An Afternoon with Erwin Schrödinger in Alpbach – Summer 1960

The bus from Brixlegg winds its way up the Alpbach Valley in tight loops, and with every hairpin bend, the light grows clearer, the air thinner, the silence deeper. The driver—a taciturn Tyrolean with a sunburnt neck—nods to me as we reach the village. Alpbach lies there like a thought that someone has spoken aloud and then lovingly placed upon a sunlit slope: dark, weathered timber; white-blooming geraniums at every window; the scent of freshly cut grass; the chime of a cowbell drifting up from the valley.