Austria once again

I guess it’s quite funny. When we lived in Switzerland, quite close to the Austrian and German borders, we almost never went to Austria. We didn’t have a car, we did have a Swiss rail pass and the Swiss alps just seemed more appealing. And yet, now that we live in Luxembourg, hundreds of kilometres away, we’ve started visiting. It’s generally cheaper than Switzerland for visiting and / or skiing, and if we’re driving for hours to get to Switzerland, we can just as well drive a bit further to somewhere we haven’t explored as much for our Alpine fix. After visiting Kaprun for a week last Autumn, we returned again to sample the delights of the Stubai Valley for New Years.

We chose this location mainly due to its altitude and the fact that there would almost certainly be some slopes open for skiing. The valley has four different ski resorts, one of which guarantees snow from October to May. This should no longer be taken for granted at that time of the year, with snow quality in general getting more and more patchy. Also, we were yet to visit Innsbruck, and its close proximity to the valley would allow for a convenient day trip when we needed a break from the slopes.

Now, there is a debate on how ethical it is to ski in areas such as this with varying opinions (please see this article in the Guardian for a brief introduction) but our overall opinion was that surely it is better to go to a resort that, at that time, will have at least some natural snow, as opposed to resorts that would predominantly be reliant on creating artificial snow. Is that an argument to try and put our minds at ease? Quite possibly, but I think its safe to say that ski resorts are not one of the major causes of climate change and having a chance to be in the mountains does make you appreciate them all the more. The debate about whether skiing and travelling in general is harmful to the environment could take up many blog posts (and I’m sure it does on other sites), so I won’t spend more time on it here. At least we didn’t fly there…

We ended up having a great few days in the Stubai Valley. We tried two of the ski resorts, which were both accessible by bus from our accommodation, as was Innsbruck for a change of pace, and there were also fireworks galore for New Years Eve! If you’d like to read more about our experiences there, then please click here.