Antony Gormley: Britain's greatest sculptor comes to Austria

Austria’s 

hidden 

treasures 

summer 

2010 

+ 

Gourmet cuisine 

Fine wines 

6 most 

romantic 

places 

Antony Gormley: 

Britain’s greatest sculptor 

comes to Austria 

Architecture ★ Cuisine ★ Relaxation ★ Spas ★ Families ★ City breaks ★ 

Action & Adventure★ Wellbeing ★ Water world ★ and more

Environment 

This page: Weissensee 

in Carinthia is the perfect 

place for water-sports, 

swimming and fishing. 

Feel goodAustria 

Holiday decisions for thinking people in 

the 21st century are increasingly being 

influenced by thoughts for the environment. 

How do you get around when you get to your 

destination? What effect is the trip that you are 

taking having on the local environment? What 

about the endorsement factor – is your visit 

supporting enlightened local policies? And 

will the money you spend during your holiday 

end up helping sustainable tourism, or will 

it end up boosting the share price of a large 

hotel corporation? 

If you are the thoughtful type, then you 

may already know that Austria, home of 

Sigmund Freud, is nothing if not a thoughtful 

country and in many ways it leads the world 

in the depth of its environmental philosophies. 

It has an instant advantage, of course, in 

that at between 90 minutes and two hours’ 

flight from most UK destinations, it is nearer 

even than the Mediterranean, let alone longhaul 

destinations; yet Vienna, for example, has 

a balmy average daily maximum temperature 

of 25°C (77°F) and nine hours’ sun in July. 

And across the country there is a fascinating 

02 a u s t r i a ’ s hi d d e n t r e a s u r e s 

is not just a pretty place: it also leads 

the world in eco-tourism, so you and 

your conscience can have a perfect holiday 

symbiosis of green thinking and fabulous 

holiday opportunities. Austria leads the 

world in highly-organised ‘Soft Mobility’ 

zones: these are areas which have organised 

advanced networks of private transport for 

tourists which mean that you don’t need 

to use a car when you’re on holiday in a 

lovely rural area. The scheme in the resort 

of Werfenweng, 45km outside Salzburg, offers 

complimentary services such as use of the 

soft mobility fleet of E-cars, Bi-Gas cars, 

E-scooters, bicycles, a shuttle service to the 

local train station and town, speedy go-karts 

for small children, a private chauffeur on 

call daily from 9am to 10pm, a guided 

Nordic walking tour, and entrance to the 

local leisure park – all free if you sign up, 

stay in one of 38 local participating hotels, 

and pay 5 euros for a ‘Soft Mobility’ card. 

Oh, and you have to either arrive by train 

or leave your rental car keys with the tourist 

office when you get your card. 

This isn’t the only area in Austria with 

such an advanced ‘Soft Mobility’ Scheme: 

17 destinations have joined together to 

form ‘Alpine Pearls’, an association offering 

similar benefits across the country. 

Or what about swimming in a lake 

which is so pure you can drink from it 

while you swim? The nature reserve at 

Weissensee in Carinthia is the highest 

‘swimming lake’ in Austria, at 930m above 

sea level, and because of the strictness of 

the local environmental regulations it’s 

certified as drinking water. 

Or there’s the plethora of locally-grown 

and organic food available across Austria; 

or the eco-friendly National Association of 

Nature Parks, 44 of them, where every visit 

contributes to the upkeep of the landscape. 

Nobody, however thoughtful, wants to 

go on holiday to wear a hair shirt – it’s your 

hard-earned money and rest time, after all, 

and this is what makes Austria so glorious: 

its natural advantage is its nature, and its 

history: all of which creates zero carbon 

footprint. The fact that you can actually 

help preserve a pristine environment by 

having a fabulous holiday – well, that 

sounds too good to be true. Except it’s not.■A 

Österreich Werbung / bArtl

Update 

The latest news from all over Austria 

Monastic Mysteries Uncovered 

A visit to one of Austria’s impressive monasteries is always a truly spiritual experience: the sense 

of history, the calm, the architecture and the (usually spectacular) settings combine to instil a 

healing calm and awe. They are also living museums of Baroque and Rococo art and architecture, and 

you can now discover these treasures with an English language guided tour via the Klösterreich 

association of 20 abbeys and monasteries. www.kloesterreich.at 

Natural Indulgence 

On the easternmost edge of Austria, 

in a climatic zone of its own 

and ringed by forest, lies Lake 

Neusiedl, one of the country’s 

gems that remains little-known to 

British visitors. The area is famed 

for its wine and cuisine, and now 

it has a resort hotel to match in St. 

Martins Therme & Lodge, which 

opened last autumn. St. Martin’s 

feels very much at one with nature: 

it sits within a natural sanctuary 

where you can find over 400 

Avant-Garde Alert 

To experience one of the world’s most 

creative festivals of avant-garde and 

contemporary art and culture, look no further 

than the Steirischer Herbst. This is a rolling, 

constantly evolving festival of dance, visual art, 

performance art, music, literature and theatre 

that takes place in the southern city of Graz every 

autumn: this year’s dates are 23 September until 

17 October. www.steirischerherbst.at 

Take a harmonious 

holiday 

In an era when we are increasingly 

aware of the environmental effects of 

our holidays, a nature reserve like the 

Biosphere Reserve of Grosses Walsertal 

is an example of the future of travel. Its 

motto is to ‘make use of nature without 

causing harm’; or in a nutshell, 

sustainable development, where 

traveller, resident and nature can exist 

in perfect harmony. It helps that the 

setting is stunning – the valley is edged 

by high mountains (perfect for hiking), 

covered with deep meadows and forests 

– and it’s famous for its wildflowers and 

herbs. www.grosseswalsertal.at 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON NEWS 

AND EVENTS THROUGHOUT AUSTRIA 

VISIT WWW.AUSTRIA.INFO 

News 

species of birds, at the edge of a 

National Park. The design is best 

described as ‘contemporary- 

natural’ with plenty of wood 

and stone; and the Thermal Bath 

and Spa is rapidly establishing 

itself as one of Europe’s best: 

the numerous baths and pools 

are filled with water pumped 

straight from a mineral spring. 

www.stmartins.at 

a u s t r i a ’ s hi d d e n t r e a s u r e s 03

Q+A 

Antony Gormley 

This summer, Antony Gormley, one of Britain’s foremost contemporary 

sculptors, is planning to unveil his work ‘Horizon Field’ in the Vorarlberg 

area, under the auspices of the Kunsthaus Bregenz. ‘Horizon Field’ 

consists of 100, 630 kilo, cast iron body forms that will be placed 

throughout the Vorarlberg region. Creator of the Angel of the North, 

Gormley is famous for his work with body forms and his investigation 

of the human predicament and our interaction with our environment. 

What inspired you to create ‘Horizon Field’ 

in Austria? 

I’ve had a long and fruitful relationship 

with Austria; I did my first exhibition there 

with Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg in 1993 

and the Modern Art Gallery in Vienna has 

a piece of mine. The original idea was to 

create ‘Horizon Field’ in the mountains at the 

same time as my current show in the Kunsthaus 

Bregenz. The inspiration behind the mountain 

project came from a work I created in 1997, 

in Cuxhaven in northern Germany, entitled 

‘Another Place’. This consisted of 100 body 

forms across kilometres of coastline and 

for about a kilometre out to sea. Ever since 

this I have wanted to make something in the 

mountains. ‘Another Place’ dealt with the idea 

of visibility and invisibility, in relation to a 

horizon between the sea and the sky, but I 

thought that perhaps the works could carry 


their own horizon, which is why the new 

piece is called ‘Horizon Field’. The works are 

rigorously horizontal and stretch over a much 

larger area than ‘Another Place’ but with the 

same 100 body forms. 

What originally drew you towards the idea 

of working with the human form? 

I wanted to find the lost subject of art; 

human ‘being’. We got so obsessed with the 

notion of the autonomous object that we 

forgot about this lost subject: the human 

predicament. 

Does your work challenge our traditional 

relationship with the material world? 

Sculpture is a form of physical thinking: it 

introduces totally unnecessary things into the 

world. There is no function other than the 

reflexivity that they produce. When you see 

Left: Test display in 

the resort of Lech 

for the planned 

Horizon Field project 

in the Vorarlberg; 

Antony Gormley 

in the Kunsthaus 

Bregenz. 

an unmediated image in the snow or against 

the sky – a still but three-dimensional mass, 

evidently the result of human making that 

has been placed in this environment, far from 

the realm of the urban – these very physical, 

material, man-made things can be examined 

afresh. I hope it is not too far-fetched, but 

perhaps they become a reversal of the normal 

figure-ground relationship that you might 

find in a painting. The subject matter of so 

much western painting has used landscape as 

a backdrop. Traditional figure compositions use 

this ground to reinforce narrative sense and 

give the viewer an idea of what is happening. 

I propose that something like ‘Horizon Field’ 

reverses that expectation and function. The 

mountains, the sky, the snow, become the 

body, and these abstracted body forms become 

holes on which we project a persona, a selfhood. 

The dialectic between material and

INTERVIEW: LAUREN STEVENTON; ©ANTONy GORmLEy, KUNSThAUS BREGENz; mARKUS TRETTER 

immaterial is reversed: I like sculpture to 

undermine the dialectic between the imagined 

and the real. 

How would you say your understanding of 

the relationship between the self and the 

environment developed? 

I like the idea of the body as an example 

of a collective condition. At first I just used 

my own, but then I realized that you could 

engage other bodies, and I think that’s what 

‘Horizon Field’ is about: the bodies that 

perceive, move around, through and apart 

from this relational field become part of 

it. I’m about to explore ‘Event Horizon’ in 

New York – 27 body forms on the skyline of 

buildings around central Manhattan, and 

four on the ground. I don’t think the work 

is about contemplating bodies, but about 

how they interfere with perception: the city 

becomes re-examined and the inhabitants 

have to modify their behavior in relation to 

this ‘infection’. If you’re walking down a street 

where there is an object that shares certain 

characteristics with you but it’s made of iron 

and it’s more static, you become more aware 

of your own passage through time and space 

and question your own ‘inhabiting’. The 

relationship between the things that you can 

touch, the things that you can see and the 

things you imagine is key. My experiment 

is similar to a chemical catalyst; a reaction 

begins that perhaps allows people to be in 

and see their environment differently. 

Does this relationship change in a city landscape 

such as New York compared to the 

mountainous landscape in Austria? 

Mountains have also become playgrounds, 

haven’t they? Certainly I’ve got some very 

Interview 

I like sculpture 

to undermine 

the dialectic 

between the 

imagined and 

the real 

wild positions for these works but a lot of 

them are in locations where people walk, ski, 

mountain bike, climb. Broadly speaking the 

question that the work asks is where does the 

human project fit within space at large and 

the different topographies of the earth? In the 

Vorarlberg we’ve got some extreme positions; 

on the edge of a cliff, familiar to the mountaineer 

who likes to face a physical challenge, 

but others will be much more integrated into 

areas of seasonal grazing and the making of 

hay and still others will be simply on exposed 

low hills between the mountains. It’s very 

important to me that this is neither the realm 

of the Gods, nor the realm of the village, but 

somewhere in between. I’m imagining all this 

but the whole point is to do it and see how 

these works both confront and contest, but 

also perhaps become familiar within these 

environments.■A www.antonygormley.com 


Back to nature 

The Alpbachtal, a sunny valley with a heart-rendingly pretty village at its heart, is a living museum 

of traditional farming practices, swathed in wildflowers and topped by the most gorgeous open views. 

Stay a while in a traditional farm guesthouse, eating local produce and steeping yourselves in 

traditional customs, and you’ll feel a tonic for the soul 

They make milk, 

haymilk cheese, and 

butter so creamy and 

juicy it tastes 

like the air in the 

summer meadows

WORLD PICTURES/PHOTOSHOT 

Alpbachtal 

uman beings are not urban creatures. We 

Hstarted moving to big cities in earnest less 

than 200 years ago; for the other 100,000 years 

of our history, we were rural, Arcadian creatures, 

and this is hardwired into the genetic map of 

even the most ardent London sophisticate. 

So it’s no wonder that visiting the Alpbachtal 

is a tonic for the soul. For here is a region 

where hundreds of years of perfect rural 

history are perfectly preserved, tended for in 

farms, museums and a thousand traditional 

ways of doing things that have been lost to the 

modern rat racer. 

