Bourdainism in Halstatt and Oberautal: The Town That Looked Like Heaven, and the Confession I Wrote in a Church

Being alone in a cold landscape is a writer’s fever dream.

Depending on who asks on my travels, my answer is usually “yes”.

“Are you an artist?”

“Are you a travel blogger?”

“Are you journaling?”

The answer is really, “I’m a writer.” I’m a writer through and through. I’m a writer in a way that one can identify with their sex, sexuality, heritage, what have you. Not as a vocation. This certainly doesn’t pay the bills. I’m just a writer through and through.

Yesterday at a bar in Oberautal, I found myself writing this:

“I think this is the part of me that I am afraid of people seeing. It’s the…part of me only few people can handle in doses. The part of me that enters creative flow. The part of me that loves my art more than I could ever love a person—the older I get, the more I realize: deconstructing the ‘why’ doesn’t matter. It simply is. I wither if I can’t create.”

I didn’t write that to be dramatic. I wrote it because it’s true, and because sometimes the truth only comes out when I’m alone enough, cold enough, and far enough away from the social expectations of being “normal.”

And I found myself missing drawing for the first time in a while. Today I’ll head off to an art supply shop; the largest in Vienna. Life’s about the simple things, before we were programmed.

A doodle of mine

Let me ask you this: You work so hard, for decades and decades, dreaming of “someday”. Hunkering down for retirement. Focused on the next carrot. It’s a noble feat, and it makes sense, especially if you have children.

Now, when that magic number appears in your bank account, and “someday” strikes, what will you do? Have you given that part much thought, yet?

Because what I’ve noticed is that some people spend their whole life waiting to finally live, and then when they get there, they don’t know what to do with themselves. They don’t know who they are without a schedule, or a role, or a responsibility.

Whether it’s hopping couches, as I once was, or trapped in a golden cage, or in a studio apartment, or in a house, or in the Waldorf, or at Ali’s in Greece, or this cozy little Twin Bed in Vienna, after I make ends meet: I write, I draw, and that’s it.

That’s why my life is so simple.

Halstatt is a small town inhabited a few hundred people, that’s been photographed millions of times for its beauty. My photos won’t do much justice compared to that, but I can tell you the unexpected experience I had there.

The tour guide I had in the morning was quite interesting. He said: “I can give you all a tour, but you have free will. Join if you’d like, or wander off if you’d like. Whatever you want.”

For some reason, I’ve been waking up at 3-4 AM sharp every day here, and got most of my work done. I decided to wander and take a brain break.

And I wandered right into this little piece of history, which spooked me:

The people of Halstatt were, and are quite poor, and they could not afford to bury their people. So their bones sat here. The Soviets invaded and rummaged through this “Bone House”, looking for loot of sorts: guns, material, money, what have you. There was nothing, and so, it ended up in this pile.

It’s strange, isn’t it? How a place can look so stunning on the outside, like something out of a fairytale, and then you walk a few minutes in the wrong direction and life shows you what it really is.

At my age of 30, I’ve experienced a lot of loss. Before therapy this year, I really didn’t know how to cope well with it. At any point, I was just ready for my phone to buzz and let me know that someone else had just died. It granted me perspective.

Down the narrow corridor from this bone house is a church, and while everyone walked in, took photos, and walked out, I sat down, way in the back.

I’m not Catholic, but I do believe in God. I think negotiating with life and loss has brought me to the firm belief of an afterlife. Perhaps one’s mind, no, soul, would shatter otherwise.

What are we all without faith of some kind?

And I wrote:

“I’m scared of loving someone, mainly because I’m scared of them dying. There’s a lot of things I wish I got to say.”

And the unthinkable happened. I just started crying. Trauma therapy tries to connect you back to your body, and it’s been working on every front except one: my relationship with grief and sadness. The lengths I can go to suppress feeling that, and the tension released.

Then I continued:

“Well, getting emotional in a Church and being captured on a Chinese tourist’s Instagram Reel wasn’t part of the plan. Anyways. I think, even though my living family largely say they hate the dead that I still mourn (like my dad hating my dead mother and adoptive father), I don’t think they do.

Because Love and Hate are two sides of the same coin. There’s just complexities in the middle of those two that they can’t stand to feel: disappointment, grief, or the anxiety around the fragility of all of our lives, able to be shattered in an unpredictable instant.

If we distilled it down, there are really only two: Love and Fear, with not much in between.”

And I looked up, and all the tourists had left. One elderly woman remained, carrying a frame of what I presume was her husband. She sat at the front, just staring up at the giant Jesus.

She looked back, and we made eye contact, and there was this silent knowing. We nodded to each other.

I wrapped up with this:

“I haven’t figured much out yet, but I try to treat everyone as if it may be our last interaction. I think that’s “Integrity”, or maybe that’s my Compass. There are no Confessions to make at this Church, today. I think I would just ask the Church to approach God with Love, and not Shame. I think that’s what God would’ve wanted.”