Anstatt sagen hello, sagen die Austrians “Grüsz Gott”. This is just one of the many differences here in this country. From the airport we rented a van and Hugo Pollhammer lead us to his home. He is a farmer and he also has farmland near Brunkild, Manitoba. Silverwinds knows him quite well. He and his son farm both places at the same time, he travels back and forth between the two countries to get the job done. His wife Theresia made a good supper for us. His house is like many of the Bauerhouses here in Austria. That is, four sections connected together to form a square with the center being open ‘zu dem Himmel’. Most of the buildings around here are 400 to 500 years old, anything 100 years old isn’t even worth mentioning.
Hugo Pollhammer told us of an experience that he had lately. I wish I would have recorded it, he told it so well. He said that he had been very sick a year or so ago, and it got so bad that at one point the doctors said that he was clinically dead for close to an hour, then he came back again! We asked him what it was like, and he said it was the most wonderful feeling that he had ever had. The peace that he had felt was indescribable, he didn´t want to come back anymore. Afterwards, this life’s worries, seemed so small and temporary. His time in the hospital gave him lots of time to reflect back on his life and what he had accomplished. After a nice evening he took us to das Gasthouse for the night.
The next day he picked us up at 10 and showed us the general area. First he took us to his farm which also has a nice Bauerhouse on it; this one was very big and most of it was rented out to other people. He showed us his crop where he planted winter wheat, winter barley and also winter canola. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen winter canola, it was all coming up nice and green. Every piece of farm land is so small compared to what we’re used to. He showed us a piece of land, 250 acres, which he bought for 5 million dollars! Here I thought thousand dollars an acre was bad! Right next to his land is a piece of land where the French General Napoleon camped when he destroyed the city of Linz. Seeing all this makes history come alive so much more.
After that we went to the St. Florian Church. This church is a thousand years old and unbelievably beautiful. It has huge marble pillars, huge organs and fancy woodwork. The pictures we took are a joke compared to the real thing. We can better understand what the Chronical is talking about when it talks about the Catholic Church’s misuse of power and money at that time. Pullhammer told us how they used laborers to build the church. They didn’t get any wages, just food to eat. They were told that they were working for the Kingdom of God and that was a reward in itself. In other words, it was basically slave labor that build the churches.
Danach sind wir nach Hause gefahren wo Therese uns eine gutes Essen vorbereitet hat. Von dort sind wir zu Linde Lederer in Kramsach gefahren. Wir sind auch durch Prien in Deutschland gefahren. (Die Autobahn hat uns eine kurze Strecke in Deutschland hineingenommen.) Das war die Stadt wo Joni von Netley, Joyce von New Haven und Priscilla von Crystal ungefähr ein Jahr zurück in der Universität gegangen sind. Sie sind auch ein paar Tage bei Linde Lederer gewesen. Paul Vetter von Green Acres war auch vor ein Monat hier. So kennt sie auch schon viel Hutterer und konnte uns viel erzählen. Sie hat uns ein gutes Abendessen gemacht, dann sind Talitha und ich bei ihr zu hause geblieben und die andren sind für der nacht zu einem Gasthouse gefaren. Es war ein lange Tage für alle.
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