I painted these on a bus, travelling across Austria. My grandma's family owned a farm in the Wachau, Austria. When we were exiled from neighbouring country because of ethnic cleansing, /46,000 Hungarians were sent to the mountains with only a handbag and the slovaks took everything from them, one of these Bethlehem edicts. Previously Hungary but the allies had given us to our neighbours, in Switzerland after WW1/ the Russians were there and my mum would not return to a Russian occupied country. I love their humour, so like mine. The Russians erected a large statue to some Russian, so the Austrians planted Cyprus leylandii trees all around him, to make it difficult to see what the statue is. The older brother got the farm, the younger the church and became a Monseignor, /just below an Arch bishop./ Their family were typically Austrian mixed, mother second cousin of the Russian Tsarina, and father cousins from the Bourgogne french throne. Bringing in the harvest one hot August, the farmer asked the stable boy to throw a bucket of ice-cold water over his back. He was dead with a collapsed lung half an hour later. Her mother married the farm manager so grandma had to go as a Lady's maid. The farm manager drank and gambled the farm away and beat his wife, so she ended in Hospital and died early. But Austria is still a delight and the younger brother the Monsignor really cared for his family, travelling regularly up the Danube with the aunts, to Poszon to check his niece's family there too.