Wish We Were Here: Salzkammergut
There are times when the Mediterranean is just too hot for comfort and this year is one of those times. This is when the coolness of the lakes and mountains beckon and I wish I was visiting the Salzkammergut in Austria. This region is cool in every sense of the word: refreshing lakes, excellent nature trails, fine food and wine, and Salzburg’s world-class cultural delights.
The contrast between Salzburg’s historic and cultivated city and the airy beauty of the lakes nearby has always enchanted me. Our visits have mainly been in the Spring or Summer but we have also enjoyed the crisp beauty of the Salzkammergut when cloaked in Winter snow.
My wife and I have indulged and enjoyed the comfort and luxury of the Schloss Leopoldskron, just fifteen minutes from the city centre. This eighteenth-century palace built originally by a Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg was abandoned and in need of repair until Max Reinhardt bought it in 1918. Reinhardt was the leading theatre director of his day and two years after acquiring the Schloss he joined with the composer Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal to found the Salzburg Festival.
Until the eve of the Second World War Reinhardt held court at Leopoldskron to Europe’s cultural elite. Lady Diana Cooper (who acted as the Madonna in Reinhardt’s Festspielhaus drama The Miracle) and her husband the Conservative politician Duff Cooper were among the British guests in attendance. Once Reinhardt had started on the restoration the palace’s beauties became ever more apparent. They can still be admired and enjoyed by hotel guests today when relaxing in the wood-panelled library and eating in the beautiful rococo style dining-room. A stroll around the small lake allows visitors to view the Schloss in all its grandeur. Be wary of the parties of The Sound of Music fans cycling along the footpath around the lake whilst listening to music from the film (which was partly shot at Leopoldskron).
Reinhardt’s other lasting achievement can be found down the road in the centre of town. If you enjoy opera and concerts, there is no finer festival than Salzburg. Top-quality performances are held in stunning settings only found in the Salzkammergut, not the least of which, the Felsenreitschule (literally “rock riding school”), has a huge stage abutting a mountain wall. The festival-goers are as stylish as the performances they watch. Austrians adore dressing up and showing off.
Salzburg is more than its festival, however. The best place to view the city is from the tables set on the expansive terrace of the M32 restaurant on the Mönchsberg mountain. This is reached via a lift set inside the rock. We have always found the venue an unsurpassed way of appreciating Salzburg. Back down on street level we usually walk through the old city – pausing to stop briefly at the stunning baroque-style Franciscan Church (Franziskanerkirche) – to reach another eighteenth-century vantage point at the Café Tomaselli coffee house. Here customers are offered selections of exquisite cakes displayed on trays brought to the individual tables.
After the culture and cake feast, it is always time to head to the Salzkammergut lakes, stopping briefly on the Mondsee before reaching the Attersee. This is where we stayed when our children were younger. We took rooms in a house owned and run by a rather striking Czech Countess and set back a short distance from the lake’s edge. Once unpacked and settled in we would walk through the trees to the lake. There we all shrieked with pleasure as we dived into the water, unprepared as always for its almost icy chill even in August. After drying off on the nearby grass in the sunshine, we would walk or drive up the hillside to have real Austrian Schnitzels in the restaurant of the Druckerhof.
The Attersee has appealed to many renowned Austrian painters and musicians. It was a favourite summer venue for one of the best-known symbolist painters, Gustav Klimt, some of whose early twentieth-century works are subtle and shimmering evocations of the lake’s colour palette in Summer. And not only painters were enchanted, the composer Gustav Mahler was a regular visitor too. Beside the lake in Steinbach, one of the small huts or little houses he rented can be found, in which he kept a piano and drew inspiration from the mountain views all around him.
On other days we have driven south to the picturesque (and UNESCO protected) village of Hallstatt on its eponymous lake. We would walk along the lakeside looking up towards the awe-inspiring Dachstein massif.
There is so much more that I could say about the Salzkammergut, much of it about drinking Austrian wines, though the best of those come from a little further east in the wide Wachau valley. The unique mixture of high culture and high mountains and lakes is truly refreshing. If you have never been, do think of going.
Things to do:
Attend an opera or concert at the Salzburg Festival
The festival is held in July and August. It is still taking place as I write. Bravely the organisers have managed to get comparatively full houses notwithstanding the Covid pandemic, but unsurprising given the quality of the performances. Take your pick of the cultural goodies on offer each year and plan ahead for 2022. Events are not only in the Summer either. I have much enjoyed the less ample or stuffy atmosphere of the Easter Festival held each year over a long weekend. And odd as it may seem, in Salzburg at least, Easter this year is in late October, the festival having been postponed from the usual point in the year. There will be appearances by the Dresden Staatskapelle directed by Christian Thielemann, the American violinist Hilary Hahn and the Bachchor Salzburg performing Mozart’s Requiem.
Eat like a true Austrian
Climb up the hillside on lake Attersee and eat and drink like a local at the Druckerhof restaurant between Buchenort and Zettel-Mittel. Specialities to savour include Schnitzel (made with veal, pork or turkey), Tafelspitz (boiled silverside rump, usually served with root vegetables, boiled or roast potatoes and horseradish), or Zwiebelrostbraten (roast beef with onions and gravy). The rooms are simple but more than adequate and outside there are fields and woods to walk among with wonderful vistas typical of the Salzkammergut all around.
Swim in a lake or scuba dive
If you have children there are stainless steel waterslides at the centre of the village of Attersee and boats aplenty. In the deeper waters of Hallstatt, many people enjoy the chance to scuba dive. But move among the lakes to enjoy different vistas simply stopping your car and jumping in as and when you feel like it.
