A Small Summer Gift, and Why I Chose August 15

Today is August 15, and I have a small summer gift for you.

Over the past weeks, I have been creating Create Your Own Sommerfrische, a free 17-page guide about giving yourself something to look forward to, changing the rhythm of an ordinary week, and making a little more of the summer you actually have.

I wanted to send it today for a reason.

August 15 is Mariä Himmelfahrt, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. In Catholic tradition, it celebrates the taking of Mary into heaven, and in Austria it remains both a major Marian feast and a public holiday. One of the old customs associated with the day is the Kräutersegnung, the blessing of herbs and flowers, a tradition particularly rooted in rural communities.

But August 15 has another history in my family.

My full name is Yolanda Asunción.

My aunt chose Yolanda. My mother chose Asunción.

When my mother discovered she was pregnant, she went to the Madonna de la Asunción in Tonaya, the small town in Mexico where I would spend the first three years of my life.

She wanted a daughter.

And my mother had a habit of bargaining with the Madonna. This was not the only time she did it. When something mattered enormously to her, she was quite prepared to strike a deal.

This time the bargain was simple: if the child was a girl, she would name her Asunción.

I was the girl.

And so she kept her promise.

For most of my life, that was the story attached to my middle name: my mother, a Madonna in a small Mexican town, and a bargain made before I was born.

Then August 15 acquired another meaning altogether.

On August 15, 1993, I came very close to dying.

For a few minutes, I was declared dead. I was resuscitated, and my life was saved. The doctor later told me that had it happened five minutes later, there would have been nothing they could have done.

The date was August 15.

The Feast of the Assumption.

Asunción.

I have never forgotten the coincidence.

In one part of my story, Asunción is connected to the promise my mother made because she wanted a daughter. In another, decades later, August 15 became the day on which I was given my life back.

That is why I have come to think of August 15 as my own quiet celebration of life.

And this year, I wanted to mark it by giving something away.

Sommerfrische belongs to a very different history, but perhaps the connection is not as strange as it first appears.

By the nineteenth century, Sommerfrische had become the name for the summer habit of leaving Vienna and spending an extended period somewhere greener, cooler and slower. The aristocratic practice of withdrawing to summer residences was gradually taken up by affluent bourgeois families, and the term itself became widely used in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was not simply an afternoon excursion. Families could relocate for weeks or months, creating a temporary second household away from the city.

Of course, that historical Sommerfrische was not available to everyone. Time, money, work and mobility determined who could leave and for how long.

I am not interested in pretending that we can, or should, recreate that world.

What interests me is the idea of a refresh.

Not a reset. A reset suggests that everything has to change. A refresh is smaller and gentler: change the surroundings for a while, interrupt the usual rhythm, do something that feels different, and then return to ordinary life with a little more energy and attention.

That, to me, is what we can borrow from Sommerfrische today.

Leave the usual rhythm for a while. Go somewhere different. Stay long enough to notice the change. Then come home.

That might mean a train journey and a whole day away. But it might also mean swimming after work, sitting in a garden for two hours, having a proper ice-cream afternoon, eating beside the water, or finally visiting the nearby place you keep telling yourself is too close to count as going anywhere.

Sometimes a small change in place is enough to change the shape of a day.

That is what Create Your Own Sommerfrische is for.

Inside, I have included ideas for two hours, half a day and a full day; a few ready-made plans; places in and around Vienna; some of the history behind Sommerfrische; and ways to find your own equivalent wherever you happen to live.

You do not need to live in Vienna.

You do not need a long holiday.

And you certainly do not need to make the rest of the summer perfect.

I would simply like you to choose one thing worth looking forward to.

I made Create Your Own Sommerfrische as a summer gift for readers of The Viennese Salon.

If you would like a copy, you are very welcome to join the Salon for free. Once you subscribe, the guide will be available to you here.

I made this guide as a thank-you to everyone who has subscribed, read, replied and helped The Viennese Salon begin to become a real gathering place.

And I hope the story does not end when you download it.

Choose something from the guide. Go and do it. Then come back here to the Chat and tell us where you went, what you tried, or what you noticed. A photograph and a few sentences are more than enough.

On August 15, I celebrate the fact that I was given life twice.

This year, I would like to celebrate it by sending you out to enjoy a little more of yours.

Happy Sommerfrische.

Yolanda
Understanding Vienna