Exploring Friesach


We stayed for 2 days in the town of Friesach for a medieval festival, which we also went to last year called the Friesach Spectaculum. Our friend who was one of the missionaries here in Vienna came to visit with his Mom. Here you can see Coby Vail with both Oliver and Elora. Oliver didn’t remember him, but Elora did. However, they both warmed up to him pretty soon.

In the morning, we hiked up to one of the castles overlooking the town. These castles are ruins from the middle ages, and unlike most castles in Austria have been left to crumble, which gives it a more ancient feel.

Inside the castle tower was a museum, which Karen had lots of fun in. We locked her up in the stocks for bad behavior, but Elora took pity on her and gave her a banana.

We weren’t sure how this thing worked, but it wasn’t very comfortable.

Elora was excited to get locked up too. She’s so cute. The kids were dressed in their knight costumes all day in preparation for the festival later on.

Ollie wanted a turn too. He didn’t like it so much when it was closed. Then again, this is the kid that gets very angry if you try to make him sit still against his own will.

More cutouts… Elora was excited that it was a witch, but she likely would have been just as excited if it was a cow or a slug or a green bean.

The museum in the tower had 6 different floors, with various artifacts. It was a nice museum, with a lot of “old stuff” as Elora would say. This floor is the medieval chapel.

The top floor had the guns and stuff. Oliver decided this would be a good time to sword fight daddy.

Look closely at the statue…. what’s with the creepy guy? No, not Chris, the other guy…

Here is the Williams family with our pal Coby. He was in Vienna for so long, a year or more, it was right when we moved here. So it was nice to get to see him again. Elora really missed him when he left last year, and even after we left Friesach on this trip, she was asking if Elder Vail would be back in Vienna again…

And then a normal family picture, because we never have a chance to get a good family portrait. This one is actually pretty decent.

Lunch time! Some tasty Kärntner Kasnudeln. They are sort of like ravioli (this section of Austria is somewhat close to Italy), but filled with a potato-cheese mixture and soaked in lots of browned butter. Plus the noodles are thick, homemade noodles.

We’ll post the festival pictures in a separate post, but you can catch a glimpse of Elora’s face paint, or as I like to call it, “The Ultimate Warrior Paint“. She is looking at the Wheel of Fortuna here, which is a strange sculture in the middle of the town moat, having something to do with the Roman Goddess of fortune.

Here we are outside the castle walls by the moat.

Friesach is one of my favorite little towns we’ve been to because it has a lot of charm, it’s old, the grocery store closes at noon, and it has a moat with a few castles.

At the end of the day, we got dessert. This was just a bowl of ice cream mixed with plain yogurt and fruit. It was a great combination. The plain yogurt had a nice sweet and tangy effect. And it came in a huge glass.

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