Haus im Ennstal

17^th to 25^th February 2024

I really don’t like spring skiing, especially in February.  Snow like concrete first thing, about an hour, maybe two, late morning of nice conditions, then snow like porridge (really hard work skiing on or through it) for the rest of the day and too warm.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a lovely holiday: Sabine relaxed and forgot about work, we were able to do things other than ski (because of the weather) and we came away uninjured but having skied as much as the conditions allowed.  We were very happy.

Travel-wise (a popular theme of mine from the other stories so far), everything went well till we landed in Salzburg and had to get from Salzburg Airport to the hotel.  The taxi people had told us that there would be a major traffic jam caused by roadworks restricting a long autobahn tunnel to one lane and the taxi was going to cost a fortune.  Saturday being change-over day at the ski resorts made the traffic several times worse than usual. 

They recommended we catch a bus at the airport that could jump the traffic queue and drop us at a town called Eben, the other side of the tunnel, and they would pick us up there.  The bus was scheduled at 2pm or 4 pm; we’d be just too late for the former (the schedule was too tight and the plane was half an hour late anyway) and so we chose to wait and catch the 4pm one. 

There was an alternative – to go into Salzburg to catch a train at 3.08pm to Bishofshofen where they could also pick us up but with two hand-luggage bags, two checked-in bags including a large and surprisingly heavy suitcase and two pairs of skis, it seemed too much effort when the bus would be outside.  Except it never came, or at least never drove past us on the one-way system because we were actually waiting for it where we’d been told but at the old bus stop, not the new one.  And the next one wasn’t till 7pm (if it came).

So at 4.20pm, after a long conversation with the bus people who couldn’t trace the bus and in consultation with the taxi firm, we decided to get a cab to Salzburg Station, catch a later train, change at Bishofshofen to one going to Schladming, and get picked up there.  Which we did, it all went smoothly, an absolutely lovely lady sitting behind us on the first part of the journey carrying our skis when we changed trains, it still worked out cheaper than the taxi all the way and, most importantly, we arrived at the hotel in time for the 5 course dinner.  But that was the first of the several examples of “You just can’t win” – in this case our initial choice of bus over train making the journey longer and far more stressful than it should have been.

Another good example was the ski pass.  Sabine’s nephew called her a fair weather skier but she was mainly accommodating me because I definitely am one and make no apology.  It’s safer and far more enjoyable.  So the forecast for the week predicted Monday, Tuesday and Friday to be days I’d rather not ski – overcast (which means you can’t make out the surface of the piste), some rain, windy and lots of rain and snow on the Friday.

There was virtually no discount for the per diem cost of the ski pass until you bought six consecutive days.  If you didn’t ski because of the weather, you effectively lost the money for that day.  So for the first time ever, I didn’t buy a ski pass for seven days, but got them daily or for two days at a time.  But Monday hadn’t lived up to forecast expectations and by Tuesday morning it definitely didn’t look as bad as the forecast.  What to do?  Because of the forecast, we’d come up with another outing that day which really appealed and it was definitely cloudy at the top of the mountain but if we’d got a ski pass, we’d definitely have gone skiing.  You just can’t win.

I have to address the ski conditions and I think this photo taken from the valley during an apres-ski afternoon walk mid-week tells it all, and I’m not referring to Sabine’s love of woolly animals:

Then on Saturday, after the big snowfall on Friday, it looked like this:

So Saturday was wonderful with the fresh snow, but the slopes were crowded with locals and the afternoon was still too warm for good skiing.  On every one of the five ski days, we started early and finished at around 1pm.  However, on the Sunday our flight back wasn’t till 4.25pm and we could and did book a taxi all the way to the airport.  That gave us nearly 4 hours skiing on Sunday morning and it was fantastic – perfect snow conditions, well-groomed pistes, blue skies and sunshine, around 0C, and not a lot of people on the slopes. It was the best skiing in all the days with Gus or Sabine this year.  The people arriving as we left, mainly Germans, would have much better snow.  You just can’t win.

Back to the non-skiing days.  Our first day off on the Monday meant that we could visit my cousin Mike, in hospital about an hour away by train, after he’d suffered a heart attack on the slopes near where we were staying.  A doctor in his ski party, a ski hut right there, another doctor in the ski hut, the prompt response of the emergency services and a nearby heart hospital meant that he received the treatment he needed.  It was very nice for us to be able to go and see him.  He’s back in his home now but under the supervisory care of the cardiac unit of East Surrey Hospital, Redhill.