The area has long been famed as a broad, 

sun-kissed bowl of a valley centred on a 

village, Alpbach, that is frequently cited as the 

most beautiful in the Alps. Arrive in Alpbach 

during the summer months and you are likely 

to feel that you are being feted by a magisterial 

exhibition of wildflowers: butterfly orchids, 

Alpine roses, delicate white pasque flowers, 

gentle buttery oxlips, proud primulas: the 

welcome parade can be glorious. Although the 

village itself and the ancient farmsteads that 

surround it have the most perfect displays of 

flowers, nature’s show, on a good week, will 

outdo them all, the colours scattering up the 

gentle mountainside like a child’s drawing. 

Home grown breakfast 

It’s a fitting start for the natural history show 

that the Alpbachtal combines so effortlessly 

with a scenic holiday. The area has more 

than 100 small working farms, many of them 

owned by the same family for hundreds of 

years. Without any need for a ‘green agenda’ 

imposed by government, these farms live in 

perfect sympathy with their surroundings. 

The farmers know, from their forebears, how 

to treat the soil, livestock and surroundings 

so both farm and environment thrive. They 

make milk, haymilk cheese, and butter so 

creamy and juicy it tastes like the air in the 

summer meadows; pears and apples grow 

in abundance (and some of them end up as 

another highly ‘natural’ local drink, schnapps, 

or fruit brandy). 

And this is where you should stay when 

you are in the Alpbachtal: on a working farm 

guesthouse. Banish any thoughts of sharing a 

farmhouse with a family that makes you feel 

This page: Summertime views over the Alpbachtal. 

Next page, from left to right: detail from an Imperial 

building in the town of Rattenberg; Almabtrieb, 

the running of the cows from summer pasture to valley. 


Alpbachtal 

guilty at their working hours (you may enjoy 

going back to your anthropological roots, but 

farmers do get up very early): the guesthouses 

all follow the revered Austrian hospitality 

tradition: wooden walls, perfectly plumped 

duvets on your beds, pristine bathrooms, 

terraces with, more often than not, views 

down and across the valley to the mountains 

beyond. Some have facilities like saunas and 

steam rooms, though the most invigorating 

thing you can possibly do in the guesthouse is 

gaze at the view of a landscape thriving with 

human and animal activity (and plant life), yet 

barely changed for centuries – and free of any 

reminders of urban blight. 

Oh, and you must also have breakfast. 

Breakfast in an Alpbachtal guesthouse really 

is something else. The view is just the starter: 

freshly milked milk, just-laid eggs, cheese 

made in that barn over there, the offer (usually 

politely declined) of a schnapps made by the 

owner’s brother to give the day a kick-start. 

Carpet of flowers 

The village itself lies on a sunny, southfacing 

shelf just above the valley; you hike 

there through flower-filled meadows, past 

contented-looking cows (no wonder the milk’s 

so good). Every building in Alpbach is perfect, 

wooden, flower-bedecked – except the one 

with a swirling glass cone. This, you discover, 

is the congress centre and it’s refreshing to 

know that even the modern building has an 

organic structure that blends with, and doesn’t 

fight, the glories of nature outside. 

Beautiful walks to a fairytale village in a 

kind of children’s storybook farm paradise 

may sound like enough for a perfect break, but 

this is just scratching the surface. The idea of 

a museum might sound strange in an outdoor 

wonderland, but the Museum of Tirolean 

Farms is an outdoor one: you can stroll 

through 14 restored farmsteads, representing 

different parts of the Tirol region over the 

centuries: each comprises real farm buildings, 

tools and furniture, lovingly restored here. 

There is also a tiny museum of mountain 

farmer history nearby: a personal labour 

of love by a local farmer, which contains a 

canopy bed from the 19th century. 

AND ANOThER ThING... 

If you want a holiday that will 

refresh your mind and body 

within a beautiful country and 

mountain setting, look no 

further than Naturidyll, a 

group of independent, family 

-run hotels all over Austria. 

Whether you are after an 

adventure or a relaxing trip, 

they will tailor make it for you. 

www.naturidyll.com 


What to do and Where to do it... 

EVENTS 

l From the 13th - 16th May, be sure not to miss 

the ‘Rolling Oldies’ Music Festival in Reith 

im Alpbachtal, where 10 live bands shall be 

performing music from the Fifties through to the 

Seventies. The line up includes the Jungle Tigers, 

Lola, Red Jacket and Overtime. 

l The mountain peaks of the Alpbachtal come 

alight (literally) on the 19th June, celebrating 

Midsummer Night. Take a gondola up to the 

Wiedersbergerhorn and watch the bonfires 

being lit from the Hornboden restaurant where, 

for this special evening, live music is played and 

local culinary delicacies and drinks are served. 

l From the 7th - 8th August, one of Austria’s 

most popular summer attractions, the NIVEA 

Family Festival, is heading to Reith, and to 

raise money for this briliant charity there will be a 

rural arcadia 

At the foot of the Alpbachtal is the town of 

Rattenberg: well, we say town, and officially 

that’s what it is, complete with town hall, but 

with a population of under 500 it has fewer 

inhabitants than some streets in Britain. 

Rattenberg has a pedestrian high street fronted 

by Imperial buildings painted in pastel colours, 

and is famed for its crystal shops – this is Europe’s 

centre of crystal making – with the ruins of 

Rattenberg castle on the Schlossberg. 

Once the valley has been explored, you can 

venture upwards on the summer cable cars. 

The Wiedersbergerhornbahn climbs to 1850m: 

this is high pastureland, above the treeline, 

where the air is rarefied and bees and butterflies 

compete for attention with the high wildflowers. 

The Reitherkogelbahn zips you to the top 

of another mountain in eight minutes, with 

views overlooking the neighbouring Inn and 

Ziller valleys; there’s even a natural childrens’ 

adventure play area – the Juppi Zauberwald. 

The Sonnwendjochbahn takes you to a place 

that looks like an illustration in one of those 

fairy books from childhood (and if you’ve 

never had one, you’ve missed out) – a high 

mountain rose garden, all colours and scents 

blending in the air. There’s some serious hiking 

and climbing to be had here, as well as gentle strolls. 

But the Alpbachtal is about more than 

mere walks: it’s a stroll for the soul, exercise 

for the deepest anthropological links in our 

range of attractions for young and old including 

face painting for children, sports activities, handicrafts, 

games, tombola, live music and more. 

l Take part in the age old Austrian tradition of 

driving down the cattle from the alpine 

pastures to the town, at Reith, on the 18th and 

25th September. You’ll also have the chance to 

experience the local farmer’s festival, a must. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

l The Alpbachtal Seenland Card is great 

value and the best way to explore the region. If 

you are staying for more than one night, you can 

obtain one from where you are staying. Among 

the fantastic benefits available, some include free 

use of the 3 summer cable cars, all bus services, 

the indoor swimming pool, bathing lake, the 

Open Air Museum of Tirolean Farmhouses and 

many more reductions throughout the region. 

collective memory. It’s a place where you feel at 

home, not just because of the justly renowned 

hospitality, but because it offers a perfect gaze 

at how we all were, not too long ago: and it 

will make you think twice and gaze out of 

your window in awe of your memories when 

you finally have to return home.■A 

FaCts & Figures 

l Alpbachtal 

For more information please contact: 

Alpbachtal Seenland Tourismus 

Zentrum 1 

A-6233 Kramsach/Tirol 

Tel: +43 (0) 5336 600 600 

Fax: +43 (0) 5336 600 699 

Email: info@alpbachtal.at 

www.alpbachtal.at 

NEAREST AIRpORTS 

Innsbruck 30 miles (48 km) 

Munich 90 miles (145 km) 

Salzburg 90 miles (145 km) 

ALpbAcHTAL SeenLAnd TOuRISMuS

As any parent knows, on a family holiday, 

if the children are happy, you are happy. 

Which is why we devote so much time seeking 

out ‘family friendly’ accommodation; and why 

there is so much scope for disappointment 

when the friendliness turns out simply to be 

a corporate message, rather than anything 

more heartfelt. A family that genuinely feels 

welcomed is a long way towards having a 

fantastic holiday. 

Which is where the Salzburger Land’s Family 

Hotels come in. These are 25 independent 

hotels, mainly family-owned, scattered around 

the scenic highlands of the region around 

Salzburg. They are all individual, private village, 

small town and country hotels; the one thing 

they have in common is that they have been 

certified by the Salzburger Land State Board of 

Tourism as being perfect for families. 

Salzburger Land 

Family wonderland 

If nature is the greatest playground of all, the hills of the Salzburger Land, and its family-oriented hotels, offer 

the perfect combination of personal welcome and nature-based adventures for all the clan 

Some are small, perfectly formed and cosy; 

others have facilities like spas, swimming pools, 

paddling pools, kids’ cinemas, rope courses, 

Alpine feng-shui gardens and bouncy castles. 

It might be that on day one, the kids are 

still stuck to their Wiis and desperately trying 

to find an internet connection to keep up on 

Bebo; by the next day, it’s pretty much a 

certainty that nature’s far richer attractions 

will have taken over. 

The greatest of all kids’ clubs, after all, is 

nature itself. More adventurous and grown-up 

children can go mountain biking, white-water 

rafting, night hiking in the mountains and 

learn how to rock climb; others can play 

farmer - milking cows, collecting eggs from 

the hens and making cheese. Somewhere in 

the middle of all this adventure, there’s also 

pony trekking and panning for gold. 


Salzburger Land 

Family nights 

Even babies are catered for with baby massage 

(every parent knows a contented baby is a quiet 

baby), and walking trails suitable for prams. 

Take just a couple of these experiences. 

A night hike in the mountains, for example. 

Wrapped up warm and under the auspices of 

an experienced guide, and armed with torches, 

you’ll set out on a path that may seem familiar 

by day but seems thrillingly mysterious by 

night. Creatures rustle and scuttle – was that 

an owl up there? A marmot zipping across the 

path in a black blur? 

High up, an eerie glow rises up just above 

the distant mountaintops. What would that 

be, do you think, the guide asks. A UFO? A 

lost city on top of the mountains? No, it’s the 

glow of moonlight on the glaciers up there, 

where it’s light as day at midnight on a clear 

summer’s night. And then there are the stars, 

revealed without their blanket of cloud or 


pollution, clearer still because of the altitude: 

they spot Jupiter, and maybe Venus, and is that 

Saturn? These are real planets, not games, and 

the childrens’ imaginations are ablaze. 

All the hotels have professional childcare 

services and access to guides for their activities, 

which means you will also be able to spend 

some blessed ‘grown up’ time together – or 

maybe just time on your own. And don’t worry 

about leaving the monitor/changing mat/milk 

bottle at home; they’ll always have one for you. 

And when your children have partaken of 

all these activities, after a few days, it might 

Facts & Figures 

salzburger land 

l Salzburg 


Salzburger Land Tourismus 

Wiener Bundesstrasse 23, P.O.Box 1 

A-5300 Hallwang bei Salzburg 

Tel: +43 (0) 662 66880 

Fax: +43 (0) 662 668866 

Email: info@salzburgerland.com 

www.salzburgerland.com 

NEArEST AirPOrTS 

Salzburg local 

Linz 75 miles (121 km) 


be time to visit Schnitza’s Holzpark. This is a 

new adventure park with an Austrian twist; 

everything revolves around a wooden theme, 

with wood carving (including huge wooden 

animals), wooden bowling, a wooden 

balancing course… 

Or for older children, there’s the famous 

(or is that infamous?) Wagraini’s Grafenberg, a 

water and mountain adventure park with one 

of the highest swings in the world, 9m tall, and 

a panoply of jungle ropes, balance challenges, 

enormous slides, a 25m rope suspension 

bridge and numerous other devices carefully 

crafted to wear your children out and give you 

a good night’s sleep. 

And at the end of your holiday, prepare 

yourself for a very strange noise: the sound of 

your children rejecting the electronic devices 

they used to use for recreation and asking 

when they can come back and do everything 

they have just experienced all over again… ■A 

ANd ANOTHEr THiNg... 

Kinderhotels is the ultimate 

hotel group for families, 

operating all over Austria. 

Holidays are tailored 

with children in mind with 

every childcare facility at your 

disposal, from equipment to 

healthy ‘baby food buffets’, 

and lots of adventure and play 

areas and fun parks. 

www.kinderhotels.co.uk 

ÖsterreicH Werbung / bArtl; robert HArding

Previous page: Forever blowing bubbles in the Salzburger 

Land. This spread, clockwise from left: stay mountainside; 

Lake Zell is backed by the 1965m Schmittenhöhe mountain; 

games on Lake Obertrumer; a family hike; Salzburg’s 

traditional Harvest Festival; cycling past waterfalls. 

