No mountain? No problem: Austrians learn to yodel in an underground car park
In Graz, a yodelling teacher has taken her class below ground – because a concrete car park, it turns out, echoes rather like the Alps.
Picture yodelling and you probably imagine a snowy Alpine peak, a pair of lederhosen and perhaps a goat. You probably don’t picture level minus two of a multi-storey.
Yet that’s exactly where teacher Anna Maria Gutschi took around 30 would-be yodellers in Graz, Austria, according to the Associated Press. Her reasoning is surprisingly sound.
“It’s not too dissimilar to the high mountains,” she explained. “You have wide hallways; you have walls that reflect a lot.”
Concrete, it turns out, is excellent for echoes – arguably better than a mountain, and with the added bonus of being dry, lit and a short walk from the shops. The car park session is part of a wider effort to keep the tradition alive by taking it to unlikely places: courses have also been held in canals and at petrol stations.
We can only imagine the experience of the unsuspecting motorist returning to their car with a bag of shopping, only to be met by 30 people warbling in harmony between bays 14 and 22.
Still, as hobbies go, it beats arguing with the pay machine. And if Britain’s multi-storeys are looking for a new revenue stream, we know some people in Graz you could talk to.
