really nice on the last weeked in October.

So not much luck with hiking during the past weeks. Instead, I want to share the nicest memory that I have of my father, without photos. There are some, but I don't know where they are.

I think it was more than 15 years ago, I was in my late twenties and working on my doctoral thesis. I got a scholarship for travelling from the university because I had to study a lot of original paintings abroad. Some of them happend to be in Spain, in Madrid and Granada. I had made some research trips earlier, sometimes alone, sometimes with my mum. I hand planned the journey to Spain for February and my father decided to accompany me. Of course, for my parents, my trips were a great opportunity to travel since they only speak German and some eastern European languages. My father hated the dark winters in Austria and we indeed got a lot of sunshine in Spain, that I remember very well.

For him, it was also the first time he actually flew with an airplane. And I think this was the only time in my life that I visited art museums with him. We went together to the Prado, the Thyssen Museum, the Escoreal and the Capilla Real in Granada. I remember that it was very windy inside the Escoreal and that it's a really huge old masters collection... In Madrdid, I met a curator at the Prado, I think we talked in French, and she warned me of the thieves. But I think I must have been alone in the galleries as well because my father walked around a lot alone in Madrid.

One day, he showed me the important buildings in the city center, because he had seen them before, he talked a lot as always, like a tourist guide, and that was when his wallet was stolen. A bank card, his ID card, a lot of money and our train tickets to Granada were in it. It was pretty difficult and annoying to file charges at the police because the officers only spoke Spanish. Luckily we found a police lady who spoke French, but my French was not extremely good either. Somehow we got the document from the police that was necessary for my dad to be able to enter the airplane, because he only had an ID card and no passport. And we had to buy the tickets to Granada again, because of course I did not cancel my research in Granada because of the theft.

In Granada, we stayed at a hotel that he liked very much. It was not expensive at all but very very nice, with huge beds (my dad was a tall man), and a nice courtyard. Well, and if my dad had not been with me I would not have seen the Alhambra. I was so amazed and enthousiastic about it that I had to study books about it after our return. And I think this journey was also the last time that my father saw the sea. One day, he made a trip to Almeria, Malaga and I think also Gibraltar alone with the bus. I was pretty worried and anxious that he wouldn't be able to come back in time. But he always had his own mind and did what he wanted to do, he was a free person. He said he saw the African coast.

I think he liked this journey very much. He talked a lot about it even years later and often looked through the photos on the computer.

simon-a.info

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