Austria in the snow

We're recently back from a trip to Austria, where my sister in law has an apartment. I've blogged about trips to Austria before as we've visited a couple of times previously - just search the blog for "Austria", but never visited in the winter.

This time we chose to go in January, along with our adult daughter, and another sister in law and her daughter who goes most years to go skiing.

We aren't skiers - I've never skied in my life, although I always fancied it, but at nearing mid 60's and with at least half a false knee, I'm not sure it's a great idea now, but more of that later.

My brother in law had put me on his car's insurance so we could go off exploring whilst they went skiing, but it was still a surprise to exit Salzburg airport the evening we arrived to be handed the keys by him with a "Well, you might as well drive" the hour or so's journey from Salzburg to Rauris in -14º temps and mostly pitch black!

Still, we made it ok. As previous blogs have noted, Rauris is a small rural village with decent skiing in the winter. The apartment has 3 bedrooms and is nice and comfortable with good views of the mountains

There were nine of us in all (over two apartments), comprising four skiers and 5 non skiers. The skiers obviously did their thing whilst the rest of us walked, took cable cars up the mountains to alms, enjoyed the views, the food, the beer and the aprés ski. We generally met up with the skiers at around lunchtime in one of the mountain alms for something to eat and some refreshment. A couple of meals out in the evening went down well, and one evening we did a long toboggan ride (about 5km in all down a mountain "road", although snowed over and with 4ft -6 ft snow banks each side it wasn't your typical road! 

Sunday

We stayed in Rauris, pottered around the village

Looking down the Rauris valley

Rauris chuch and village

Monday

We drove over to Angertal near Bad Hofgastein in the next valley, and took the cable car up the Stubnerkogel to around 2,200m (7,200ft) where the views were glorious 

The gang above Bad Hofgastein

The Gastein valley

The 140m long & 28m high
Stubnerkogel suspension bridge

Tuesday

Tuesday dawned wet and dull Whilst the skiers went off somewhere we drove to Zell am See for a walk by the lake and a browse in the town (and coffee and cake!) One of our party who shall remain nameless (not me) had an altercation with an automatically cleaning toilet (basically got trapped inside when it started cleaning!!!). No harm done, but it was very funny!

The Grand Hotel Zell am See

The offending automatic toilet

Zell am See 

Ice patterns

Wednesday

A brighter day than Tuesday, but a thaw was setting in as the temp rose to around freezing We wandered around Rauris in the morning, had a lazy lunch waiting for the skiers to return before going off on our toboggan trip at the Ammererhof Hotel at the top of the valley. Great fun! I only crashed twice too!

The Ammererhof Hotel

A bit snowy up here!

Ready for the off

Tally Ho!

Made it in one piece - just!

Thursday

A pretty lazy day. Anne and I went for a walk around Rauris, before coming back for lunch and generally loafing about. The skiers returned about 4pm and we went over to the local aprés ski all for a bit of a session. Good fun was had by all!

One of the two rivers in Rauris

The oldest building in Rauris.
Still not sure what it is/was

Apres ski!

Shots

Apres ski giggles

Cheers!

Friday

By now the temperature was above freezing, and the thaw was well and truly set in. What had been snow all over at ground level (970m above sea level, but still ground level), was now mostly gone apart from the snow cannoned nursery slopes and ski run finish. There was plenty of snow higher up though. We took the cable car up the mountain, and did a walk on a snowy trail back to an all for lunch before descending back by cable car.

My wife's niece on the slopes

Starting our snowy walk at about 1,700m

Mountains and valleys

The snow's deep up here

Tilly's Trail

Snow angel

All in all we had a great time. I was, I have to admit, quite jealous of the skiers. Despite my reservations on age and dodgy knees, when I saw the age and condition of some people on the slopes, I reckon I could give it a go. Who knows, maybe next year?

As an aside, what was truly magnificent was seeing the children on the slopes, some so small, but fearless and technically quite brilliant at skiing. Ah, sometimes I wish I was younger!!!

