 |
| Pittoresque Austrian January landscape. |
I yawn into the face of an unenthusiastic Monday morning and press my arms against a stubbornly vibrating steering wheel, while the scenery around me drowns in nauseating boredom and muddiness: an ugly study in dirty browns, greens and greys meets the ponderous eye, like a rugby players' torn, draggled shirt at the end of a rough and painful match. I try to focus on the road in front of me as it darts ahead, dividing a wet and rainy horizon into two parts of naked browns to the left and right, and a threatening mass of heavy greys pressing firmly down from above.
The procession of cars moves sleepily through the pallid morning light. It is still early in the day, the week, and the year and it seems the world is still caught in the half-slumber of last years' Christmas holidays. I silently curse at a lorry that is valiantly battling uphill in front of me, break out of the line and quickly overtake the struggling giant, before the two lanes merge back into one. And while Johnny Cash recites 'Mean As Hell' over the wailing sound of the strained engine, the smear of the windscreen wipers produces glorious halos around the oncoming traffic, transforming the garish stares of blinding headlights into twinkling, ever changing beams of light, blatantly stretching their arms from one end of the smudged windscreen to the other.
Traffic eases, as the road takes me further away from the city. My gaze wanders across the heavy, grey sky looming over a batch of naked, rolling hills that welter slowly across the horizon. If I squint hard enough, I can spot in the distance, in the sky, a tiny, yellow band trying hard to break the monotony of the dominating grey. A faint and fragile window that, perhaps, grants a feeble glimpse into the future, when the now barren landscape will glow in a rural, domesticated symmetry of lush and glorious shades of greens and yellows. Nature tamed, shaped, butchered, and raped by man, displaying its neatly arranged forests, its imposed, unnaturally straight lines and artificial rectangular patches of colour in the golden light of spring sunshine - a sight both beautiful and atrocious at the same time.
The continuous drizzle that was a constant companion since I left the city slowly fizzles and dies. The windscreen wipers protest with a sound like a battalion of obese, middle-aged housewives rubbing their enormous, fleshy backs against the insides of a million bathtubs, as the rubber jolts unwaveringly across the now dry glass of the windscreen. An unpleasant shiver runs down my spine and I quickly turn them off, before they get a chance to repeat themselves. I put my foot firmly on the accelerator, as the road bends gently - almost as if not to break - up the steadily ascending slope.
Further ahead a cluster of blinking orange lights flashes wildly into the grey of the morning. They are cutting down trees, dragging their fallen corpses across to the other side of the street. A man in a Hi-Vis jacket and matching wellies motions me to slow down, while a few others in similar gear wrap heavy chains around a giant log. Hi-Vis-And-Wellies-guy stands by the roadside and monitors the situation. He has a plain, earnest face with eyes that ooze focus, diligence, and determination. He is in total control and exudes an unwavering certainty that he couldn't possibly be anywhere else than right here, right now. He returns my gaze and I quickly look away, afraid of what he might find behind my eyes. Instead I search the horizon for that tiny, yellow band I saw before. It seems that it's gone. Or maybe it was just my imagination.
