The Sound of Austria

I hope our kitty friends in Austria had a wonderful National Day holiday with their humans. Today is Austria's National Day, which commemorates the State Treaty restoring national sovereignty and the end of occupation and the passage of the law on permanent neutrality which occured exactly 50 years ago.

Contrary to popular belief, the Austrian National Anthem is NOT Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, but from a melody from Mozart's masonic cantata (Mozart was a Mason as you can tell from his opera The Magic Flute/Die Zauberflöte) .

You can listen to the Austrian National Anthem - here (opens in RealPlayer).

The lyrics were written by poet Paula von Preradovic and are as follows:
Land der Berge, Land am Strome,
Land der Äcker, Land der Dome,
Land der Hämmer, zukunftsreich.
Heimat bist du grosser Söhne,
Volk begnadet für das Schöne,
Vielgerühmtes Österreich,
Vielgerühmtes Österreich!

Heiss umfehdet, wild umstritten,
Liegst dem Erdteil du inmitten
Einem starken Herzen gleich.
Hast seit Frühen Ahnentagen
Hoher Sendung last getragen,
Vielgeprüftes Österreich, Vielgeprüftes Österreich.

Mutig in die neuen Zeiten,
Frei und gläubig sieh uns schreiten,
Arbeitsfroh und hoffnungsreich.
Einig lass in Brüderchören,
Vaterland, dir Treue schwören,
Vielgeliebtes Österreich, Vielgeliebtes Österreich.

(Not much better than the Australian National Anthem - are they all so bad?)

Austria has graced the world with a rich legacy of musik - Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Mahler, Schubert, Strauß (both father and son), Bruckner etc. And let's not forget the contribution to psychiatry by Sigmund Freud.

In fact, next year in 2006 is a huge year celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's Geburtstag. See Mozart 2006.

And you can't visit Austria, especially for such an occasion, and not have Sacher-Torte along mit your Kaffee.

My human told me that he loved visiting Vienna and Salzburg. Unfortunately the lady at the shop at Salzburg Castle told him that too many Americans asked about kangaroos, so they made up a t-shirt with "no kangaroos in Austria". Duh!



Actually, my human had an interesting encounter getting off the hydrofoil in Vienna (from Budapest). He wanted to find out where the nearest U-bahn stop was and asked the first group of people he saw, auf Deutsch natürlich, and their reply was "we're American". Not quite what he had hoped to hear...

*As always, please check out Cooper and Camilla who always have interesting things to say.

........ooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo........

I've been a bit aloof lately but I still want my lap time! Must be the weather. All this sudden downpours of rain, then sunny skies. I'm so confused.

I think I better tell my human to let me watch the rest of Lost in Translation now.

keisercat@wildmail.com