What to do and 

Where to do it... 

EVENTS 

Children can go 

mountain biking, 

white-water rafting 

and learn how to 

rock climb 

l June 20th sees the opening of Summer in 

the Hills 2010 (Salzburger Almsommer) at 

the 200 year-old Saalalm in the mountains of 

Saalbach Hinterglemm. There are traditional 

handicrafts and a fun and varied programme 

for children. From there, spend the day hiking 

between the local mountain huts and tuck 

into traditional foods such as Troadsupp’n, 

(grain soup) and Hoargneist-Nidei (sauerkraut 

and potato loaves) accompanied by live 

music from alphorn and wind musicians. 

l The world’s biggest ice cave promises an 

array of incredible impressions deep within 

the mountain at the World of Giants, 

Werfen. Warm clothing is essential for this 

excursion high above the village of Werfen 

amid the impressive mountain range of the 

Tennengebirge, reached by road then cable 

car. Here you’ll find the entrance to the 

world’s biggest explored ice cave. Discovered 

in 1879, this 42km cave system is filled with 

breathtaking ice formations. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

The SalzburgerLand Card gives you free 

admission to over 190 sights and attractions 

throughout the region including museums, 

castles and palaces, buses and trains, wildlife 

and adventure parks and the mountain 

lifts. Pay just €43 for a 6-day card or €52 for 

a 12-day card and what’s more, for children 

between the ages of 6 -15, it’s half price. 


River deep, 

mountain high 

The Tirol is dominated by one of the world’s greatest trails, the Eagle Walk. This spectacular path 

runs over mountaintops and along glacier edges, past shimmering lakes and down through thick forest. 

Take a deep breath and escape from the world for as long as you dare

To experience the 

thrill of the mountains 

properly you must 

do so on foot 

LAURIN MOSER; MARLENA KOENIG; PATRICE KUNTE; PhOTOShOT 

Tirol 

Have the Alps been tamed? Perhaps they 

have, in our minds: we fly over them, 

drive under or through them, and ski on them 

in winter. But in fact they are anything but. 

This is, after all, a mountain range that rises 

through the heart of Europe, splitting it north 

from south, linguistically, meteorologically, 

geographically and culturally. 

They rise far higher, and longer, than any 

other mountains in western Europe, and it’s 

useful to bear in mind that it’s only for the last 

150 years or so of their existence that they have 

been conquered by mountaineers; for aeons 

before, they stood, mighty and forbidding, 

towering above the inhabitants of their valleys. 

And they are still forbidding now. We have 

made ingenious incisions into some of the 

Alps by way of high-altitude cable cars and some 

spectacular mountain restaurants, where, on a 

sunny day, even a child can be whisked up to a 

point on a mountain that his or her forebears 

might only have dreamed of visiting. 

Mountain thrills 

But away from the transport technology, the 

mountains are still as dramatic and – we should 

say it – threatening as they always were. Visit 

the high Alps, like any mountain range in the 

world, and you must be prepared: in high 

summer, when the village on the valley floor 

is sweltering in sunshine, a little wind and a 

high-altitude cloud can suddenly plunge you 

into icy wintertime. 

That is the thrill of the mountains, and to 

experience the mountains properly you must 

do so on foot. No railways or cable cars; no 

This spread, from left to right: View from the Eagle Walk’s 

trail in the Stubaier Alps with the Zillertal Alps in the 

background; hiking in the Karwendel mountain range. 


Tirol 

the eagle walk 

2010 sees the fifth anniversary of the 

inauguration of the Eagle Walk. Check out 

the offical website, www.adlerweg.at, for 

the latest news and developments, and 

information on how to find a guide. 

Depending on your ability, you can ask 

your guide to take you along the straightforward 

Red and Blue-marked trails for 

the length of your walk (see below); or, 

if you are an experienced hiker, climber 

or scrambler, you can challenge yourself. 

The most challenging sections to go for 

include the segment from Steinberg am 

Rofan to Schafsteigsattel and Erfurter 

Hut, and the hardest and highest part 

on the trail from the Karwendelhaus to 

the Birkkarspitze, Hallerangerhaus 

and Hallerangeralm. 

sophisticated restaurants populated by urbane 

tourists. The best way is to make an itinerary, 

and walk a high mountain trail for a few days. 

Challenging heights 

The best place to do this is in the Tirol, and 

its most famous, and challenging, itinerary 

is the Eagle Walk. This, in its complete form, 

comprises a 126-stage, 1470 km route along 

and around from the length of this province. 

The main route, excluding all the variations, is 

280km long and split into 23 stages. You don’t 

have to do all of it, or even most of it, and you 

can also make your own variations on whichever 

part you do attack. Regional side routes, 

recently added, mean you can branch off the 

main walk into the province’s great valleys. 

Each stage of the route is marked for 

difficulty in a way that will be familiar to 

skiers: grading starts at blue, for beginners, 

through to red, for intermediates, and black, 

for experts. In reality, you can do the whole 

of the main walk while sticking to blue and 

red paths, meaning anyone who is reasonably 

fit, and, ideally, has a little hiking experience, 

can do the whole walk. (To tackle the Black 

branches of the route, which are optional, you 

do need to be an experienced hiker.) 

The trail is clearly marked all the way along 

but far better done in the company of a guide, 

because they will be a mine of interest. 

AND ANoTHER THINg... 

For the ultimate hiking holiday, 

Europa Wanderhotels are the 

specialists. With 38 dedicated 

hiking hotels all over Austria, 

you’ll be spoilt for choice. Hire 

equipment and guides directly 

and there are wellness facilities 

to enjoy after all that excercise. 

www.wanderhotels.com 


This page from top: Hiking along the trails of the 

Rofangebirge - each stage of the Eagle Walk is 

graded according to difficulty; re-energise yourself 

along the way with fresh mountain spring water. 

Wherever you pick up the route, you will 

start in a low valley of meadows; then you 

are likely to pass through Alpine forests, and 

climb above the treeline to a sparse, wonderful 

world of short grass, lichens and streams, with 

exposed rocks and peaks never far away. 

And then you spot a patch of snow, a 

remnant of winter incongruously lying nearby 

on a hot summer’s day. Determined to make a 

snowball, one of your companions runs towards 

it, then slows down and struggles along: meanwhile 

he is barely getting nearer to it. This is a 

‘snow mirage’: the snow is much further away 

than it appears, and it’s amusing to watch your 

friends realise this and turn back while you 

take a well-earned breather on a rock. 

Anyone used to the somewhat barren 

experience of hiking in Britain is in for a 

very pleasant surprise here. For in these high 

mountains, at over 2000m altitude, there is 

plenty of life, human and otherwise. 

The trail is dotted with huts, many of them 

the summer homes of farmers tending to their 

animals in high pasture, where you are welcome 

to stay. Arrive at one of these huts after several 

long hours of hiking, a fabulous panorama 

stretching below you and an icy evening breeze 

starting to waft down from the glacier, and 

you’ll be greeted with plates of ham, homemade 

bread, deliciously soft beer, and schnapps. 

You’ll eat at a communal table with the farmers 

and other hikers; and you’ll often share a 

dormitory with your companions. 

Starts are early: despite the schnapps 

and beer, your happily weary body doesn’t 

keep you up late, and you may be pleasantly 

surprised to find yourself delighted to rise with 

the farmer, at sunrise, to a breakfast of ham, 

eggs and coffee, before you start the long day. 

Often you’ll find yourself meeting the same 

people all the way along the trail. And at some 

point, you will head down the mountainside, 

into the valley with all its modern civilisation; 

and you’ll look up at the Alps and their ridges 

and ravines, and say: “Did I really walk along 

those? Did anyone?” ■A 

FaCts & Figures 

Tirol 

l Innsbruck 

Eagle Walk 


Tirol and its Leading Resorts 

Maria-Theresien-Strasse 55 

A-6010 Innsbruck 

Tel: +43 (0) 512 72720 

Fax: +43 (0) 512 72727 

Email: info@tirol.at 

www.visittirol.co.uk 

NEAREST AIRpoRTS 

Innsbruck local 


Munich 129 miles (208 km)

The Kunsthaus art museum 

was built in Graz in 2003 

and is nicknamed ‘the 

friendly alien’. 

3 things to do in…graz 

Austria’s southernmost city bathes in a sunny 

climate, and combines history and gastronomy 

with an irresistible ambience. 

TAkE A HikE 

Graz may be the second-biggest city in Austria 

(after Vienna) but it’s also intensely pedestrianfriendly. 

Situated in the south of the country, 

the light and the climate have a Mediterranean 

quality, as does the pace of life. It’s a place where 

you wander from square to square, sitting in 

cafés, admiring the architecture, dominated 

by Renaissance treasures, and enhanced by 

contemporary marvels such as the Kunsthaus 

art museum. More than anything else, this is 

a place to wander and discover courtyards, 

terraces and squares where sitting and watching 

the world go by will be irresistible. 

iNdulGE iN THE GAsTrONOmy 

Graz is known as ‘Austria’s delicatessen’: its 

geographical position at the confluence of the 

Alpine and Mediterranean climate zones means 

that everything from mountain beef and milk 

City Cool 

Graz, Innsbruck and Salzburg, three 

of Austria’s great cities, have a unique 

combination of culture, history, 

activities, gastronomy and other 

attractions. Here, we pinpoint 

the very best ways to experience 

the best of each of them 

to Mediterranean vegetables are grown locally. 

The best introduction is a visit to one of the 

farmers’ markets in the Old Town on a weekend. 

They feature only local produce. Throughout 

the summer, cherries, peaches and apricots are 

sold in abundance; as autumn starts you’ll spot 

varieties of mushrooms and blackberries, and, 

one of the most well-known local specialities, 

pumpkins. And if that’s all too much, ask your 

hotel for a ‘Graz picnic basket’ of regional 

delicacies which you can take out to a romantic 

spot on the Schlossberg and enjoy in utter peace. 

AbsOrb THE culTurE 

Graz was a cradle of the Renaissance, with 

influences from surrounding regions in Italy 

as well as the Austro-Hungarian empire to 

the north. The town centre at the foot of the 

Schlossberg is redolent of this, with its grand 

residences, churches and Renaissance detailing; 

but it’s also offset by the best of contemporary 

culture, like the Kunsthaus museum with its 

cutting-edge art exhibitions. There is also an 

array of festivals throughout the year in fine art, 

music, literature and design. 


Graz 

l Graz 


Graz Tourist Office 

Herrengasse 16 

A-8010 Graz 

Tel: +43 (0) 316 80750 

Fax: +43 (0) 316 807515 

Email: info@graztourismus.at 

www.visitgraz.com 

NEArEsT AirpOrTs 

Graz local 

Vienna 124 miles (200 km) 


Salzburg 

Salzburg’s enchanting 

Mirabell Gardens. 

3 things to do in… salzburg 

Mozart’s hometown is dripping with cultural 

beauty and history; yet it also has compelling 

contemporary sights to see. 

iMMErSE yourSElF iN MuSic 

Everyone knows Salzburg was the home of 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and there is no 

more glorious a place to hear a Mozart concerto 

or a sinfonia concertante than in one of the 

city’s theatres or music rooms. But there’s a lot 

more music to be had in Salzburg, not forgetting 

the Salzburg Festival: one of the world’s leading 

cultural festivals, it combines opera, drama and 

musical concerts across the spectrum from dark 

plays to childrens’ concerts. 

AdMirE THE ArcHiTEcTurE 

Salzburg’s old town is a perennial festival of 

fabulous, colourful, romantic Baroque-era 

architecture. You can make an itinerary of sites 

to visit, like the Cathedral, the Hohensalzburg 

Castle, and the Residenz Palace; or you can 

simply wander the streets, each one a Baroque 

showcase, and admire the city as it happens. 


And you mustn’t leave Mozart’s house, the 

Franziskaner Church and the Mirabell Palace 

off your list. But it’s not just Baroque: Salzburg 

is home to one of the world’s most renowned 

pieces of contemporary architecture, Hangar-7, 

just outside the city centre. This is a combination 

of dramatic architectural showcase, aviation 

museum, and contemporary art gallery, with an 

ever-changing roster of shows, and avant-garde 

restaurant, showcasing chefs from around the 

world. The contrast with the old city centre 

couldn’t be more striking, but Hangar-7 is a 

destination in itself. 

