In a sense, the map of Central Europe is not much different from the map of North Africa. Unless the contours of countries are more intricate. The main similarity: both there and there are no lakes. In Europe, they are so microscopic that they simply can’t cope with the scale of the pages of the atlas. Having departed from the bays of the Baltic and the Mediterranean Sea deep into the continent, you understand that it seems like there is nowhere to swim. Hungarian Balaton, knee-deep, and a cocktail of Alpine lakes with floating pieces of ice.
But, as newspaper tabloids sensationally erupted, you can swim in the Alps! Wörthersee, the largest and warmest lake in the Austrian land of Carinthia, is pompously called the Austrian Riviera (because without its own Riviera of Austria it is not comme il faut). The 16-kilometer Wörthersee length contributes to the usual desperately elongated configuration for alpine lakes, such as the "eel". Other Carinthian lakes, and there are more than a thousand, even on local maps are no larger than droplets, dots and hyphens. Such is the hydraulic punctuation.
Two hundred sunny days a year and a modest depth allow pure bluish-green water to warm up to bathing temperatures, as a result of which, even in September, there is every chance here not to catch the kidneys and appendages! There are no problems with salmonella. The bike about the annual boat breakthroughs by the mayor of Klagenfurt to the center of Wörthersee is in fashion, where an important person scoops up lake water and drinks in public! The hidden morale of the paddling: “you are swimming in drinking water!”.
It is clear that from the shores of Wörthersee tenacious paws of the resort industry are trying to squeeze all the juices. The Southern Railway, laid in the 19th century, brought to the amazement of the amazed peasant poor, the brilliant Viennese nobility. The stable life of the region has changed like a malleable weather vane. Why plow clay clods when it’s easier to sit on a tourist igloo.
The overwhelming number of villas, guest houses, hotels and restaurants peremptorily pushes to the periphery the remaining forms of civil architecture. The best of them become, for lack of other things, the sights of coastal towns.
Reifnitz, where we lived, is neither a city nor a village. In the Russian language there is generally no word denoting the status of Rainfnitz-like settlements. Austrian thought in the field of nomenclature of settlements is much more inventive. The catastrophic German term katastralgemeinden means something like the cadastral community or commune into which the municipalities are divided. Nevertheless, for convenience, the concept of "town" Reifnitz is adjusted with some stretch. Do not repeat the unpronounceable term endlessly!
The center of Reifnitz is formed by the immediately forgettable city hall and the Strandhotel Sille with hints of half-timbered architecture. Along the perpendicular to the lakeside highway the road is sculpted with fifty houses. Another part scattered along the surrounding hills, not climbing higher than expected.
The Wörthersee is compressed by alpine foothills covered with a dense brush of forests. The slopes are dissected by a network of hiking trails, like a city by streets. The length and elevation for every taste. On the longest and highest alpine Raynfitz route, climbing heroes rely on a bonus: Mahler's country house. The solitude of the thicket pushed the composer to a whole series of symphonies (from 5th to 8th).
To the churches of St. Anne and St. Margarita, ordinary retirees are also able to climb on the forces. Along with the Malerovsky refuge, churches emphasized distance from the central hotels. Is this Reifnitz? By virtue of its “catastralheimendenovity,” the borders are hardly intelligible.
The doors of the snow-white church of Anna, covered with sown wooden plowshares, are wide open. Anyone has the right to enjoy the marble columns and the altar with generous gilding. From hardly possible hooliganism here, a defenseless church - neither the soul nor the caretaker - is protected by the entrance grilles. View, not touch! The tradition of controlled openness has taken root throughout Carinthia. You can look into the temples in the late evening, illuminating for a moment the blackness of the interior with a flash.
From an even more ancient church of Margarita to the ruins of the 12th century Burg, on one of the rocks there is a tractor, sensitive to the muscles of the hips. The saying that “majestic ruins can only be majestic structures”, of course, not about Burg. At the same time, the uneven masonry of bumpy cobblestones along the chest height is evidence of fortification strength. In the troubled times, the Christianization of Alpine pagans would not have been possible.
A patient continuation of the ascent will lead to the Pyramidenkögel - 851-meter mountain, a record on Wörthersee (420 m above the lake). When the top of the Pyramidenkogl was overgrown, the crowns blocking the view began to fight with the help of the tower - the namesake of the mountain. The current, from steel and concrete, replaced the post-war wooden. Despite the definition of “avant-garde” (from “Lonely Planet”) and enviable statistics (five millionth visitor in 2008), the threat of new reconstructions is ripening.