By Eva Ciabattoni

Photos courtesy of Max Dietz The view from Ciabattoni’s study window looks out on this 12th century ruin, above, once inhabited by knights of various stripes, including robber barons who galloped down the hillsides to hold up passing carriages.

Eva Ciabattoni is a Los Altos resident and freelance writer living on the outskirts of Vienna for one year. Born in Austria, she moved eight times between the United States and Austria while growing up. Her family roots go back generations in Baden, Austria.

Nestled at the foot of the Vienna woods 30 miles south of Vienna is Baden, a town similar in size to Los Altos, except that weather patterns drift in over the wooded hills from the Alps instead of the Pacific Ocean. My children and I are spending the year here, rediscovering a piece of our history in this place of my ancestors.

Landlocked Austria has a rich history of settlers and conquerors, from the Celts, who established the vineyards we drive through on our way to school, to Marcus Aurelius, who drove back invading Germanic tribes, to Attila the Hun, who needs no introduction. For thousands of years, Austria’s history cycled through times of peace and creativity alternating with wars, invasions and diseases. Modern raiders are of the corporate type; Kraft Corporation now manufactures the lilac-wrapped Milka chocolate bars.

Over coffee with anyone from my mother’s generation, the conversation invariably turns to the wars of the 20th century. My mother’s mother survived both world wars, my mother’s father only the first. “Did you flee or stay?” people ask. “Were Russian or Nazi soldiers in your house? What condition was your home in when you returned? How much school did you miss? How long before you were reunited with your family?” In elegant drawing rooms, relatives talk of lost possessions, still mourned after 60 years. My mother’s 78-year-old cousin Josef tells of being dragged into an empty building and stripped of his boots by a Russian soldier. They didn’t fit, so he got them back. Another soldier gave him an old pair of boots to wear and advised him to hide the shiny ones. They were eventually traded for food. “I’ll never forget the feeling of constant hunger,” Josef said.

On walks along the verdant Beethoven hiking trail, moments from our front door, my mother points out the cave that sheltered her family during air raids. She explains that the Urtelstein (slang for Verdict Rock) was where lawbreakers were tried hundreds of years ago and, if convicted, tossed into the Schwechat River, too low nowadays to harbour the whirlpools and water nixies that are the stuff of local lore.

Baden streets radiate out like spokes from a main square dominated by a trinity monument erected to celebrate the end of the Black Death. A tour group from Ohio snaps photos before ordering “must” (freshly pressed grape juice) and “sturm” (literally storm, grape juice that has turned cloudy as it begins to ferment) at the wooden hut set up every fall at grape harvest time. One block away on the corner of Rathausgasse and Beethovengasse is the house where Beethoven composed the majority of his 9th Symphony in the summer of 1823.

Nearly every morning, I walk to one of the local bakeries. My favorite, now that master baker Sommer has retired, is by Mill Brook, near one of the gates in the wall that used to encircle the city. Residents were safely within the city walls by curfew or begging the watchman for entry. The water wheels and grindstones are silent now, but a few bakeries do still make their own dough. Baker Sommer would rise at 4 a.m. Monday through Saturday to make sure he’d have fresh bread for the locals by 6 a.m. His name is faded but still legible above the shutters of his erstwhile store.

There are many reasons why we came back to Baden, but first and foremost I wanted my children to learn the language, live in the embrace of extended family and experience another culture. Baden gave us a chance to do all three. When I used to drive to downtown Los Altos, the chain of wooded hills and the small town center atmosphere reminded me of Baden. Sometimes the way it smelled after a rain made me homesick.

It’s the immigrant’s dilemma - where to call home. One of the things I’m exploring is how to call two places home when you love them both.