SHop! 

Even the shopping in Salzburg is spectacular. 

The Europark shopping centre, on the edge of 

the city, was designed by award-winning Italian 

architect Massimiliano Fuksas to provide 

floods of natural light and to blend in with its 

environment. It has 130 shops for every budget 

and taste, with a particular emphasis on fashion 

brands, and is also home to the Oval, a theatre 

at its heart, which seats 250 and has a rolling 

programme of cabaret, theatre, jazz and films. 


l Salzburg 


Salzburg Tourismus GmbH 

Auerspergstrasse 6 

5020 Salzburg 

Tel: + 43 (0)662 889870 

Fax: + 43 (0) 662 8898732 

Email: tourist@salzburg.info 

www.salzburg.info 

NEArEST AirporTS 

Salzburg local 

Munich 112 miles (180km)

Innsbruckphoto.com; tVb Innsbruck 

3 things to do in… innsbruck 

The capital of the Tirol is surrounded by 

mountains and combines urban culture with 

the best outdoor activities. 

GET CulTural 

Innsbruck established itself as one of the great 

cultural centres of Europe more than 500 years 

ago, when the Habsburg emperor Maximillian 

I resided there. The old town centre is oozing 

with Baroque history, whether you’re wandering 

the mazy backstreets or visiting sights like the 

Hofkirche (the Habsburg imperial church), 

the Goldenes Dachl, the famous golden-roofed 

building created for the Emperor, or other 

monuments. There’s also the stunning Schloss 

Ambras, above the city, created by another 

resident Emperor, Archduke Ferdinand II, in 

the late 16th century. 

ENjoy ThE GrEaT ouTdoors 

Even in Austria, Innsbruck is unique in its 

combination of historic city feel within the 

old town, and high mountains all around. 

You can take all manner of daytrips out to the 

mountainsides, though two stick in the mind, 

at opposite ends of the spectrum. First up is 

the Olympic Bobsleigh run at Igls, just outside 

town. This is one of the greatest bobsleigh runs 

in the world and is open from June to August: 

your average speed down the run will be more 

than 60 mph… You can then calm down 

with a round or two at the nearby Innsbruck- 

Igls Golf Club, with three courses of varying 

difficulties, all with fabulous views down over 

the valley, and some fine restaurants and ‘19th 

hole’ bars. 

GET dowN wITh ThE kIds 

Innsbruck offers the best of both city and country 

life for children. You can start by exploring the 

city, sitting on a terrace with some home-made 

ice-cream; then make a trip by bus to the 

Alpenzoo (Alpine zoo) which is full of ‘local’ 

animals like otters, ibex, eagles, as well as a petting 

area of mountain piglets and lambs. Then there 

are the guided childrens’ tours at Ambras Castle 

– teaching about childrens’ lives at the castle 

400 years ago, as well as water parks, adventure 

playgrounds, treehouses and more. ■A 


l Innsbruck 

Innsbruck 


Innsbruck Tourismus 

Burggraben 3 

6021 Innsbruck 

Tel: + 43 (0)512 59850 

Fax: + 43 (0)512 59850107 

Email: office@innsbruck.info 

www.innsbruck.info 

NEarEsT aIrporTs 

Innsbruck local 

Clockwise from top: the Zaha Hadid 

designed Bergisel ski jump; the 

Golden Roof; view of church domes 

over central Innsbruck; the Column 

of Anna on Maria Theresien Strasse. 


Alternative view 

Main picture: the Nordpark cable 

railway interior. Right, from top: 

the Bergisel ski jump; exterior 

view of the Nordpark cable railway.

Modernist movement 

When Zaha Hadid, one of the 

world’s foremost renowned 

contemporary architects, designed 

a mountain railway and other 

holiday infrastructure above the 

Tirolean capital of Innsbruck, she 

changed the way humans and 

mountains interact for good. The 

forms of her creations are organic, 

as if shaped by the same elements 

that created the mountains 

millions of years ago: the result 

is a mountain railway and a ski 

jump that are at once modern 

and harmonious. Hadid says of 

the railway: “Each station has its 

own unique context, topography, 

altitude and circulation. We studied 

natural phenomena such as glacial 

moraines and ice movements as 

we wanted each station to use 

the fluid language of natural ice 

formations, like a frozen stream 

on the mountainside.” 

www.nordkette.com 

a u s t r i a ’ s hi d d e n t r e a s u r e s 19 

H É l È nE bInET, © ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS; InnSbRUCK TOURISMUS

Making a splash 

Water makes a perfect holiday, and Zell am See-Kaprun has water in abundance, amid the 

surprisingly warm ripples of its mountain lake, and, high up, the year-round snows of its glacier. 

A wealth of activities means it all makes for a most relaxing summer holiday 

20 a u s t r i a ’ s hi d d e n t r e a s u r e s

The water in the lake 

is pure enough 

to drink and in 

summer reaches a 

balmy 24 degrees 

Zell am See-Kaprun 

What is it about water? There’s nothing 

quite so exhilarating as waking up, 

pulling the curtains, and seeing an Alpine lake 

spread before you. 

At Zell am See-Kaprun, you have the best 

of water in both of its forms: firstly the lake 

itself, Lake Zell; and, thousands of metres 

above, the glacier and year-round snowfields 

of the Kitzsteinhorn mountain. 

On your first day in Zell am See-Kaprun, 

you will wake up in your spa hotel to a double 

dose of sunlight, from above and also from 

the shimmering reflection in the lake. You may 

feel like diving straight in, and you’re most 

welcome to, as you’ll get a delightful surprise: 

the water in the lake is drinking water quality, 

and in summer it reaches a balmy 24°C – as 

warm as the Mediterranean. 

Family challenge 

But it’s more likely you’ll feel tempted to make 

a conquest first. At 3203m, the Kitzsteinhorn 

is a serious Alp – more than three times the 

height of Snowdon – but the good news is that 

it’s also a friendly one, a conquest the whole 

family can make. A local guide will take you: 

the first part of the climb, through forest and 

along grassland paths, is an upward stroll, and 

the final part, steeper and rocky, requires the 

whole family to be roped together. It doesn’t 

require special technical expertise though: just 

determination to make it to the top, at which 

point any children, and most adults present 

will feel a frisson of joy at having conquered 

what is likely to be their first 3000m peak, and 

in true mountaineer style. 

That joy then quickly turns to awe. You 

are on the roof of Europe here; turn 360° on 

your booted heel and you will see more than 

30 peaks of more than 3000m rising around 

you, with Austria’s highest mountain, the 

mass of ice and rock that is Grossglockner, 

rising almost next door. The sky is a deep, 

concentrated blue, the sun shines upwards 

off a hundred glaciers; if you’ve brought your 

children with you you might tell them that 

underneath each of those peaks is a valley, 

containing villages, towns, roads, churches: it 

all looks like a giant toy from here. 

And climbing is just part of the joy. The 

mountain’s altitude means it plays host to 


Zell am See-Kaprun 

Previous page: Lake Zell at Zell am See-Kaprun is delightfully 

warm in the summer. This page, clockwise from left: 

Lake Zell is the perfect spot for watersports; canoeing on 

the lake; enjoying a spot of lakeside volleyball. 

summer snowfields: come back another day 

on the Gletscherjet 1 cable car and spend the 

day skiing, snowboarding and even skating 

on the ice rink. The Mooserboden lakes, pure, 

deep, and green, lie nearby. 

Spa therapy 

The thrill of playing (for adults and children 

alike) at such altitude shouldn’t be discounted: 

the air is thin, pure, clean; the sun is strong 

(don’t forget your Factor 30), so you will tan 

in minutes; the only noise on the glacier is 

of summer meltwater trickling off in unseen 

underground streams. 

Heading back home, you descend the 

mountainside into the valley, where you realise 

the aromas of pine needles and wildflowers 

that scent the air were missing at the purity of 

altitude. You stop off at a farm shop and buy 

some local cheese, and schnapps, pear brandy, 

and some ‘children’s schnapps’ (lemonade) for 

the offspring. 

The next morning your hotel spa’s therapist 

gives you a soothing massage, welcome after 

all that exercise for muscles that you are not 

used to using back home; they also devise a 

nutrition and wellness plan for you for your 

stay. This is a spa, Austrian style, where they 

don’t do things by halves: look after your body 

and your body will look after you, they say. 

And still, you have only just scratched the 

surface of this region. Swimming and waterskiing 

in Lake Zell are activities for a whole day; 

you might take a few minutes to look up at the 

mountain and reflect with some disbelief how 

high you climbed earlier in your trip – you are 

indeed a member of the 3000m club. 



EVENTS 

l The Gössl Dirndl Flying Day makes for an 

altogether more quirky experience on the 3rd 

July. Plucky participants dress in traditional, 

regional costumes from manufacturer Gössl 

before plunging from a platform into the 

refreshing water of Lake Zell. 

l While Zell am See-Kaprun’s Lake Festival 

offers plenty of daytime entertainment, with live 

bands and traditional food, it’s most famous for 

its impressive fireworks which draw the event 

to a close. For the best panoramic views jump 

on board the MS Schmittenhöhe and watch the 

pyrotechnic spectacle, without the crowds, from 

the middle of the lake. Be sure to catch it on 17th 

- 18th July and 7th – 8th August. 

l Kaprun Castle will be host to the annual 

Fortress Festival from the 24th - 26th July, 

one of the largest events of its kind in Austria. 

great heights 

On another morning you set off for Europe’s 

highest waterfalls, the Krimmler Falls; they 

burst forth seemingly from within the heart of 

a forest, down a series of giant rock steps for 

380m (that’s the height of two BT Towers). A 

carefully-carved path, created by the Austrian 

Alpine Association, takes you to the top in 

around an hour, all the time accompanied by 

the roar of the water. 

And then there’s the Grossglockner Alpine 

Road. If you are a keen driver, motorbike rider 

or the hardiest kind of cyclist, you will have 

heard of this legendary strip of tarmac, which 

winds up to an altitude of 2504m through 

Austria’s highest mountain massif in a series 

of hundreds of hairpin bends, each one 

seemingly revealing a more hair-raising view. 

This being Austria, it’s child-friendly too, 

with a series of children’s playgrounds located 

along the route, all beautifully decorated with 

images of the road’s mascot, Marmie the 

Marmot (marmots are the elusive and furry 

Alpine rodents). 

If you’ve caught the hiking bug, there’s a 

famous trail, the Alexander Enzinger Way; if 

history and culture is your thing, then the 

panoramically located Imperial-era Sissi 

Chapel above Zell am See-Kaprun, dedicated 

to the Hapsburg Empress Elisabeth, is a must 

to visit. And always there’s the smooth service, 

AND ANOTHEr THiNG... 

Zell am See-Kaprun isn’t the 

only place for watersports fans. 

Located in central Austria, the 

region of Salzkammergut 

boasts three lakes for every 

water activity imaginable, from 

water-skiing to windsurfing. 

You can even scuba dive. 

www.salzkammergut.at 

Expect a thoroughly medieval affair with jugglers, 

knights and ancient craftsmanship. 

l Austrian-born composers Mozart and Strauss 

brought musical fame to their homeland during 

the 18th and 19th century. Celebrate their legacy 

and head to the 2000m summit of Schmittenhöhe 

between the 30th July and 8th August to enjoy 

classical music concerts from highly renowned 

orchestras as part of the Hochkultur - There is 

Music in the Air event. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

Feel the power of nature and visit the Sigmund 

Thun Klamm, a mountain gorge 32m deep and 

320 feet long, near Kaprun, only a 1.5km walk 

from the city centre. The gorge was formed by 

melting snow from several glaciers and dates 

back to the Ice Age. Don’t miss the guided 

nature tours through the gorge every Monday 

throughout July and August. 

warm welcome, spa and culinary delights of 

your hotel when you return. 

At the end of your stay, the likelihood is 

that you’ll gaze out over the lake, look up at 

the mountains…and decide to return next 

year to conquer Grossglockner itself. ■A 

FactS & FigureS 

l Zell Am See-Kaprun 


Zell am See-Kaprun Tourismus 

Brucker Bundesstr. 1a 

A-5700 Zell am See 

Tel: +43 (0) 6542 770 

Fax: +43 (0) 6542 72032 

Email: welcome@zellamsee-kaprun.com 

www.zellamsee-kaprun.com 

NEArEST AirpOrTS 


innsbruck 87 miles (140 km) 

Munich 136 miles (220km)

This page: Old and new stand side 

by side in Bregenzerwald: the 

village hall in Andelsbuch next to 

a typical ‘Wälderhaus’. 

