2012 Vacation to Austria

Theo and Jeff visited Austria again, from July 5th to July 19th, 2012.  We flew into Munich, then drove about three hours to Matrei in Osttirol.  We stayed in that small town for three nights, then drove to Soelden, in  the Oetztal valley, southwest of Innsbruck.  On the way to Soelden, we stopped at Krimmler Wasserfaelle, along which we hiked up and down.  We spent eight nights in Soelden, then drove to the very small town of Alpbach, east of Innsbruck.  We stayed there three nights and then drove back to Munich for the flight home to Virginia. 

Our intent was to hike, and hike we did. Some hikes were tough, some easier.  The weather was mostly okay, with the occasional rain shower.  Only one shower was bad enough to limit our hike - and that was our first hike in Matrei.   No hikes in the snow this year! 

Below are pictures and notes from the trip.  You can click on the pictures to make them bigger, then escape to come back to the blog.

Above is a view from our apartment balcony in Matrei on the first morning (July 6th.)  We had a modern, two-bedroom apartment with kitchen and sitting room.  We booked it through bookings.com and got it for less than $100.00 per night.  The apartment was five minutes walk from a good restaurant, five minutes from a grocery, ten minutes from a cable car up the mountain, and about ten minutes from the middle of town.  It was a great location at a really good price.







There are waterfalls throughout Austria, most of them uncommercialized.  We passed this one on a road above Matrei.  Theo is standing there, proving that she was actually at the site.   Note the wildflowers behind her.

Matrei lies near the base of Austria's highest mountain, Gross Glockner.  We got the view below on our second day in Matrei, as we drove up to a small town called Kals.  This was the only time in three days that the mountain was not obscured by clouds.   We took a cable car up the mountain you see in the foreground and then hiked across and up to a restaurant called Blauspitz.  We had our first excessive plate of Kaiserschmarren there.  Kaiserschmarren, as you know from previous blogs, is sugar-coated pancakes, fried in a pan, with berries or applesauce or both added.  Delicious.  Fattening as hell.

Austria also has wildflowers, and rocks, everywhere.  Here's a picture from our hike above Matrei of wild azaleas - and rocks. 

This is a view across a dropoff of the winding path we took to Blauspitz.   All along the path, we were whistled at by marmots (like our groundhogs, only smarter).  We took pictures of the marmots, but who wants to see pictures of groundhogs?

Because Theo has balance issues when climbing down mountains, we usually took roads or cable cars down.  Here she is on the road down from Blauspitz.

After we left Matrei, we drove through the Gerlos pass and on to the Krimml Waterfalls.  They are a series of three falls coming down the mountain.  The three collectively are Austria's highest.  We had hiked the falls once before in 2005 or so, but we did it again this time in good weather.  Beautiful as always.  We spent some time with an Israeli father and son who were doing the falls for the first time.  Nice people.

Above the falls is a beautiful valley that works back about four miles to a glacier.  We love the valley and have had some good food at a farm in that valley.

We continued on to Soelden, where we stayed for the fourth year in a row at the Castello Falkner hotel.  We love the people there and the service is fantastic. 

We took our first hike in Soelden, with Christoph Holzknecht, who has guided us in past hikes.  He's a great guy.  He drove us to Obergurgl and then we took a grueling hike to Hohe Mut, a restaurant high up in the mountains.  Although it was a chilly day, it was warm up on the mountain when the sun came out.  Here are Theo and Jeff, working their way through some glasses of Spezi, which is a combination of Coke or Pepsi and orange soda.  Pretty refreshing, unless you really wanted a beer.   (Note that, despite a lot of hikes during which we sweated like marmots, both Theo and Jeff gained several pounds on the trip.  Most of our food was farm-fresh, including eggs, bacon, bread, butter, vegetables and fruit.  We couldn't seem to stop eating, a condition that was worsened by the huge portions we seemed to be served everytime.) 

Below is the view from the table you see above. 

We took a second hike with Christoph and were joined by Jonah and Joerg Roesenmeier (above) from Germany.  These guys were pretty fit and a lot of fun.  The next day, Jeff joined the Roesenmeiers in climbing Stuiben Falls in Umhausen.  This was true rock climbing, including ropes, helmets, safety equipment and a guide.  We crossed a river on a cable, scaled some mountain walls, hung out over the dropoff on numerous occasions, and finished by crossing the waterfall on another cable.  The guide took some pictures, which I'll share if I ever get them.  This was the first true rock climbing Jeff has done.  Wasn't too tough.  Wasn't scary at all.  But, once was probably enough.

Our third hike near Soelden involved following the river to Zwiesselstein, then hiking up the valley toward Vent, then hiking straight up a mountain to Gaislach Alm (where we had some Spezi and struedel), then continuing on to the Middle Station of the Gaislachkoglbahn, then taking the cable car down the mountain.  This was about five hours of effort, in sun and rain,  but it turned out to be a very refreshing hike.  Below are pictures of Theo along the river and following a mountain path.

We did some other hikes in Soelden that were fairly easy.  But, Jeff also climbed alone up Gaislachkogl to the top, which is at 3057 meters, or just over 10,000 feet.  The climb was mostly straight up over rocks, but fortunately, it was pretty chilly up there.  Although Jeff sweated a lot, he didn't get exhausted - and he took the cable car back down.   He didn't have his camera with him, but you can see pictures of the views from Gaislachkogl in last year's blog.

Our last hike was about four hours and ended up again at the middle station of the cable car bahn.  Due to a mistake on our service cards from the hotel, Jeff's card didn't work to allow him to take the cable car down, so he ran most of the 12 kilometers of zigzagging road that brings one down the mountain.  It was hard pavement and after a while, Jeff's ankles, shins, knees and thighs were screaming.  Not too bright a move, but good to see that he could still run at age 64. 



After eight days in Soelden, we went east to a small town named Alpbach, which is described on the Internet as the town voted most beautiful in Austria.  It was pretty, with lots of flowers on every house and beautiful, wooden homes and businesses.   The views were spectacularly green, with lots of forests and pastures.  Below is a view from a cafe in Alpbach.

We climbed a mountain above Alpbach on our second day and took the picture below from halfway up the mountain.  That's Alpbach down below.

Here's a view from our second hike, looking back across the fields to Alpbach.  On this hike we climbed to Bischoferalm, which is a restaurant fairly high up the mountain. 










At Bischoferalm, we ate some good food and listened to a band, whose members played traditional Tirolean songs and told jokes we couldn't understand.  But, the crowd really loved the activity.   Theo had a nice chat in Italian/Spanish with some Italian ladies, who turned out, like Theo, to be teachers.  We also got encouragement on this hike from an Italian man wearing a NY Fire Department hat, of which he was very proud.










Here's a final view of Theo heading along the path back to Alpbach.





After fourteen days, we were ready to come home.  We flew to and from Washington to Munich on Islandair, with stops both ways in Reykjavik, Iceland.  The flights were great, the airline service very good.   It was nice to finally have uneventful flights.