On Tuesday, we agonised about not going skiing but stuck to Plan A.  We caught a bus from the base station of the Hauser-Kaibling gondola to a little village called Rössing where Lodenwalker (pronounced Loadenvulka), a business established in 1434, still manufactures felt from the wool of mainly the local mountain sheep, which it uses to make its own lines of clothing.  https://www.lodenwalker.com/en

One of these lines, the Schladminger Loden (a really heavy felt coat, warm and water-proof), has been made even more famous by the celebrities who have purchased it.  It justifies a story in its own right, so I’ll simply attach a photo of Arnie sporting his Schladminger alongside one of Sabine modelling the Lodenwalker waistcoat, the latest addition to her wardrobe.

Sabine Arnie

And Lodenwalker is a good example of something we observed throughout the various valleys we travelled through.  There is a lot of small scale industry of all shapes and sizes all over the region.  In Haus we found a manufacturer of buttons for traditional Austrian dress (dirndl and lederhosen) and an importer/exporter of classy leather goods.  In other places, there were lumber mills, small chemical plants, furniture makers, and a technology automation specialist, to mention just those I remember.  And of course there was the fantastic hospital in Schwarzach im Pongau that looked after cousin Mike.

I can give you another example of the unintended consequence of having to make a decision.  I’m retired, so I can go skiing anytime.  However, my better half is gainfully employed and so we needed a week that would be best for her work and also not give us the horrendous lift queues that we suffered last year – Fasching Week, a start of lent carnival holiday week in most of Germany and Austria.  This year it was the first week of February (Easter is early this year) and English half term was the week after.  So we went for the third week of February.  Except that it turns out that is the holiday week for the local province, Steiermark (Styria).  It is also Crocus Week for the Dutch, so we had the queues again and at times overly crowded slopes on top of challenging snow conditions. You just can’t win.

I wish I had been able to take a photo of one particular family.  Does anyone remember the family in film National Lampoon’s European Vacation, the Griswolds: Mum, Dad and two teenage kids.  In Paris, Dad (Chevvy Chase) got them all to wear ill-conceived French berets with their first names on them, to blend in with the locals and not look like tourists, says Dad.  Of course, they looked like dorks.  Well, there was a family of five, Mum, Dad and three kids aged about ten to fourteen all wearing unmistakable exactly matching ski outfits (vivid green and yellow).  We saw them on two different days. In fairness they weren’t bad skiers but they looked absolutely ridiculous all skiing together in these co-ordinated outfits.  I can’t understand how the kids went along with it – no ski holiday otherwise?  Weird parents, any way you look at it.

In addition to arriving by train and visiting Mike, we had a another train journey to Salzburg on Friday in the pouring rain and snow on the way back, where we had lunch in a delightful authentic restaurant that served Salzburger Nockeln, a soufflé served with raspberry jam (yum yum).

In the train to Salzburg, an older man with a meowing cat in a travelling basket sat opposite Sabine, who naturally struck up a conversation with him, asking him if they had a long journey ahead of them.  The cat replied by meowing again and he said yes, Vienna (300km to the east) – the cat had belonged to his ex-wife who had just died the previous week; he couldn’t keep it, so he was taking it to a new home with a former student of his there rather than put it in the local animal shelter.  Sad but lovely at the same time.

We caught 9 trains on this trip.  It would have been 10 but we caught a direct train (Swiss – Zurich to Graz) from Schwarzach to Schladming after seeing Mike – very exciting, but sadly ours didn’t have the panorama observation coach that we saw go past a day or so later during our apres-ski valley walk.  They were all high quality, especially the local shuttle between Bishofshofen and Schladming – clean, on time, good station signage, the local shuttle not at all crowded, convenient timetables, good connection times and not expensive.  They linked in with the ski bus timetables in Schladming too that we took from and to the hotel in Haus. 

All in all, a great holiday but like the Skiing with Gus story, we had to make the best of less skiing than we’d wanted.  Global warming and its effect on the skiing industry and the regions dependent on it as well as the possible limited horizon to the enjoyment skiing gives to so many people were glaringly obvious, but I can remember other years when the snow has been bad and things subsequently improved.  Who knows.