The art 

of living 

Contemporary architecture, modern 

restaurants, slick spas with the 

most natural of products; this lovely 

valley in Vorarlberg has it all 

Bregenzerwald - Vorarlberg 


and another thing... 

Wine enthusiasts must pay 

a visit to the Loisium, ‘The 

Adventure World of Wine’. 

Located in Langenlois in Lower 

Austria, here you will learn 

everything there is to know 

about wine. Sample it too! 

www.loisium.at 

If you think about modern buildings and 

holidays together, you might be forgiven for 

thinking of hastily-constructed and soulless 

concrete boxes. And yet it is within buildings 

that we spend so much of our holiday time, 

sleeping, talking, eating and simply relaxing; to 

be in a human construction that is harmonious 

and pleasing is surely as important as the 

landscape outside it. 

A beautiful, thought-provoking and crafted 

building, that appeals to the soul, doesn’t have 

to be an old edifice. Bregenzerwald, a deeply 

beautiful valley that runs throughVorarlberg in 

northwestern Austria, has an ancient tradition 

of wood carving and architecture using wood. 

In 1999, the ‘Werkraum Bregenzerwald’ was 

formed, an association for the trade craftsmen 

in the region, offering its members support 

in product and design innovation, marketing 

and training. It has meant that the culture of 

Bregenzerwald has kept on thriving. 

Take a stroll around one of its 22 old 

villages and you might think you’ve stepped 

into a Brothers Grimm fairytale of intricately 

designed woodwork and painstaking detail. 

But take a stroll around another village and 

you are as likely to come across a spectacular 

modern building as you are a Hansel and Gretel 

cottage. Expanses of glass and wood, minimal 

use of steel: the craftspeople here have carved a 


niche for themselves in the modern architectural 

world as foremost proponents of an uplifting, 

naturally lit style of building that combines the 

traditional and contemporary to beautiful effect. 

As one leading architectural writer commented, 

the buildings “have been built using hardly any 

materials”, making them “surprisingly rich in 

spatial and functional qualities”. In layman’s 

terms, that means great mental wellbeing on a 

holiday in a place where physical wellbeing is a 

given. Hotels like the Sonne Lifestyle Resort in 

Mellau lift your spirits the moment you walk in. 

There’s another feelgood factor at work too: 

all the contemporary buildings here are world 

leaders in the use of renewable energy using 

geothermal energy, solar cells, and different 

local materials. 

Culinary delights 

So: you feel in harmony with nature. And very 

soon, nature starts to feel in harmony with 

you. Because you’re eating it. Firstly, in the 

form of the highly-regarded local cheeses; the 

best-known product of the region is the tangy 

mountain cheese, Bergkäse; myriad other 

cheeses come in the form of delicacies such as 

Bachensteiner, a red, semi-soft and Alpzieger, a 

greenish cheese dotted with more than 40 local 

herbs. ‘Sig’ is the local equivalent of caramel. 

Secondly, in the form of local herbs, which grow 

This spread, clockwise from left: The reception of the 

Sonne Lifestyle resort in Mellau; the Women’s Museum in 

Hittisau; the Angelika Kauffmann Hall in Schwarzenberg; 

a traditional and a modern house in the Bregenzerwald. 

in the Holdamoos meadow, known throughout 

the country as a source of rare wild herbs. 

All the elements of the Bregenzerwald come 

together in the form of ‘MundArt’, eight of the 

area’s most prized restaurants, which, reflecting 

the architectural movement’s contemporary 

take on traditional crafts, interpret traditional 

dishes with modern flair. Light purees and 

foams combine with traditional noodles, roasts 

and dumplings to make highly creative cuisine. 

But the local food products are not just 

good to eat. They are good to apply, too. As 

natural as any skin product can get, local farmer 

Ingo Metzler’s whey-based skincare products 

would be a hit with London fashionistas if they 

could get hold of them. Whey, a byproduct of 

cheesemaking, is fat and protein free and contains 

nutrients and vitamins amazing for the skin. 

And the ultimate escape for those seeking 

skin rescue? The spas at numerous hotels in 

the area; the respected German travel magazine 

Geo Saison recently voted the spa at the Hotel 

Post in Bezau top of its ‘wellness’ category, 

praising the spa’s ‘luxurious simplicity’. In a 

way, that perfectly sums up the whole of the 

Bregenzerwald spirit. ■A

© CHrISTopH LIngg; pETEr MATHIS/ArCHIV SCHUBErTIADE 


l Bregenzerwald 

Vorarlberg 


Bregenzerwald Tourismus 

Gerbe 1135 

A-6863 Egg, Vorarlberg 

Tel: +43 (0) 5512 2365 

Fax: +43 (0) 5512 3010 

Email: info@bregenzerwald.at 

www.bregenzerwald.at/uk 

www.vorarlberg.travel/en 


Friedrichshafen 32 miles (52 km) 

Zurich 81 miles (130 km) 



EVENTS 

l The renowned annual Schubertiade festival, 

dedicated to the memory of composer Franz 

Schubert, held in the village of Schwarzenberg, 

takes place in the Angelika Kauffmann Hall. It’s 

become a meeting place for an international 

audience of lieder and chamber-music 

devotees. It prides itself on its intimate and 

distinguished atmosphere which in turn has 

attracted world-class singers and musicians to 

perform at this event year after year. 

l Every Tuesday between the middle of July 

and the end of August the village square of 

picturesque Bezau comes alive with ‘Bezau 

Beatz’ as jazz, blues, pop and classical artists 

take to the stage to perform to the crowd. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

The Women’s Museum in Hittisau, a perfect 

example of contemporary architecture, is the 

only Women’s Museum in Austria. All of the 

exhibitions here offer an exposé of the world 

of women, both from the past and in the 

present and it holds different exhibitions on the 

subjects of cultural history, contemporary art 

and social policy all year round. 

Bregenzerwald - Vorarlberg 


Lake Constance - Vorarlberg 

This spread, clockwise from 

left: Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda at 

the Bregenz Festival 2009; 

the town of Bregenz on the 

shore of Lake Constance. 

High culture 

Where in the world combines cutting-edge opera, contemporary art and world-leading architecture with 

views across one of Europe’s great lakes? Lake Constance, in Vorarlberg, that’s where 

If you plan a holiday to go to a world-class 

opera and art galleries, you generally do so 

on the assumption that you’ll be visiting a big 

city, without the diversions of, say, spectacular 

mountain views or waterside dining by an 

Alpine lake. 

Conversely, if you were on a holiday that 

involved gazing in awe at a view of 240 Alpine 

peaks ranged across several countries, you 

would be forgiven for assuming that there 

wouldn’t be an option to see one of the world’s 

great orchestras performing Aïda, or walking 

around a world renowned contemporary art 

museum just a few minutes later. 

However, you would be wrong. Because in 

the region of Lake Constance in Vorarlberg, you 

can do all of these and more. How? Read on... 

To opera lovers, the name of Bregenz, 

Austria’s northwesternmost city, conjures up 

one thing: the Bregenz Festival. Every summer, 

the world renowned Vienna Symphony 

Orchestra decamps en masse to Bregenz, or, 

more precisely, to an orchestra pit in a floating 


stage in Lake Constance. There, the Bregenz 

Opera puts on a summer extravaganza of 

shows, ranging from the classical (Aïda) to the 

contemporary (West Side Story) via the 

alternative (operas by Kurt Weill). 

The Bregenz Festival began in 1946 with 

the performance of a Mozart work on two 

barges moored on Lake Constance. Over the 

years, the festival has grown to international 

fame, with a proper floating stage, and, in 

1980, the addition of an Opera House on land 

connected to the stage, in case the weather 

turned inclement. 

Every summer hundreds of thousands of 

culture lovers come to the opera here: in the 

past decade the Festival has become even more 

ambitious, staging some of Giuseppe Verdi’s 

most dramatic works, like A Masked Ball and 

Aïda, and Puccini’s La Bohème. 

But just to show that Bregenz’s artistic 

direction was as avant-garde as ever, in 2004 

the Festival appointed David Pountney, 

formerly director of the English National 

Opera, as artistic director; Pountney quickly 

brought new international recognition to the 

Festival by directing works such as Nielsen’s 

Maskarade, Weill’s Der Kuhhandel and, last 

summer, Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger. 

Attending the Festival is only touching the 

surface of Bregenz though. The other cultural 

BrEgEnzEr FEstspiELE / andErEart 2009; KarL FOrstEr, 2009

In the past decade the 

Festival has become 

even more ambitious, 

staging works like 

Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda 


If you love music, you musn’t 

miss the music festival at 

Grafenegg Castle from the 

19th August - 12th September. 

It features renowned and 

acclaimed international 

orchestras, soloists and 

conductors and will be 

opening with a performance 

of Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’. 

www.grafenegg.at

Lake Constance - Vorarlberg 

attraction of world renown is the Kunsthaus 

Bregenz, the contemporary art gallery 

designed by Peter Zumthor, the Pritzker 

Prize-winning Swiss architect. 

Made of etched glass, cast steel and 

concrete, and shaped in ‘living’ forms with 

an abundance of natural light in its gallery 

spaces, the Kunsthaus has a rolling schedule 

of exhibitions from some of the world’s great 

contemporary artists, as well as a thorough 

programme of tours on arts and architecture. 

And once you’ve explored the Kunsthaus 

– which with its wide piazza at its heart is 

somewhere to spend a day or two – there is 

a plethora of modern and contemporary art 

galleries in Bregenz. 

The views 

Just a few minutes’ walk through the town 

centre of Bregenz from the museum you’ll find 

the bottom station of the Pfänder cable car. 

Hop on, and six minutes later you emerge 

to...something quite spectacular. Just as the 

cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin once commented 

that the best way to see our planet was when 

you were away from it, viewing from space, so 

you might think when viewing the Alps from 

the 1064m high top station of the Pfänder. 

For Bregenz and Lake Constance actually 

lie just to the north of the Alps; the lake is fed 



EVENTS 

l The Bregenz Spring Dance Festival has 

been in existence for over 20 years and has 

evolved into one of the most significant dance 

festivals in the region. It kicks off the annual 

cultural activities calendar each year. Austrian 

premiere performances can be seen on particular 

days throughout March, April and May. 

l Under the artistic direction of Philippe Arlaud, 

this year’s Feldkirch Festival, held on 2nd – 

13th June takes the theme of Russian music 

of the 20th and 21st century in his continuing 

desire to transcend cultural barriers with the 

universal language of music. 

l The world renowned Kunsthaus Bregenz, 

opened in the summer of 1997, is not only 

a contemporary art gallery but a work of art 

in itself with its cubic-crystal design from the 

This page, from top: Test display in the resort of Lech for the 

planned Horizon Field project in the Vorarlberg by artist 

Antony Gormley; the Kunsthaus Bregenz exterior. 

by the River Rhine at the point the Alpine 

scenery gives way to the forested hills of 

northern Europe. So the Pfänder is like a 

natural viewing station facing the wall of the 

Alps. On a clear day you can see 240 Alpine 

peaks, from central Switzerland through to 

Austria’s Arlberg and Bregenzerwald regions; 

to the west and north are the hills of the Black 

Forest, and the lake shimmers below. 

Back down in town, the views are of a 

different kind as you stroll along the lakefront, 

perhaps taking a glass of champagne in a café 

by a fisherman’s pier. And there are views of a 

different kind a short distance away in Feldkirch, 

a beautifully preserved medieval town. 

Where there is culture there is cuisine, and 

the region of Lake Constance in Vorarlberg is 

no exception. The lakeside restaurants have a 

perfect setting; you can look at the water and 

wonder if you saw your dinner before it 

arrived on your plate. ■A 

horizon Field 

Antony Gormley, one of Britain’s foremost 

contemporary artists, is planning to unveil his 

work ‘Horizon Field’ in the Vorarlberg area, 

under the auspices of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, 

this summer. Horizon Field consists of 100 lifesize 

cast-iron figures of Gormley’s body, spread 

at 2039m above sea level, over 100sq km in the 

Vorarlberg area. Says Gormley: “The rise of 

the great river civilisations has programmed 

the human species to see its future well-being 

as city-based and in distinction to nature. The 

radical revision of the dialectic between nature 

and culture is necessary if the present human 

population is to successfully confront the issue 

of man-made global warming. Horizon Field 

asks an open question as to where the human 

project fits within the evolution of life on this 

planet.” See interview on page 4. 