All photos here are from my iPhone. A fuller set taken with my "proper" cameras is available on my Flickr pages here.

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Snowy September: Austria Part 2

At 1,753m above Rauris

16 days before the above photo was taken, we were enjoying a family holiday in Corfu in 30º+ heat. Marginally over two weeks later, and at 1,753 metres in Austria, it's snowing and we're standing in four to five inches of the white stuff. It was slightly surreal, first to wake up to see snow on the mountain tops in Rauris, and then to riding up in the cable car with snow falling all around and the sound of alpine cow bels clanging - it felt like Christmas in September. That much snow at this time of year was unusual, but you can see how much there was from the photos.

The alm at the top of the Hochalmbahn in Rauris.
Sadly closed - but the middle station was open!

From here we walked down to just over 1,400m to the mid station and the adjacent alm where we imbibed with warm drinks and goulash soup before catching the cable car back down to Rauris. The snow disappeared at around 1,400m, but the views, despite the cloud conditions were fabulous.

Walking down from 1,700m-1,400m

Rauris is a small village in the Eastern Alps about an hour south of Salzburg. It's a skiing village, although not a big resort, but pretty in a typical Austrian way, with wooden houses and grassy alpine fields. The photo below shows the view from our apartment balcony, looking up the valley towards the Kolm-Saigurn national park, with the pyramidal (at least from this angle) Ritterkopf mountain - the one with the lenticular loud above it, towering at just over 3,000m.

The view from our apartment 

The next day saw us driving along the valley into the Kolm-Saigurn National Park for a walk up rather than down. We climbed up to around 1,700m from around 1,400m, quite steeply along a well marked trail before coming to a wide flat valley. From here the path eased gently downwards towards an alm, the Ammererhof where of course sustenance was enjoyed.  The Ammererhof, at 1,600m itself, faces the Hoher Sonnblick, a 3,006m peak with a weather station atop, although it was carpeted in cloud this day.

On the way to Kolm-Saigurn

At our highest point of the day

After being sated with goulash soup, cheese and meats, cake and of course something to drink, we wound our way gently down the stony road back to our cars. The views again, fantastic as we walked alongside the river gushing with snow melt, surrounded by tall snow capped mountains.

The gentler walk back down

Next instalment: Rauris and Zell am See

All photos from the trip are available on my Flickr page - link below

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Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Austria Part 1

Long story short - Anne and I were off to Austria, with her brother & his wife to join her sister and her husband and his brother and wife (still following?) for 10 days. Her sister has an apartment out there, and well, why not.... walking, beer, food, good company, mountains....

Descent into Frankfurt - it was all going so well....

We drove to Birmingham the night before our flight as Anne's sister lives near Solihull and it was an easy overnighter for a 6am taxi call to the airport. The flight from Birmingham to Salzburg enquired a change at Frankfurt, and though the transit time at Frankfurt was very tight (50 mins), the fact that the Lufthansa web site had offered that combination, suggested all would be ok.

The taxi arrived early at 5.50am and the four of us were soon at Birmingham airport. Bag drop was quick but the security queue was very long as there were many flights going around the same time. Still we managed to get through ok and get some breakfast before boarding. We took off more or less on time (efficient Germans)and settled in with our complimentary bottle of water and chocolate bar for the 90 minute flight to Frankfurt.

We were on time descending into Frankfurt (from the air you get a sense of the scale of this Lufthansa hub airport -it's huge! Landing on time, it became quickly apparent that we were at the far end of terminal 1 and being on the apron meant we were going to have to bus it to the terminal. A sense of doom descended as our 50 minute turnaround was immediately being eaten into and suddenly looked at best marginal and realistically, unlikely.  The bus collected us from near gate A60, and announced "a few minutes to the terminal" - it took about five, and duly dumped us near gate A1 - the gate for our connecting flight was way back at A64! Following the signs for connecting flights we turned a corner and hit the (big) queue for border control! Of course, biometric EU passports could sneak through the self reader gates and there was no queue for this, but you know, Brexit....

