Category Archives: vorarlberg

Monday 30th June 2014 – THIS IS THE VIEW …

view from window hotel post trafoi alto adige southern tyrol stelvio pass italy … from my bedroom window.

Not my bedroom window from last night, but my bedroom window from this evening. For I am in another hotel. This is actually in Trafoi which is a tiny village in the Alto Adige, the Southern Tyrol, in Italy. It’s halfway up the Stelvio Pass on the way to St Moritz and Switzerland. This was a Shearings destination from the 1980s and didn’t last long, not the least of the reasons being that to road up here from the Reschen Pass is pretty dreadful.

Anyway, it was another item on my list of places to visit – and here I am.

Even more surprisingly, this is actually the first hotel in which I have ever stayed in Italy. All my previous visits have been either with friends, with Nerina’s family or in a nunnery, and I bet you think that I am joking too. "You’re forgetting your skiing trip with Anna in 1996 " – ed.

The Alto Adige is a weird place to be. It was formerly part of the Austrian Empire until 1919 when it passed to Italy in the peace treaty between the two countries after World War I.

german flag flying alto adige southern tyrol stelvio pass italyAfter World War II it remained with Italy, presumably due to the fact that Italy had ended the war on the winning side, but you would have a hard job convincing the inhabitants. Here’s a German flag flying outside the house of one of the inhabitants.

Not only that, most of the signs here are in German even though we are in Italy, and the official roadsigns show the town names in both German (which is displayed first) and Italian.

I’ve also seen grafitti to suggest that at least some of the people here are interested in independance.

festung nauders reschen pass austriaThe border between Austria and the former Italian city-states has always been fluid. This is Festung Nauders, the Nauders fortress dating from the end of the 1830s and there’s another building of a completely different style just across the road and dating from 1840.

It’s not too difficult to imagine that the reason for these two buildings being here in the Reschen Pass is that this was at one time a border crossing following one of the frontier adjustments.


festung nauders fortress military museum reschen pass austriaToday the building is a military museum and outside is a display of tanks. The Reschen Pass was heavily fortified and many of the German defences still remain today despite the best attempts of everyone to blow them up and remove them.

The Pass was to be defended every inch during the last few weeks of April 1945 as it is the soft underbelly of the German Reich on a direct route to Munich. However, events at Berlin forestalled everything.

lech flexen pass vorarlberg tyrol austriaThis morning in a torrential downpour I went for a walk around Lech to see what was what. As I said yesterday, I was here in 1988 but I didn’t recognise the place. It’s changed out of all recognition since those days.

I didn’t stay long either because the weather really was quite dreadful too and it was no fun walking around in all of this.

hotel gasthof kreuz pfunds tyrol austriaNext stop was Pfunds and this was another place that Nerina and I had visited – and on more than one occasion too. We spent a night here on our honeymoon while we were on our way to Italy and if she were to pass by this place today she wouldn’t recognise it, apart from the name painted on the wall.

Still, 25 years is a long time in tourism and time won’t stand still for anyone.

samnaun duty free area switzerlandNot too far away is a little enclave of Switzerland called Samnaun. It was formerly isolated from the main part of Switzerland and so was a duty-free haven. However there is now a road from Switzerland that connects with the area but the duty-free status remains.

Not that is does any good because the place is full of Porsches and the like buying up the perfumes – the entire place smells like a tart’s boudoir – and there is nothing of anything at all that might be of interest to me.


samnaun duty free area switzerlandI come here for the views, which are certainly spectacular as you can see for yourself. There isn’t much like anywhere in the Alps quite like this.

Another thing that brings me here is the diesel. 114 cents per litre in Euros (it’s Swiss currency here of course) and that’s the second-cheapest that I have found so far in Europe after Andorra in March.

From here I headed back down to the Reschen Pass and you know the story from here on in.

Sunday 29th June 2014 – YOU CAN’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES, CAN YOU?

lech flexen pass vorarlberg tyrol austriaI thought you wouldn’t. But that is indeed snow up there in the background. Here on the 29th June, the temperature has dropped to 3.3°C and there is snow in the rain here but up in the mountain pass that I’ve just driven through, it really is snowing.

So where am I then? I’m actually in a village called Lech which is high in the Austrian Tyrol way above the Arlberg Pass between Innsbuck and Bregenz on the Swiss border. Nerina and I visited here on our honeymoon in October 1988 and made a vow that one day we would come and stay here. Of course things have moved on a great deal since those days, but here I am all the same. At least I have made it here.


haus brunele lech flexen pass vorarlberg tyrol austriaAnd here is a guest-house that charges just €25 for bed and breakfast and while it isn’t 5-star luxury, I’ve never had value for money quite like this. I also found a decent Italian restaurant here that cooked me a special meal. I spent the evening there talking Italian to the staff there and it’s amazing how much came back.

This has made me make a decision that for all of the languages that I can speak in a marginal kind of way, I’m going to spend some time in each country at least once per year. I’m not sure how this will work for my Russian, but we’ll see.


sankt christoph am arlberg arlberg pass tyrol austriaThis photo is interesting too. This is Sankt Christophe, the highest point in the Arlberg Pass. I have a photo that I took here when Nerina and I passed by. It featured the old Cortina estate that we had – OCC 883S and a hanging cloud that had chased us all the way up the pass billowing over the crest. This photo features Caliburn of course, and it would have featured Strawberry Moose too except that it was absolutely p155ing down and snowing, and His Nibs didn’t fancy getting wet.


heavy rain hanging cloud motorway innsbruck bregenz tyrol austriaAnd I can’t say I blame him either. This is what it looked like on the Motorway between Innsbruck and Bregenz. Totally dreadful as you can see and I was driving with the rear foglights on. It was the only way to be seen through the spray coming off the road. The hanging clouds wedged up against the mountains look impressive too.

And doesn’t Strawberry Moose take an excellent photograph? He should be proud of his skills.

This is the weather that we have been having all day. It was raining when I left bei Hanzi this morning and gradually degenerated as I drove down the B11 towards the Austrian frontier. Once in the Alps we got the lot and that was that.

So I’m going to have an early night and hope for better things tomorrow.