Swiss architect and Pritzker award winner, Peter 

Zumthor. Be sure to catch the summer exhibition 

from 17th July – 3rd October. 

l The Art Bodensee fair in Dornbirn is the 

main art fair in the Lake Constance area and is 

the only art fair in the region that takes place in 

the middle of summer and the only one where 

you can chat to gallery owners and artists. It 

draws together the talent of fifty galleries from 

nine countries. Visit from 23rd – 25th July. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

For those who wish to attend the world famous 

Bregenz Festival (July 21 - August 22, 2010), 

stay for 2 nights from €189, including B&B at a 

choice of hotels, welcome cocktails, a ticket for 

Aïda, a Festival Leisure pack providing entrance 

to top places of interest, and an information pack 

from the Bodensee-Vorarlberg Tourism Board. 


Vorarlberg 

l Lake Constance 


Bodensee-Vorarlberg Tourism Board 

P.O. Box 16 

6901 Bregenz, Austria 

Tel: +43 (0) 5574 434430 

Fax: +43 (0) 5574 434434 

Email: office@bodensee-vorarlberg.com 

www.lakeconstance.eu 


NEArEST AirPOrTS 


Memmingen 48 miles (77 km) 


© AnTOny GORMLey, KUnSThAUS BReGenZ; MARKUS TReTTeR

Herbert LeHmann 

Perfect dishes 

From apple strudel in the heart of Vienna to a 

boutique-chic restaurant where everything is 

served in a cone, austria’s burgeoning 

restaurant scene has something for 

everybody. Here are six of our very favourite 

spots around the country for gourmets 

Landhaus Bacher, Wachau 

Lisl Wagner-Bacher heads up this two 

Michelin-starred restaurant in the medieval 

town of Mautern. She was the first woman 

ever to be awarded the Gault Millau ‘Chef of 

the Year’ in 1983 and her cuisine is famed for 

its refinement and panache; dishes include 

salad of warm lobster (above) and guinea 

fowl with roasted salsify, périgord truffle 

and hazelnut foam. Learn how to create 

these dishes yourself by enrolling in one of 

her courses. www.landhaus-bacher.at 

Schloss Velden, Carinthia 

The fine dining restaurant at this grand hotel 

has two Michelin stars and scores 18/20 in the 

Gault-Millau guide. Chef Silvio Nickol sources 

most of his ingredients from local farms here 

in Austria’s ‘larder’, Carinthia: local fishermen 

deliver the catch of the day from the lake. But as 

much as the magnificent food, you are likely to 

remember the views over Lake Wörth, and the 

stylishness of the hotel (right), which has been 

attracting Euro-aristocracy for more than a 

hundred years. www.schlossveldencapella.com 

Carpe Diem, SaLzBurg 

Salzburg may be full of history and tradition, 

but all that is swept away at Carpe Diem, a 

chic modern restaurant where everything 

is served in bite-sized cones. And we really 

do mean everything: there’s hamburger in a 

rosemary-infused cone, mini-fillet steak with 

mash and red wine sauce in a cone, wild boar 

with polenta and apple-Calvados foam in a 

cone… www.finestfingerfood.com 

Cuisine 


Cuisine 

Steirereck, Vienna 

Vienna’s most famous restaurant lies in the 

middle of its most picturesque park, the 

Stadtpark, right in the centre of town. The 

modern Austrian cuisine here is divine, 

particularly if taken on the terrace, although 

be warned, it’s not cheap. An excellent 

alternative is to go next door to the Meierei, 

under the same management, which serves 

more than 100 kinds of cheese (below), 

milkshakes, apple strudel and other specialities 

in a café ambience. www.steirereck.at 

Taubenkobel, Burgenland 

This restaurant lies in a traditional 19th Century vintner’s house in the heart of Burgenland, 

the wine-producing province southeast of Vienna, and is a member of the Relais & Chateaux 

group. It is owned and run by Chef Walter Eselböck and his wife Eveline who have been here 

since 1984. Together they have created a unique experience for all those who visit. Walter (who 

has won numerous awards), is at the helm in the kitchen while Eveline will greet you, tend to 

your every whim and advise what wine should accompany your meal from the vast selection of 

wines, all chosen by herself from producers she has known for many years. Such is the extent 

and fame of her knowledge that her wine seminars are usually booked out months in advance. 

Walter likes to use regional ingredients and is famed for his creativity and inventiveness. 

Be sure to try the seven course meal menu which culminates with ‘yuzu soufflé’, where each 

delicious course is paired expertly with a complementing wine. www.taubenkobel.com 


hohE MuT alM, ÖTzTal, TIRol 

It’s not often you can eat a gastronomic meal at a height of 2670m, but that’s exactly what 

Hohe Mut Alm offers. Perched on a mountain ledge high above the treeline, surrounded 

by some of the highest mountains and glaciers in Austria, this beautifully refurbished 

high mountain lodge offers traditional and Mediterranean specialities and an excellent 

wine list. The sun is strong at this altitude and the sky a deep blue, so spend the afternoon 

nibbling, sipping and basking – and don’t forget the sunblock. www.hohemutalm.at 

PlachuTTa, VIENNa 

This world famous restaurant lies in the 

heart of Vienna and has been owned and 

run by the Plachutta family for decades. 

Chef Ewald Plachutta has won numerous 

culinary awards that include Chef of the Year 

from the Gault Millau guide in 1991 and a 

Michelin star awarded the same year. Guests 

come to try the speciality ‘Tafelspitz’ (tender 

boiled beef, left). www.plachutta.at

The natural kitchen 

When is the last time you saw or smelled 

wild herbs? Herbs are something that we 

use every day, an essential element of almost 

every cuisine. For many of us, they come in 

glass jars in the supermarket. For some, they grow 

in window boxes and kitchen gardens. But wild 

herbs, sprouting from the soil, lining the side of a 

woodland trail, washed by sun and mountain air? 

The first thing you notice about wild herbs 

is the aroma: a waft of chives through the area; 

a pinch of basil in the breeze gets the gastric 

juices going immediately; parsley has a distinct 

freshness; mint and spearmint a tangy zest. But 

where can you find these aromas, fixed in the 

freshest of breezes? 

The Zillertal is where. This deep valley, 

carved millions of years ago by glaciers into 

the high Tirolean Alps is famed for its wild 

herbs and, not coincidentally, its cuisine. And 

if there’s a better way to whet your appetite for 

a series of delicious gastronomic experiences 

than go for a gentle walk among herb-filled 

meadows, we have yet to find one. 

Local cuisine 

But first things first. You might start your 

visit to the area in one of its famous four-star 

hotels; many of these combine a high level of 

comfort with a high quality restaurant, as the 

gastronomic tradition runs deep in the Zillertal 

Zillertal 

The Zillertal is one of Austria’s culinary heartlands. This deep valley’s warm summers and lush pastures 

give rise to hundreds of indigenous herbs, fabulous local speciality dishes and some of the best restaurants 

in the Alps. Even the cheeses are special. And the scenery’s pretty good too 

and nobody wants to be seen to be offering 

anything but the best of the local produce. 

Zillertal’s local ingredients – cheeses, hams, 

roasted meats, eggs, breads and all those herbs 

– are famous in Austria; every type of cuisine 

from the rustic to the gastronomic is on offer 

here. A local chef, Alexander Fankhauser, 

was named Austrian Chef of the Year by the 

respected Gault Millau guide in 2005. But the 

best way to start experiencing the cuisine is 

to start at the rustic, traditional end: for to 

understand a cuisine is to understand a culture. 

So you settle down to your first supper at 

your Zillertal hotel, sip a welcoming beer or a 

glass of Grüner Veltliner white wine and await 



Food lovers must pay a visit to 

Vienna’s Naschmarkt which 

dates back to the 16th-century 

and today boasts a unique mix 

of culinary influences from all 

over the world. Buy anything 

from bread and cheeses to 

sushi and exotic herbs. 

www.wienernaschmarkt.eu 


Previous page: the area is renowned for its wild herbs. This 

spread, clockwise from left: walking in the Zillertal; quail 

in strudel pastry; bread and the local Graukäse. 

the first course: a flavoursome ‘Graukass’ soup, 

made with the local ‘Grey cheese’. The cheese 

itself is something of a work of art, being rich 

and viscous with a grey core, but with a low fat 

content of less than 0.5%. The taste is 

distinctive and quite addictive: it’s dry, with 

bracing freshness and a hint of mountain herbs. 

The very low fat content makes it both healthy 

and moreish, and creating it is a specialised art, 

limited only to officially-certified producers. 

Another must-try in the Zillertal is the local 

‘hay milk’, from cows who have grazed on high 

pasture in summer: the cows eat only highaltitude 

grass (and herbs) and drink natural 

spring water and the result is milk of uncommon 

purity of taste. Then there are the local 

speciality Schliachta-Nudeln, broad and grainy 

noodles; and spinach-filled crêpes. 

The next day, it’s time to discover the 

herb walk: together with a guide, you wander 

through meadows and fields, spotting and 

smelling the wonderful bouquets of arnica, 

erica, dandelion, yarrow and many others, as 

your guide, herself an extraordinarily healthylooking 

lady, points out. 

You spend another day dropping into a farm 

that makes the local grey cheese, and end up 

making some yourself. 

To work up an appetite for one of the area’s 

more gastronomic restaurants, you head up one 

day to the Berliner Hütte, at the valley’s peak, in 

the Zillertal Alps Nature Park. The view here is 

one of the most breathtaking in all of Austria,

ALAMy; ÖSTERREich WERBuNG/GNAEDiNGER; ZiLLERTAL TOuRiSMuS 

as you take in the deep Ziller valley, the steep 

forested mountainsides, the pastures above the 

treeline, and finally the glaciers, snowfields and 

rock faces reaching for the sky. 

It’s also the oldest mountain refuge of 

the area and here, spending an hour or so on 

the sunny terrace amid the deep blue high 

altitude sky, you get chatting to numerous local 

characters who tell you about local legends, as 

embellished by hunters over the centuries over 

glasses of the strong local schnapps. 

And then it’s back down to the valley for 

your last night; whether you’re partaking of the 

six course ‘connoisseur’ dinner at the Restaurant 

Alexander Fankhauser (perched high up at 

1500m) or the freshness of simple local produce, 

you feel like you have eaten a little bit of nature 

itself – and all the better for it. ■A 

Together with a 

guide you wander 

through meadows 

and fields, spotting 

and smelling the 

wonderful bouquets 




EVENTS 

l Zillertal 


Zillertal Tourist Board 

Bundesstrasse 27d 

A-6262 Schlitters, Zillertal 

Tel: +43 (0) 5288 87187 

Fax: +43 (0) 5288 871871 

Email: info@zillertal.at 

www.zillertal.at 





Zillertal 

l The 500 year old Gauderfest, Austria’s largest 

spring festival from the 29th April – 2nd May, is 

the epitome of rural tradition. The festival opens 

with a traditional speech and highlights include 

the popular Alpine wrestling competition and 

specially brewed ‘Gauderbock’ beer. The main 

event though is the traditional festival parade 

where everyone wears colourful costumes and 

there are music groups and decorated floats. 

l Embrace the onset of summer with the 

Zillertal locals at the Days of the Open Valley, 

a two day event from the 29th – 30th May with 

lots of family entertainment. Explore the valley 

at no charge with free use of all the services. 

l Dedicated foodies must pay a visit to Zillertal 

during Schmankerlfest - local delicacies week, 

from the 5th – 11th July, to take full advantage 

of the best local food on offer from the region’s 

hotels, such as Zillertaller Krapfen (the region’s 

speciality doughnuts). 

l The Torseemarsch & Tuxer Hiking day 

takes place on the 25th July and is a 20km hike 

at an altitude of 1300m through the Tux Alps. 

The route will take you from Lanersbach village 

through the mountain pastures of Brandalm 

and Stoankasern, up to the Ramsjoch mountain, 

down to the Torseen lakes and the pastures of 

Nassen-Tux Alm and finally back to Lanersbach. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

Zillertal offers guests the Zillertal Activcard, a 

must-have when visiting the region. There are 

many advantages including a return cable car 

trip per day on any of the 12 cable cars, free use 

of the outdoor swimming pool (one visit per 

day), free admission to the Observatory and the 

Planetarium Königsleiten (great for children). 


