Austrian

CHRISTKINDL, Austria -- It is a tiny little hiccup of a place. The wee dot that it is on a map shows not even the faintest squiggly line of road going there, and, thus, it takes a resident to guide foreigners to the exact spot. No problem, he says. Go up the mountain, then left, left and right. He pat-pats the hood of the car for emphasis and sends the foreigners trundling up the mountain. No problem. Grown-ups may find themselves losing the way, but the children of the world have never had a problem finding the hamlet of Christkindl.

The women wanted a real downhill course for the Olympics, and a real downhill course is exactly what they have. Unfortunately, the unforgiving Roc de Fer (French for "Rock of Iron") has already knocked some of them out of the Winter Games.Medal contender Sabine Ginther of Austria, Lucie Laroche of Canada and Wendy Fisher of the United States were injured practicing on the course designed by 1972 Olympic downhill champion Bernhard Russi.All three were prepping for today's downhill portion of the combined event.

Tomorrow at 8 p.m., John Waters is showing the undeniably artful Austrian slice-of-misery, Ulrich Seidl's Dog Days (2002), as part of his annual presentation at the Maryland Film Festival -- a yearly invitation to test Waters' unique sensibility and sample his runaway wit. But I really hope it's just a run-through for him to record a special-edition DVD commentary track in the satiric manner of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I'm always engaged less by Waters' favorite movies than by his affection for them.

PARIS -- Austrian skier Ulrike Maier, a two-time world champion and the only mother on the Alpine circuit, died yesterday after crashing and breaking her neck during a World Cup downhill race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.Maier, 26, lost control of her right ski in a narrow section of the 1.7-mile course while traveling at about 65 mph. She hurtled off the course, slammed into a timing post, lost her helmet and tumbled several times before sliding limply to a stop in the middle of the run.Medical staff and race officials attempted unsuccessfully to revive Maier with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage.

THE WIND dropped away to nothing somewhere around Smith Island. What a race. Eight fantastically honed, quiveringly energized, fabulously expensive sailboats -- world racers and veterans of the Southern Ocean, where wind and waves are death-dealing -- were left bobbing on the Chesapeake. At least, one sailor remarked, you could sit on the toilet without getting chucked off it. It took hours and more hours, but, anyway, they're here. The eight entrants in the Volvo Ocean Race braved the rigors of the Patapsco and finally found their way to Baltimore.

Days until opening ceremony: 14.Snowfall: No new snow yesterday. Current blanket is 5.5 inches in Nagano city, and 5 feet, 8 3/4 inches on men's downhill course.Update: Austrian ski jumper Andreas Goldberger will be able to take part in the Olympics, thanks to special permission from Japan's justice minister, who overrode laws banning anyone penalized for drug use from entering the country.Going for the gold: Melanie Suchet of France scored her first World Cup victory after 10 of the top 15 skiers failed to complete the super-G course in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy.

Police in Austria say they have unearthed about $4 million more hidden by Maryland savings and loan swindler Tom J. Billman, who went to prison in June claiming to be broke and asking taxpayers to pay his legal fees.The multimillion-dollar hoard, dispersed among several bank accounts, came to light recently during an investigation by police in Vienna. Austrian police were drawn into the case last spring after a courier for Billman was arrested while attempting to make a $5 million transaction that the former executive had ordered from his jail cell.

HANOVER, N.H. - One by one, Howard Dean read through the placards as they were held behind the camera, stumbling at times, his voice low and scratchy from a bad cold. "Solution No. 10," he intoned, "Switch to decaf. ... No. 8: Marry Rachel on the final episode of Friends. ... No. 6: Show a little more skin." At that point, the production people directing the taping urged Dean to remove his suit jacket, but he protested dryly, "Our guys say no - it's not presidential." Instead, he flipped open the jacket, but it caught on the microphone wire taped to his back.

MOZART WAS NOT A NATURE lover. On all his youthful travels by horse-drawn coach throughout Europe as a prodigy, he rarely commented on the landscape that he passed through in letters to family and friends. He loved cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, London and Vienna. Yet the closest I felt to Mozart on a recent trip to Austria came in a bucolic setting, the Monchsberg, a forested ridge above his hometown of Salzburg. I had spent the previous day and a half wandering around churches, cemeteries, a mansion and a fortress, all with connections to the composer.

Agathe von Trapp, the eldest daughter of the von Trapp family made famous in "The Sound of Music," who took exception to the way her father was portrayed, died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. She was 97 and lived in Brooklandville. "She had been rabidly negative about the musical and film," said her physician, Dr. Janet Horn, who with her husband financed the publication of 3,000 copies of Miss von Trapp's memoir, which she wrote to set the record straight about her family's exploits.