Freinberg

Freinberg ①

In Linz, we often visited Freinberg. Freinberg is an accessible mountain—or rather, a gentle hill—rising only about 150 meters above the city. Being so close to the urban center, we ended up walking every corner of it inside and out.

In spring, the vast open meadows burst into a riot of native wildflowers, and the vibrant chorus of insects was truly wonderful. Perhaps experiencing the arrival of spring in a foreign land in the middle of a pandemic made the preciousness of everyday nature resonate even more deeply with us. We grew so fond of Freinberg that we returned time and again to photograph and record the local flora and insects. It turned out that many locals shared our love for Freinberg's natural beauty; once, right after we finished recording, someone struck up a conversation, saying, "I've seen you two recording around here before. It’s a wonderful soundscape, isn’t it?" Scattered across the meadows stood several ancient, solitary trees, and as we stroked their trunks or sat on them, we found ourselves imagining narratives.

Passing through the meadow area led to a forest rich with a wide variety of trees. Small mammals and birds were, naturally, abundant, making every walk through Freinberg feel fresh and delightful, no matter how often we strolled its paths.

Freinberg ②

There is a small observatory on the meadow-covered southern slopes of Freinberg. Built to be purely practical and compact, it stands quietly against the backdrop of the vast, open meadow. The scene looks like something straight out of a fairytale, and seeing it for the first time made us feel instantly and utterly delighted.

Remarkably, its name is the Johannes Kepler Observatory Linz (Johannes-Kepler-Sternwarte Linz). We loved the fact that, despite bearing the name of the towering figure who laid the foundations of modern astronomy, it is not an authoritative, massive complex, but an unpretentious, modest observatory. It instantly brings to mind the pure joy of a lone stargazer gazing through a telescope into the night sky!

Looking into its history, we learned that Kepler was a man of painstaking observation and calculation, prioritizing the stubborn pursuit of data over the grand stature of a court astronomer—even through financial hardship. This dedication seemed to echo the story of the Linz Astronomical Society (LAG), founded in 1947, whose members persisted through decades of funding challenges to finally bring this observatory to life in 1983.

Perhaps the Turkish astronomer in Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince discovered the prince’s home asteroid from a humble observatory just like this one—or so we let ourselves imagine. And from there, our imaginations turned to narratives beyond the atmosphere.

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