Wine 

The Winkler-Hermaden Winery 

in Kapfenstein, in the 

southern province of Styria 

Q&A Austrian wine 

Wine is one of the unexpected 

joys of Austria. From world-beating 

whites to perfect summertime 

reds, the country’s wine regions 

have it all. Add magnificent 

scenery to the package and it’s 

all close to perfection. But what 

should you try? Josef Schuller, 

Director of the Austrian Academy 

of Wine, gives the inside track 


To someone who is a novice about Austrian 

wine, how would you recommend learning 

more while visiting the country? 

Austria is a treasure trove for visiting wine 

lovers. Hundreds of small wineries, all within a 

90 minute drive from Vienna, are open daily 

and welcome visitors. Visiting wineries is 

the best way to learn more about a country! 

What are the most interesting wine regions 

to visit in Austria? 

You must visit the wine growing areas along 

the Danube towards Krems for zesty fresh 

whites. If you like your reds you should go 

south to the Burgenland area, near Lake 

Neusiedl. If you like Sauvignon Blanc, visit 

beautiful hilly Styria on the Slovenian border. 

And don’t forget Vienna’s own wineries! 

What would you recommend as the most 

interesting Austrian fine wines, to someone 

who was a lover of traditional French wine? 

If you like clarets (Bordeaux) then you must 

try wines made from the Blaufränkisch grape 

in Burgenland. If you like red Burgundy, 

try the Zweigelt or St.Laurent varieties in 

Austria. If you like white Burgundy, try some 

mature powerful Grüner Veltliner. 

Are Austrian wines created to be drunk 

with food, or alone? 

This is the most exciting part: Austrian wines 

are excellent food wines and this is not only 

true for Austrian cuisine, but for all, yes I said 

all cuisines! If you find a dish where there 

isn’t an Austrian wine to pair it with I will 

buy you dinner in Austria! 

Find more details on Austrian wineries at 

www.winesfromaustria.com 

AWMB, ÖWM, StÖcher

world pIctures/photoshot 

How do you relax? Perhaps you play a little 

sport; or go out with friends to a bar or 

restaurant; maybe catch a film. But that begs the 

question - how do you really relax? As in, switch 

off your mind, think about nothing, take in the 

world, stretch out your time as far as it will go? 

Maybe, like most of us, you don’t. But you 

might, if you took a trip to Lech Zürs. These 

two villages in Vorarlberg are separated by a 

high mountain valley and are famed as one 

of the most fashionable wintersports resorts 

in the world. 

In summertime, their beauty, and the natural 

wilderness of the Vorarlberg region in which 

they are set, takes over. You are high in the Alps, 

Lech Zürs - Vorarlberg 

High-altitude health kicks 

It’s the greatest tonic in the world: peaceful relaxation amid the Alpine meadows, gentle 

exercise in the form of mountain walking, enhanced by some of the purest drinking water you’ll ever find, 

while based in some of the prettiest villages Vorarlberg has to offer 

at an altitude of above 1500m; the valley is 

famed for the purity of its air and water. 

And you can relax without distraction. 

Don’t get us wrong: the villages are beautiful 

– in fact Lech, the lower and larger of the two, 

won the award for the most beautiful village in 

Europe in 2004 – and all the infrastructure of 

two of the world’s great ski resorts is there to 

be used and enjoyed. 

But still, it’s all about relaxing and doing 

what you want, not what your itinerary or any 

manmade artefact dictates to you. The ultimate 

form of contemplative relaxation is walking: 

the area has 250 km of trails, many of them 

easy walks at a perfect altitude of 1500-2000m. 


Lech Zürs - Vorarlberg 

Previous page: The view above Lech; hiking in the area. 

This spread, clockwise from left: Farmhouses in Lech; 

hikers in Wandern am Spullersee; canoeists in Lech’s 

‘Peak Triathlon’; relaxation techniques; summer in Lech. 

Sports scientists have proved that moderate 

exercise at this altitude is disproportionately 

effective for fitness. Walk, think, gaze at the 

view and get fitter, effortlessly. 

Peaceful minds 

Walking like this, amid such scenic and uplifting 

surroundings, resets the mind into the kind of 

equilibrium it cannot find in today’s suburban 

and city lifestyles. 

At the start of the trails above Lech, your 

mind might perhaps still be a jumble of all the 

things you have taken with you from home; 

but by the end of the walk, a kind of peaceful 

enlightenment takes over. 

You look forward to the comfortable hotel; 

to the pleasing aesthetics of the village; to a chat 

with the herb man who delivers herbs from the 

mountainsides to the restaurant you sit in for a 

reviving drink, to chatting to your companions 


over supper for longer than you would at home. 

The source of this relaxation is partly 

your mind being taken into the natural world 

whence we came; and such references are all 

around. At home, you might, if you’re trying 

to be healthy, go to the shop and buy a 1.5 litre 

plastic bottle of mineral water to drink during 

the day. The water will have come out of a 

spring somewhere in the world, been bottled at a 

plant, and shunted around before reaching you. 

In Lech, you can turn on the tap and drink 

copiously from the gently frothing water that 

comes forth. The water in the region is famous 

and the water in Lech has a nitrate content 

more than 20 times lower than the EU legal 

drinking water limit of 35mg/l; it also has high 

levels of important minerals such as calcium, 

magnesium and sulphates. Most importantly, 

it tastes delicious, is free and limitless, flowing 

down from the high mountain peaks. 

That’s not to say you can’t also indulge 

in something a little more hearty like the local 

schnapps…after all it’s all part of the ultimate 

in natural relaxation. ■A 

the green ring 

This summer, Lech Zürs sees the opening of 

a brand new hiking route, the ‘Green ring’, 

a three day hiking trail around the region. it 

offers hiking trails for all ages and levels of 

ability. You’ll trek across the mountain ridges, 

along the valley floors and past the lakes 

and rivers. But this is a trail with a difference: 

unusual and enthralling installations have 

been built along the way that tell entertaining 

stories of mythical legends in a modern and 


Vorarlberg 

l Lech Zürs 


Lech Zürs Tourism 

Dorf 2 

6764, Lech am Arlberg 

Tel: +43 (0) 5583 21610 

Fax: +43 (0) 5583 3155 

Email: info@lech-zuers.at 

www.lech-zuers.at 


NEArEsT AirporTs 




humorous way; it’s like a ‘literary’ hiking map 

that will be enjoyed by people of all ages. Take 

a rest on benches positioned along the way 

and take in the awe-inspiring views. This route 

promises to add a totally new dimension to 

the region of Lech Zürs and one that people 

will come from far and wide to enjoy: it is the 

first time that people will be able to enjoy and 

experience hiking, art, nature and literature all 

at the same time, whilst being surrounded by 

seriously impressive mountain scenery. 

ALAMY; h. weisenhofer/n. freudenhALer/Lech zÜ rs tourisMus; Ö sterreich werbung/feLder

AND ANOThEr ThING... 

For those who want a holiday 

all about well-being, look no 

further than Austria’s Health 

& Spa Hotels, 54 top hotels 

all over Austria, specialising in 

wellness and spa. Tailor-make 

your stay according to your 

body’s needs. Lech’s own 

member is the Hotel Rote 

Wand with its luxurious Red Spa. 

www.health-and-spa.at 

The ultimate form of 

contemplative 

relaxation is walking 



EVENTS 

l Get to know the locals at the village festival 

in Lech on 10th July at the Rüfiplatz. Take in the 

celebratory atmosphere and impressive views 

whilst enjoying a speciality lunch, all set against 

the backdrop of Lech’s mountain scenery. 

l Keen athletes can take part in the 13th Lech 

Summit Triathlon on the 17th July. This starts 

with mountain biking at the Rüfiplatz, followed 

by kayaking and then finishing with a run. This is 

not a challenge for the faint-hearted! 

l For a traditional Austrian summer experience, 

go to the Festival on the Mountain on August 

8th. There’s something for everyone from 

pre-lunch drinks accompanied by music from 

a traditional brass band to the bouncy castle 

for the little ones. Enjoy all this entertainment 

alongside delicious local culinary specialities. 

l Panoramic views like those in Lech Zürs are 

worth making the most of so it’s no surprise 

that the Lech high altitude half marathon, 

with its fairytale route through majestic peaks 

and wildflower-filled meadows is a popular 

event. The 8th annual half marathon takes place 

on 22nd August so be sure to take part. 

l Folk music is integral to Austria and carrying 

on traditions is very important in maintaining 

the authenticity of the region. Lech’s Musicians 

Day on the 31st August will see music groups 

from Austria, Germany and Switzerland playing 

various locations throughout Lech before 

coming together for the grand finale. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

Lech offers guests the Active Inclusive Card, 

your free leisure ticket for the region. Stay at 

least one night in Lech and you’ll get free 

access to all cable cars and chair lifts, the local 

buses, selected guided hikes, a day ticket for 

the Lech Golf Academy, the forest swimming 

pool with slide and children’s pool, village 

events such as concerts and much more.

You shoot down 

the trail, aware of the 

view and the sky, 

barely able to suppress 

a yelp of joy 

This spread, from left to right: 

Saalbach Hinterglemm is the place 

to go for keen mountain bikers; 

there are many single trails with 

breathtaking views in the area

The only thing,” you say, in between sharp 

breaths of delight, “better than this is… 

flying.” You and your favourite person in the 

world are sitting on a terrace overlooking a 

sharp valley, a few clouds floating down below 

you like cashmere. Next to you are two tough, 

all-terrain bikes, which you have just climbed 

off. On the mountainside above you is the trail 

you have just ‘freeridden’ down, a dramatic 

track leading from a top cable car station high 

in the sky. You’re both breathing rapidly, not 

so much from the exertion – although 

freeriding a bike downhill demands more 

from the body than you expected – but 

through sheer adrenaline. 

This is the essence of Saalbach Hinterglemm 

(dubbed the Valley of Games) in summer: the 

ultimate adrenaline rush. 

But adrenaline doesn’t necessarily need 

to be combined with discomfort. This is 

Austria, after all, not some unaccommodating 

distant mountainside. When you arrived in 

the area the previous day, you might have 

Saalbach Hinterglemm 

Non-stop thrills 

There’s nothing more refreshing than a break that involves a pure adrenaline rush. In Saalbach Hinterglemm, you’ll 

find an array of activities to get your pulse rate going, and soothing spas to ease you back down again 

been forgiven for wondering where any of 

the thrills were going to come from. Yes, there 

were mountains all around; but your spa hotel 

seemed more concerned with reducing your 

pulse rate than getting it going. Full-body 

massages? Check. Skin soothing baths? Check. 

Those beauty treatments you never have time 

and anotHer tHing... 

Nature and technology are 

combined at Area 47 in the 

Ötztal Valley. There is every 

activity imaginable here for 

adrenaline junkies from high 

rope courses, climbing walls 

and speed climbing routes 

to kayaking and white-water 

rafting on the Inn River. There’s 

also a beach and water park. 

www.area47.at 

for back home, what with juggling work and 

everything else? Check. Breathe out, slowly… 

You came to Saalbach Hinterglemm 

because you wanted a change of pace. Both of 

you have full-on jobs; one of you is considering 

a change of career while the other just wants 

a break from the relentlessness of it all. You 

wanted to relax utterly, which you did in the 

spa, but you also wanted a thrill, for your 

body to be charged with electricity for reasons 

other than wondering if you’re going to finish 

your Powerpoint presentation in time for your 

next meeting. 

And so, on the second day of your break, 

comes the thrill. You’re met in your hotel by 

your guide, Alex, who promises to be at your 

side throughout the ‘Big-5-Challenge’ mammoth 

freeride tour. It’s all about 5000m in altitude 

and 57km of riding. Given that you’ve never 

fancied yourself as a racing cyclist, you are 

relieved that you go up by cable car, and down 

by bike, and not the other way round. But still, 

the butterflies start in the stomach as you head 


Saalbach Hinterglemm 

up the mountain in the cable car. 

The Höhe Tauern mountain range seems 

to grow before you as the cable car reaches the 

peak. This is the highest range of the Alps east 

of the Brenner Pass and includes the highest 

mountains in Austria. Breathing in the thin, 

cool, dry air at altitude, you both stop for a 

second to get a grasp of your surroundings… 

and the fact dawns on you that it’s a long 

way down. Alex is looking at you expectantly. 

