Fortunately, I have no plans to go to Austria any time soon

I tried Austria once.

Didn’t much like it.

Maybe it was because I was 23 years old, but I found Vienna bourgeois and boring. Maybe now that I’ve aged into bourgeois and boring, I’d think differently if I were to go back, but I don’t think so. The country side was pretty enough – although I’m not sure whether I’m actually recalling the scenery I saw in real life, or pre-credits opening to The Sound of Music. But I’m just not the edelweiss type, I guess.

So, no donning of the dirndl and yodeling off to Austria for me, danke.

But if I needed another reason to put Austria on my must-avoid list, the Huffington Post just gave me one.

An Austrian hotel is looking for a jester:

Applicants are asked to bring – and play – their musical instrument during the job interview. Also welcome: creative costumes. The successful candidate will earn 1,400 euros – around $1,900 – a month.

Hotel director Melanie Franke says those interested should not think they're on a fool's errand in applying. She says the idea is to treat guests like royalty, noting that "jesters were a luxury that royal families indulged themselves in."

With the exception of rats coming out of the toilets, it would be hard for me to think of anything that would make a hotel less relaxing and inviting than having a jester waving his bell-stick in my face. Or serenading me with some strum on his lute. Or just being anywhere within eye-shot of me.

Jesters. Clowns. Mimes.

Life is hard enough, without having to go into jester-, clown-, or mime-avoidance mode while you’re on vacation.

If you want to treat me like royalty, I’d say to keep your jester way, way, way far away . And I suspect that Elizabeth and Philip, Charles and Camilla, and Wills and Kate would feel much the same way. Maybe mad King Ludwig might think that having a jester on board is the height of luxury, but other than that.,,

(Imagine Grace Kelly having to contend with a jester? Or even King Zog of Albania?)

And I do believe that in the days when royalty indulged in jesters, they also had the power within them to have some other court retainer cut their lute strings and/or lop off their heads -  whatever the royal whim of the moment happened to be.

I suspect that this is not what the Austrian hotel has in mind.

I’m also wondering about what they’re willing to pay.

Sure, a dollar may go farther in the Austrian province of Styria than it does in midtown Manhattan, but $1,900 a month?

Perhaps it includes a pallet near the kitchen hearth, as well as table scraps and the occasional dram of mead.

The article I saw didn’t name names as far as the hotel went, but they did provide a clue, telling us that the hotel was:

… designed by famed Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Franke says the jester concept fits its hotel's colorful appearance.

Which led me to discover Rogner Bad Blumau:

Aiming to create a synergy between man, nature and architecture, its designer, the Austrian artist and environmental champion Friedensreich Hundertwasser, devised an enchanting, fairytale exterior, and an wonderfully meandering interior where straight edges have no place and none of its 2,400 windows are the same. (Source: Austria: Arrive and Revive.)

Now I suppose there could be multiple Austrian hotels designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, but I’m guessing this be the place, given its “colorful appearance.” Kind of Frank Gehry-ish, I’d say.

Wouldn’t want to have one two many glasses of gewurztraminer and try to find my way back to my room. Especially given the risk of stumbling upon a jester up to no good. (It goes without saying, of course, that a jester is up to no good – at least in my guide book.)

As noted, the artist who designed Rogner Bad Blumau was one Friedensreich Hundertwasser. If you find his name a mouthful, even by compound word, German language standards, it is deliberately so:

In 1950 Friedrich Stowasser changed his surname to Hundertwasser. 10 years later he changed his first name from Friedrich to Friedensreich. (Source: Rogner Bad Blumau site.)

The hotel is all about “conveying a light-hearted, visionary life in harmony with nature.”

Which, personally, seems at antithetical odds with having jesters lurking around on prem. But I guess one person’s “light-hearted” is another’s invitation to homicidal rage.

Jesters and the possibility of dizziness-induction aside, I must admit I find the architecture interesting and amusing – plenty interesting and amusing enough without adding an insidious jester to the mix…

But, as I said, I have not plans for a trip to Austria anytime soon.