Javoll in Brixen

December 2005

The Man Said Javoll!

We stopped the night in Brixen (Sud Tirol), which we like because although it’s in Italy it’s German-speaking and very Austrian. We actually heard someone say javoll! Did you see the films of the Nuremburg trials ever? The minions being put on trial tended to reply, Javoll! to questions requiring an affirmative answer, it’s a response that needs a clicking of the heels. Javoll! Germans don’t say that any more, they say genau, which translates to ‘exactly’, and you hear repeated genau-ing in every corner of every bar and café. But in Brixen, a waiter said, Javoll! Austrians tend to be more archetypically Peter Lorre than the Germans themselves , though I have to remember that this chap was, technically, Italian.

There’s more about the Sud Tirol and how it came to be part of Italy, and more about the spiritual clicking of heels, on Grüss Gott, Click.