Two and a half hours from Vienna. Then the valleys narrowed, and the slopes grew thick with forest. In St. Gallen, a man showed me nails he still forged “like my grandfather did, with the same fire.” Higher up, in the Kraushöhle, a cave carved by water into gypsum born from a tropical sea 220 million years ago, I walked through soft, white corridors. “Gypsum breathes,” said the Geopark guide. The air was cool and slightly salty. On the way back down, a woman in a red scarf handed me a hot bowl of soup, thick and dark with juniper. She hummed as she stirred. The orchards opened into bare stone. In Gams, the guide placed in my hands a slab full of fossil corals and ammonites, 100 million years old. She smiled. That evening, in a barn, a man played quietly. No one spoke. Just that music, flowing like a river. The next morning, I slipped on a life vest, took up a paddle, and joined a small group on the Salza. The guide led us through the gorge. The water was fresh, fast but gentle. I laughed. Everything became fluid. The landscape slid past. And I moved with it.