“It’ll be the ride of your life,” he says. Have a 

snapshot taken as a souvenir to ‘immortalise’ 

yourself in the ‘Big-5-Challenge’ Hall of Fame 

and…Alex climbs on his bike, you climb on 

yours, and you’re all off. 

You shoot down the trail, aware of the view 

and the sky, barely able to suppress a yelp of 

joy – it’s all such a release – and then, all too 

soon, you’re at the terrace café, your midway 

point on this particular ride. A glass of apple 

juice each (you fancy something stronger but 

Alex suggests saving it until the end of the 

day) and you’re off again… 

But it’s not just cycling here. What about 

the zipwire? For those who haven’t yet had the 

pleasure, zipwiring is when you go shooting 

across a valley, attached to a wire by a sturdy 

harness and hooks, but not much else. Perfectly 

safe, but tell that to yourself when you are 

bulletting, Bond-style, across a ravine, with 



EVENTS 

l Thousands of Harleys will be rolling into the 

Glemm Valley for a four day programme of 

parading at Biker Mania from 3rd – 6th June. 

Evening highlights include poker at the 

Alpine Palace Casino and live music. 

l With mountain biking in mind, the top freeride 

bikers from around the globe will be flocking to 

the Freeride Festival from the 9th – 11th July in 

search of the ultimate adrenaline rush. Participants 

can test out the latest bikes and the highlight of 

the event is a mass downhill from Schattberg. 

l The 12th World Games of Mountain Biking 

will see approximately 1000 amateur bikers 

gather in Saalbach Hinterglemm from the 9th - 

12th September to battle it out in the disciplines 

of marathon, cross country, downhill and 

freeride. There’s also a challenge for the kids. 

This page, clockwise from above: one of the cable cars in 

Saalbach Hinterglemm; the high-rope course in Saalbach 

Hinterglemm has different levels between 3 and 40m; 

zip-wiring in the Glemm Valley at speeds up to 70km/h. 

nothing underneath you but pure Alpine air. 

And here there’s not just any zipwire, but 

the longest in Europe. So, the next day, after a 

short orientation and training session with a 

reassuring instructor, you’re hooked up. Ahead 

of you is two kilometres of wire, suspended 

more than 100m above the valley floor. 

Three, two, one…blastoff! Or at least 

zipoff, as you shoot down the wire, zigzagging 

above the valley at up to 70km/h. You really 

are flying now, or so it feels, with a bird’s eye 

view of the pastures, forests, farm animals and, 

occasionally, people far below. You suppress a 

desire to scream with a mixture of joy, release 

and…well, a little bit of fear, even though you 

tell yourself, as you shoot through the air, that 

all the safety checks were meticulous. And, 

finally, you land at the other end, your heart 

pumping. Another day in that hotel spa 

suddenly sounds tempting…. 

l Motorbiking enthusiasts must head to the 

International Trial Championships from the 

24th – 26th September to see the latest stunts 

put into action by the stars of the sport. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

The Saalbach Hinterglemm Joker Card is an 

essential must-have when visiting the region. If 

you are staying in one of the Joker Card partner 

hotels (of which there are many), the card is free 

of charge and has many benefits. Some of these 

include unlimited use of all the lifts, the indoor 

and outdoor pools, tennis courts, the local folk 

museum and the ski museum. The Montelino’s 

adventure trail on the Kohlmais and the Noddy 

Train at the end of the valley are both fun (and 

free) activities for the little ones. Pro and hobby 

bikers should take advantage of free admission 

to the Adidas Freeride Park on the Reiterkogel. 


l Saalbach Hinterglemm 


Tourist Office Saalbach Hinterglemm 

Glemmtaler Landesstrasse 550 

A-5753 Saalbach Hinterglemm 

Tel: +43 (0) 6541 680068 

Fax: +43 (0) 6541 680069 

Email: contact@saalbach.com 

www.saalbach.com 

NEArEST AIrpOrTS 



■A SAAlbACH.CoM

ArchIVe MontAfon tourIsMus GMbh, www.MontAfon.At; edI GroeGer; GeorG AlfAre 

The ultimate 

health club 

Sitting at a desk or in an office isn’t good 

for you. That’s official, courtesy of any 

fitness guru you’d like to ask. So we spend our 

evenings piling into gyms, trying to reachieve 

the kind of muscle-fitness equilibrium our 

bodies were made for. 

But what if you could go on an entire 

holiday that was, in effect, one visit to the most 

spectacular fitness centre in the world – a gym 

that was outdoors, bounded by sky, sun and 

mountain rather than ceiling and walls? One 

that had all the equipment you could hope for 

at the most advanced fitness studio? A holiday 

in which you emerge fitter and weller than you 

were when you arrived? 

That is what Montafon has to offer – and 

it is verified by some of the world’s leading 

sportspeople, who are regular visitors to train 

here in its ‘natural gym’. Arrive in Montafon 

and the first thing you must do is experience 

the scenery, and the best way to do this is to 

drive (or mountain bike if you begin the way 

you mean to go on), up the Silvretta High Road. 

This toll road rises up through forest and 

grasslands, bordered at times by seas of flowers 

and butterflies, revealing the distinctive peaks 

of the Silvretta mountain range as it does 

so. At the top of the road, on the Bielerhöhe 

Pass, you can see the range’s highest peak, the 

famous Piz Buin, in all its glory. 

Montafon - Vorarlberg 

Imagine the world’s biggest gym, bounded not by walls but by mountainsides, with blue sky as a ceiling 

and all the facilities you could imagine, but on the grandest of scales. Imagine no more. Montafon, in Vorarlberg, 

has it all, including probably the longest piece of fitness equipment in the world...and what a view... 


Montafon - Vorarlberg 

Previous page: There are hundreds of kilometres of trails 

for keen hikers; Montafon is perfect for families. This 

page, clockwise from left: the Silvretta Classic Rallye; 

Montafon’s alpine pastures are great for hiking; rock 

climbing is one of the many activities this region offers. 

Mountain fitness 

And then, on to business. The unique highlight 

of the ‘open air gym’ in the mountains 

around Montafon is the Europatreppe 4000. 

Now, we all know stair-climbing in the gym; 

trainers say this is one of the best ways to 

exercise your quadriceps and calf muscles. 

We’re often advised to climb, or run, the stairs of 

the buildings we live or work in. But no building 

in the world can match the Europatreppe: 

4000 steps rising up a vertical difference of 

700m, with a maximum gradient of 86%. 

This, ‘probably the longest piece of fitness 

equipment in the world’, serves as training 

ground for the Austrian Ladies National Ski 

Team, numerous football teams and marathon 

runners. It’s run at the level of a top gym: you 

get a pulse rate monitor from the Gaschurn or 

Silvretta Partenen Tourist Office before setting 

off and measure your heart rate as you go; 

there are also time clocks at the start and finish 

so you can measure your personal best. 

Next up, what about mountain biking? 

There are 860kms of track, all of them graded 

according to difficulty. All the routes are on 

the Internet with GPS data; and the local 

leisure centre has more than 60 mountain 

bikes for hire. The ne plus ultra of this activity 

is the Silvretta Bike Safari, a mountain bike 

tour through the mountains of the Silvretta. 

The next day could be hiking. Hundreds of 

kilometres of marked trails and guided hiking 

tours for groups are available, all with different 



Vorarlberg 

l Montafon 


Montafon Tourismus 

Montafonerstr. 21 

A-6780 Schruns 

Tel: +43 (0) 5556 722530 

Fax: +43 (0) 5556 74856 

Email: info@montafon.at 

www.montafon.at 


NEArEST AirporTS 


Memmingen 87 miles (140 km) 

Altenrhein 46 miles (75 km) 

themes. You don’t need to be a professional 

sportsman to enjoy these: two of the themes 

are herb and forest trips, with gentle itineraries. 

You can even do a ‘sunrise hike’ following a 

memorable night in a high mountain lodge. 

For something more challenging, try the 

Klettergarten Gaschurn-Partenen, a climbing 

garden for all levels of ability. There’s also 

mountain running, Nordic walking, the high 

rope course, canyoning, swimming through 

potholes… And if the weather happens to turn, 

there’s the indoor climbing hall at Gargellen. 

Swimmers can immerse themselves in the 

There are hundreds 

of kilometres of 

marked trails and 

guided hiking 

tours available 

ANd ANoThEr ThiNg... 

If golf is your thing, Austria has 

plenty to offer. GIA - Golf in 

Austria are specialists in 

holidays specifically tailored 

to playing golf. All GIA hotels 

are close to courses that offer 

green fee reductions and 

guaranteed tee times. 

Combine with cuisine and spa 

for those who want to relax. 

www.golfinfo.at 

new Alpenbad Montafon, which opened last 

year: there’s a 25m lap pool and a large natural 

bathing pool. Or you could try the Aquarena 

nearby in St. Gallenkirch, which is a beautifully 

composed meld of indoor and outdoor pools, 

sheltered sunbathing areas and children’s pool 

areas, all warmed using an eco-friendly heated 

air system. Or Mountain Beach, a lakeside 

beach complex created using water purified by 

13,000 plants of the green, growing kind. 

For an adrenaline rush of a different kind, 

that doesn’t require quite so much effort, 

there’s the Alpine Coaster, a cross between an 

Alp-eating rollercoaster and a mad toboggan 

ride. There are loops, curves and jumps on a 

ride that is 2.6km long and 350m high. 

And at the end of each day, in your hotel 

or pension, you can sit down to dinner, made 

with local products, safe in the knowledge that 

nature’s gym has made you fit and its produce 

is making you healthy. ■A


EVENTS 

l The Silvretta Classic Rallye, named after the 

mountain range it tackles, is a prestigious 620km 

challenge for vintage car owners. The course 

winds through the Alpine landscape of Montafon, 

Bregenzerwald, the Arlberg and and the 32 

hairpin bends of the Silvretta Alpine Pass. 

l Enthusiastic mountain bikers can take on the 

155km Montafon mountain bike Marathon 

M3 on 31st July. The terrain provides a varied 

course including flat single trails, high alpine 

sections with plenty of gravel, woodland paths 

and panoramic trails against the backdrop of 

the Silvretta mountain range. There are also two 

shorter, energetic courses for the less ambitious. 

l Now in its 44th year, the traditional Montafoner 

Pferdesporttage equestrian days in Schruns- 

Tschagguns have developed from a small and 

provincial event into an eagerly awaited and 

internationally recognised jumping competition. 

500 equestrians and their horses will congregate 

at this social and sporting event from the 5th - 

8th August and 13th – 15th August. 

l For twelve years on the last weekend in August, 

Montafon has been the meeting place of folk 

musicians from the entire Alpine region. Several 

inns, hotels and mountain stations host Austrian 

and international singers and music groups who 

perform in a style indigenous to the area. 

GOOD TO KNOW 

The Montafon Silvretta Card offers many 

benefits for your stay; obtain one free of charge 

for your little ones when you buy your own and 

book for 5 nights or more. Also receive a voucher 

from your hotelier and stay for 7 days but pay for 

only 5, valid from 15th – 29th May, 2010. 


Romance 

It’s in 

the air! 

dinner on the ferris wheel, vienna 

Watch over the magical city by candelight. www.wienerriesenrad.com 

travel austria's romantic road 

Chill out in the lovely town of Hallstatt near Salzburg. www.hallstatt.at 


What’s romance to you? It might 

be a traditional candle-lit dinner in 

a restaurant with exquisite service, 

and perfect cuisine. Or maybe it’s a 

glass of wine or two in an ancient 

vineyard, as nature slowly turns day 

to night? Perhaps it’s holding hands 

as the view of one of the world’s 

most beautiful cities unfolds 

beneath you? Or dinner for two in 

a luxury treehouse way up high in 

the stars? Austria has all of these, 

and many more: here are some of 

our favourites... 

dinner for two on lake millstÄtt 

At the Hotel Koller's private palm island. www.kollers.at 

tree's company 

In the Newlywed Hut at Almdorf 

Seinerzeit in Patergassen. 

www.almdorf.com 

embark on a designer romance 

At the Romantik Hotel Gmachl near Salzburg. www.gmachl.com 

an afternoon in a heuriger, grinzing, vienna 

Sip local wine at a pub with its own vineyard. www.heuriger-reinprecht.at

Antony Gormley: Britain's greatest sculptor comes to Austria

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