“Schlepping Through the Alps” is a worthwhile read, if nothing else, for its novelty.
In this one-of-a-kind travelogue, Sam Apple, a fledgling New York-based journalist, crosses parts of Austria with Hans Breuer, the country’s last wandering shepherd, a radical communist and a Yiddish folk singer to boot.
The two met in New York. Breuer was traveling through on a very small lecture tour. Apple covered the event as a reporter for The Forward.
Breuer, an anachronistic half-Jewish mountain man, sang in Yiddish with unrestrained volume and emotion. Apple, a smart aleck and hip-hop enthusiast, spent much of the performance choking down his laughter.
But Apple saw in Breuer a story larger than just a newspaper profile. He wanted to know: Who was this man, herding sheep and keeping Yiddish alive, in Austria of all places, where anti-Semitic traditions can be traced easily from Hitler to the Freedom Party? Why again are so many Austrians embracing xenophobia and anti-Semitism? And how are the two — Breuer and the anti-Semites — coexisting?
It was an ambitious alpine adventure, and Apple knew this: “When I left for Austria to think about Jews and Gentiles and anti-Semitism, I was carrying around a lot more baggage than just my backpack. I didn’t quite know what to expect when I left, but it wasn’t long before I was up to my knees in my sheep shit.”
He was also over his head, lumbering to keep up with Breuer and his shepherding crew, and struggling to understand Austrian politics.
“Schlepping” works best when it sticks to its well-crafted portrait of the inimitable Breuer. The shepherd is an open and unaffected subject with a complicated past, to which Apple is given unfettered access. Breuer’s mother and grandfather, both staunch communists, were tortured by Austrian Gestapo agents at the onset of World War II. Breuer ran away from home at 16, an aggrieved and bewildered youth enchanted by the international counterculture of the late 1960s and disgusted by his nation’s legacy. He joined a cultish commune, and eventually found his way into shepherding out of a sheer necessity to make a living.
Now ask yourself who is more interesting: a wandering Yiddish-singing Austrian shepherd whose wife left him for his own dentist, or a New York-based hypochondriac journalist clearly hankering for a book deal?
Too often, Apple appears to favor his own story to his subject’s. He reacts to the Austrian mentality in terms of his experience as an American Jew. He struggles to be taken seriously as a journalist (there’s much bumbling involved) and wants to find a temporary Austrian girlfriend (more bumbling).
He does find one. Her name is Irene, and she despises Joerg Haider, the leader of the Freedom Party and salient proof that anti-Semitism is alive and well in parts of Europe.
Apple’s shepherding ruminations are delightful: “The Austrian hills were alive with the sounds of bleating sheep and Yiddish music, and for at least a few minutes I felt at peace.”
Even better: “I drifted along in silence and thought about cancer, which is what hypochondriacs do when we have nothing pressing on the agenda.”
But “Schlepping” never becomes more than a patchwork of the author’s personal reflections and subsequent interviews with Austrians, torn by their nation’s anti-Semitic history but truly fond of the homeland.
He is a candid narrator, but too often he trains his lens on his own confusion and rage, rather than on those of his subjects.
“Schlepping Through the Alps” by Sam Apple (304 pages, Ballantine Books, $23.95).