At this point, we'd resigned ourselves to missing our connecting flight, but along with many others apparently in the same predicament, we shoved our way to the front of the queue and eventually after answering the "why are you here?", "where are you going?", "how long for?" questions had our passports stamped and hastily legged it towards gate A64. 

Alas, we were inevitably too late - arriving puffed out in a staggered formation, the lady on the gate gave us the bad news and offered us all she could - standby tickets on a later flight (the only direct one to Salzburg that evening) which was full, so no guarantee of even one, let alone four seats.

Gathering our breath we considered our options, and decided they were 1) get a train, or 2) get a flight to Munich (our brother in law who was due to pick us up from Salzburg, would have collected us from Munich, but it would mean a two hour trip (four round trip for him) rather than the one hour trip to the apartment from Salzburg Airport.

Then the thought occurred to us - in either scenario, where was our checked baggage? The lady at the gate usefully advised us that if we weren't on the plane, then our cases weren't. Beyond that, they were somewhere in Frankfurt airport. Thanks.

So we walked back from A64 to beyond A1 to the Service Centre to try and locate our bags and make a decision on next steps. There was a queue at the Service Centre, inevitably, but there were only about 10 people in from of us and four kiosks open. Still, it took us an hour to get to the front of the queue. The person on the desk advised us that all flights to Munich that evening were full. Bah.

That left us with the train option. The only problem being that obviously we'd have to pay for the tickets, and it was a SIX hour journey! But it realistically was our only option if we wanted to get to Salzburg that evening. She managed to correctly identify that we had two suitcases floating about in the ether and advised us where they would be delivered "in about 30-40 minutes". When we left the service centre, the queue had grown to about 50 people - thank God we got there when we did!

We located the baggage hall and carousels, and sure enough after about 50 minutes our cases turned up. We then legged it to the adjacent train station (isn't it great when airports have train stations - Cardiff are you listening?).

Using a ticket machine we tried booking tickets to Salzburg but it wasn't coming up as a destination. A kindly passer by pointed out we are using a red regional ticket machine and needed to use a blue national one. Having located one, we got as far as being ready to confirm payment, before the machine threw a wobbly and sent us back to the beginning. Spying an information centre we went over and were informed there was a ticket office next door. Phew. We bought four tickets to Salzburg (about €430, requiring one change at Munich (with a 15 minute window). The platform was adjacent and we got a coffee and some food and sat waiting for the train, due in about half an hour. About three minutes before the train arrived there was a message (in German obviously) and people started moving - the platform had changed!!!! Luckily it was to the next one only. The train arrived on time, and we managed to get four seats together. For the first ten minutes it went fairly slowly, stopping at a couple of stations, before coming to a grinding halt. It transpired this was due to a signal fault, and lasted about ten minutes, eating into our precious 15 minute window at Munich. Luckily, soon after we got going again, and with fewer stops, the train really picked up speed as it rolled through the German countryside, at one point topping 240kph, about 154mph!

Fastest train I've ever been on!

At those speeds, we quickly made up time, unlike First Great Western back home, and we rolled into Munich a couple of minutes ahead of time, and managed to find our way to our next train with plenty of time to spare. It turns out that the reason so many flights to Munich was full, was probably because that day was the start of Oktoberfest, and Munich station was heaving with plenty of merry people wearing lederhosen!

The second train was a little more rustic than the ICE from Frankfurt, but equally full but still made good time, as it stopped half a dozen or so times en route to Salzburg, rolling into Salzburg at 9.40pm.

We managed to locate Anne's brother in law quickly, and were quickly in the car for the hour or so rainy drive to our destination, Rauris, in the Eastern Alps, getting to the apartment, at around 11.30pm, in time for a quick beer before turning in.

It had been a fairly frazzled day of travelling, but at least we'd got to our destination. 

Next instalment: Snow in September!

Twitter: @Statto1927 

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