Here in Austria in late February it is like the dead of winter. Temperatures just keep sinking way below zero. Minus 17 is our lowest temperature yet. When you open a window it is like opening a store room freezer door. The cold misty air rushes in all around you. Human life in the outside world is kept to a minimum. It is hard to move quickly and the icy air hits your face and fills your lungs.
We have really enjoyed our train leg throughout Austria. This is the only way to travel in winter. It is easy to gaze for hours out the train window. The landscape is coated in thick snow. Mountain escarpments look like they are covered in icing sugar and blanket upon blanket of snow would make it impossible for animals to survive in the open fields.
Crisp mountain rivers run frantically over rocks causing rapids. House roofs are blanketed in thick winter snow. I am not sure if this is really the sort of insulation that you want. Towns look dormant and isolated like from the story of the Magic Porridge Pot that wouldn’t stop cooking and flooded the town except in this case it is snow.
We have spent 8 days in Austria. We have visited 4 cities on our dead of winter leg of Austria.
Innsbruck
This was our first town. The town is surrounded on both sides by Alps. The mountains are monitored each morning and if there is too much snow they blow the snow up at 7am using explosives as avalanches are a high risk here to the town below!!!Our accommodation had a big window which looked smack bang out onto the river and a huge mountain face. The Innsbruck airport sat below the mountain which seemed to have a very short run way covered in snow. Pilots were definitely need skill landing here between two mountains and an icy short run way.
We got into watching the winter Olympic’s ladies down hill alpine skiing races. These young women were clocking speeds of over 100 kilometres per hour. The races were dominated by those born in these cold countries eg. Switzerland, Austria and Canada. An Australian competitor all of the age of 18 came 20th not bad considering how little snow we get compared to here in Austria.
One thing we loved here was apple strudel.
Salzburg
Salzburg is known for the movie – The Sound of Music and where Mozart was born.
Sound of Music was obviously was filmed in summer as the Salzburg we saw had frozen fountains and iced over castles.
