Like any criminal who has knowingly broken the law, my sole desire was to be rid of the evidence; without the bell, I thought, I was innocent.
When the white and red car with blue lights on top pulled into the parking lot several minutes later, I was sitting in a foldable camp chair and trying much too hard to laugh along with my friends and their wisecrack jokes about me getting arrested for the theft of a cowbell.
Two really tall police officers sporting military-style crew cuts stepped out of the car and began making their way towards where I was sitting. They seemed to take little notice of my friends and began engaging only me in German.
Among soldiers, it’s a little-discussed fact that living on a military base has a way of isolating you from the surrounding culture; it does this by limiting your interaction with locals and robbing you of the motivation and need for learning the language of your host country. So despite physically living in Germany for two years, I could barely get past responding to the basic greetings in Deutsch the officer said to me.
“Did you take a bell from the cow?” the one officer asked, this time in English.
“What bell?” I asked.
“We talked to a woman who saw you take the bell. Would you like us to arrest you instead?”
I had no idea of what kind of agreement or status that our government had with the Austrians. I was also clueless about Austrian laws regulating the theft of private property. I guessed that they were probably not very lenient. And I imagined that getting thrown in an Austrian jail would not bode well with my commanding officer or, for that matter, with the U.S. government.
I caved. “I hid it over there,” I said, pointing to the bridge between the resort and the parking lot.
When I returned, I was relieved of my prized souvenir and led into the back seat of the police car.
“We are taking you to the police station to decide what should be done with you,” I was told as the officer shut the door.
After a rather silent ride down the mountain, we reached the village of Mayrhofen, where the main police station was located. I was led inside the station and to a small office in the back. The taller of the two officers sat down at a wide desk in the center of the room.
I was dwarfed by the man’s looming figure as he shoved a clipboard across the desk.
“Here is your citation,” he said.
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An Ecotourism Paradise
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I quickly signed and handed him money for the fine.
On our way back to Hintertux, the cops turned down a narrow dirt road and pulled up to a rustic, white and black two-story farmhouse. One of the cops grabbed the cowbell and walked up to the door of the house and knocked. A weathered-faced man wearing a tattered work shirt answered and began talking to the policeman.
The man gestured to the hills and made a grimace and then pointed back to the cop car. The two men shook hands and the policeman returned to the car with the cowbell.
When we arrived back at the parking lot, the cop in the passenger seat turned and faced me. “We spoke to the owner of the cow. He wants you to put the bell back on the cow. If you don’t replace it, we will have to increase your fine.”
I begrudgingly took the bell and made my way past my chuckling group of friends and back down towards the creek. In my hands, the tattered leather belt and clanging bell no longer held the glamour they did when I first unbuckled the belt from the neck of the cow. And, as I slowly entered the water, my body could no longer ignore the cold. Instead, I felt the icy fingers of the water reach all the way through to the bones of my legs, and when I got out on the other side, I was shaking uncontrollably.
I pursued the cow up and down the creek’s bank, but no doubt frightened by the sight of the quivering man trying to pursue her, she would have nothing to do with me.
After a number of failed attempts, the policeman called for me to return to the car.
As I made my way, shivering across the creek,C I became aware of loud spurts of laughter coming from both my friends and the policemen, who were now all circled together around the police car and watching me.
Returning the dreaded cowbell back over to the policeman, I said apologetically, “I’m sorry, I tried but I just couldn’t get the cow to stop for me.”
He smiled and chuckled. “You know, you are not such a good American cowboy.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right,” I admitted.
“I think you’ve paid your fine, don’t you think so?”
“Ye-Yes,” I stammered, my teeth chattering.1
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