I’m sitting here on the grandstand looking out over the valley before me. It’s a quiet rural valley, if it weren’t for the cars going past me at 300 km/h.
I feel like I can name all the little towns I see down in the valley, and the peaks of the mountains on the other side. The mountains are full of trees, the taller ones with a visible tree-line are behind me. It’s a cloudy and rainy, yet humid, summer day. Everything down in the valley is green as far as I can see: grass, fields, trees.
But of course I don’t know all the little towns and mountains. I’m 10,000 km away from where I grew up! I’m at Fuji Speedway, watching Super Formula, not Formula 1, and instead of the Austrian Alps, it’s Mt. Fuji towering over everything behind me.
Yet, this spot feels exactly like the valley surrounding Knittelfeld, looking down onto it from the Red Bull Ring. Not exactly how the Austrian countryside feels to me today, but how Austria felt to me growing up in the 90s.
I’m at Fuji this weekend, and in a few days’ time I’ll be at the “same” spot in Austria. I don’t really know what makes the Japanese countryside, and the Gotemba valley in particular, feel so familiar to my home. I guess it’s kind of a Happy Valley.