Since our comrades all backed out on our planned trip to see the Grossglockner mountain in the Hoehe Tauern National Park, we decided to take a bus to nearby Lunz am See instead. A much tamer adventure, to be sure, but fun nonetheless. We made it to the Lunzersee by about 9:00 in the morning, and had the place all to ourselves. Almost as soon as we sat down on the shore to eat some breakfast, however, we noticed a large white swan swimming in our direction...
Feed me! Feed me!
Maria was absolutely terrified of the thing, which is quite understandable actually, considering that once it had climbed out of the water it was apparent how much bigger it was than she. After eating, we escaped the swan by renting a peddle-boat and heading out into the middle of the still empty lake.
8 comments:
Great pics. Remember the swans in Strafford? I haven't cared for them since then. Tell Maria we have a quacking duck game for her. We will think of John whenever we play it!
You were selling things from the boat? Or did they sell you the time on the boat? Wait, I know - you meant 'pedal-boat', not 'peddle-boat'. . . OK, that makes sense. . . ;)
(I'm a little surprised Big Daddy hadn't weighed in on that one. . .)
But hey, what are your kids gonna do when they don't have mountain lakes just sitting by the side of the road?
And Maria was right to be afraid - swans are mean! You remember the ones from Summer Camp, right?
Boy, the "e"'s and "a"'s are tricky, aren't they? I think that's a "paddle" boat, which has got to be the slowest way to escape a water creature ever invented.
You need to teach Maria why oversized nasty-tempered critters like swans still exist in Europe - to be eaten! Pre-Endangered Species Act Greeks and Romans eradicated lions, for instance.
Sorry Dad,
it looks like Craig both beat you to the punch and corrected me correctly. The error was the extra "d" not the "e" instead of "a". We were actually pedaling the thing with our feet, which may perhaps be even slower than paddling.
Well, I guess they're called 'pedal boats' and 'paddle boats'. Who knew?
See, the pedals turn the paddles. . .
So - maybe 'peddle boat' is one of those 'hybrid' coinages? You know, like Sonny Elliott used to do in his weather reports - 'snow' + 'sleet' -> 'sneet'. . .
I'd go with that explanation, John. Knowing how much Big Daddy loves neologisms. . .
Absolutely! As we say in the IT world, "verb a noun today"!
I think I can justify my use of "pedal" over "paddle" by pointing out that the German word I was translating is "das Trittboot".
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