There must be something fulfilling in reading low-demand novels and then writing about them. I reached for one of my favourite kids books recently, Heidi, and all it has done is further fuelled a desire to visit a place with snow and craggy peaks and coffeeshops that will allow me to order warm beverages in bad German. There are plenty of scenes where the plucky yet forthright Heidi skips through valleys of wildflowers and gazes longingly at snow turned pink by sunsets. She feasts on goats milk cheese that I can only dream of eating, and has her skirt tossed around by Alpine gales.
I have even moved my ten-year-old and as-yet unused German travel guide to the toilet as reading fodder, to further torture myself. They all make me dream of winding goat tracks and sunlit fields of green, housing the happiest purple Milka cows in existence, with some imposing Nazi-era castle in the distance. All being tended to by some buxom lady in some ruffled outfit, her ruddy cheeks turned pink with the brisk breeze.
It doesn’t help that I’ve never really encountered huge mountain ranges in my life. Ones in the US were passed by on Greyhounds while in the dead of night. Kosciuszko doesn’t exactly inspire Australians with its looming visage. The only winding track up Kosciuszko has unfit tourists puffing along the path to the top. I would much rather be the unfit tourist puffing around some exotic German village with a wurst in one hand and a hot chocolate in the other.
