Home » Helpfulness

What moves vorarlberg in winter – a wintertime journey

What moves Vorarlberg in winter

When everything turns white, the pace of life changes and the colors of autumn make way for delicate pastel. The world becomes less noisy. A lot of things suddenly change, some residents in Vorarlberg even take on different jobs – stories from a region that knows and loves winter.

TEXT: STEFAN NINK

There’s this one day when everything changes. When the landscape suddenly looks very different from what it did before. When a total regeneration, so to speak, takes place in Vorarlberg. It’s usually the first snow of winter that makes this day so special. The first snow probably fell earlier, on a dull afternoon at the end of October or sometime at night when nobody noticed.

… it’s probably more tentative, hesitant, dithering …

Tentative, hesitant, dithering … as if it were not courageous just yet. But then that day arrives when everything does change, when the complicated maneuver between autumn and winter finally results in a winner. That’s the day when Vorarlberg visibly changes color: when everything turns white. Everything. The valleys, the roofs, the cars in their parking spaces, the climbing frames on the children‘s playgrounds, the roads and the gardens and, of course, the Alps and the mountains. No longer just up at the peaks, no longer just on the high flanks. Everything turns white on this day. Across the whole of Vorarlberg.

Left: Promenade in Bregenz
Right: Wintertime in the historical center of Feldkirch

A lot of changes with the snow. Some people even take different jobs.

It’s the day that makes a turning point for Vorarlberg’s residents: from this day forth, it’s winter. The snow may disappear for a while again, in a week or two, but, from now on, it will usually stay – and will stay in place for the next few months. From now on, the snow needs to be cleared from driveways and pavements; from now on, commuters need to schedule additional time for their trip to work in the mornings; from now on, kids prefer to spend their afternoons after school on the slopes and not on the football pitch. A lot changes with the arrival of winter: the lifts are put into operation, the slopes and cross-country ski trails are groomed and the hotels get ready for the first arrivals. Mountain guides become ski instructors. E-bikes are now being repaired on snowboards.

Winter changes the region, in all aspects of life, it changes every day routines, that’s what happens in the Alps.

One of many: Vorarlberg has 45 skiing areas. This is a ski slope at the Silvretta Montafon ski resort

Its effects can already be felt in the morning when the doors are opened, when they come to the office. Walmendingerhorn or take the cross-country ski trail behind the house. Whether to meet with friends for mulled wine at the Christmas market or to set off as a couple on snowshoes at dusk. You could be lucky. And catch sight of deer. Or even a stag. Because that’s what winter does, too: it brings a lot to light.

The tracks in the snow show what else is nearby. The hare that must have zigzagged across the meadow. The squirrel moving between the tree and its hiding place in the garage. Each night, secretly, stealthily, quietly – you can see that happening, too.

A winter setting: Nature sleeps. Tour in Laterns Gapfohl

Earlier, thick downy flakes floated from the sky

It’s sometimes said that snow is just snowing down in Vorarlberg, the Montafon, Kleinwalsertal or the Bregenz Forest on a winter’s day and suddenly you notice: snow is not just snow, snow is always new and always different. Downy flakes piling up on the branches of the fir tree, in a reminiscent of a swinging pendulum. The big flakes have turned into small white lentils.

Then it’s more real, more quickly, as if it were wanted to show what snow is real. And that’s it
over now.

The snow is now wet and drops from the sky like millions of tiny facecloths splattering down from the sky. If you’re very quiet, you can hear it hit the ground. Sometimes it looks like a veil on the local landscape. And sometimes it floats over the slopes like white powder. As if someone had just left a car in the air.

The mountains look like they’ve been covered in a soft duvet

The snow changes Vorarlberg, it reduces the diversity of autumnal nature to an essential minimum. As soon as it has fallen, the mountains no longer look so rugged and angular but rather than a soft duvet had been thrown over them, as if someone had blanketed the whole wide country up there. Of course, there are those days when an artist wants to depict winter in Vorarlberg on canvas could get by with two colors – more than radiant white and bright blue would not be needed. But on other days, the dull and gray ones, when visibility is limited and dimensioned fades, those are the days when the winter creates pictures like landscape paintings by past masters. Views where the fine line between heaven and earth becomes blurred. And you need 117 shades of color in white to dark gray to do justice to the world.

But, it’s something wonderful, winter, And in torarllight hikes through an icy gorge (in Kleinwalsertal) – just to name a few things to do. And, of course, more cross-country ski trails and winter hiking routes than you could book. And where is the village most assured of snow? So in Vorarlberg. The snowfall in Damuls is the heaviest in the world. While maybe more snow does fall in northern Canada or Greenland, there are no villages there.

Damüls in the evening

Sometimes it’s time to stop talking about the silent magic of the world

It’s pretty much the most beautiful thing you could do in Vorarlberg on a winter’s day (if you’re not fancy skiing or snowboarding). More snow piles up around you than you could ever imagine. It grows higher and higher. Deeply scrubbed deep blue sky from whence it came recently.

It’s in those moments that you catch yourself in hushed tones. And sometimes you ask yourself a word out loud. Snow has the wonderful property of being able to dampen. It makes a sense of calm in the world because it makes it easier to grasp by making it smaller. It absorbs the noise and the roaring, it blocks valleys and roads, it drapes itself around the region like a big white cloth and creates its own small worlds. And silence – it creates that anyway. And with silence the realization that it does not simply mean a lack of noise but rather the amplification of other sounds that audible. The crunching of footsteps. The distant ringing of church bells. Your own breathing in and out. The whoosh created a lorry-load of snow comes down after it, when it whirls up the dust that makes the whole world disappear in a swirl of white mist.

As if it were not important at all.
As if it was not even there.

Winter wizardry: Like in the evenings here in the Bregenzerwald.
Right: Landscape without corners and edges: Snowshoe hike on the Sonnenkopf in Klostertal

Winter in Vorarlberg

Read more

Maria Gobald – Ski instructor in Vorarlberg

For the past 30 winters Maria Gobald has made a lot of passion for learning how to ski.

Andi Fritz – hunter by trade

Andi Fritz is a professional hunter in his Kleinwalsertal home for 12 years. He feeds the wild animals in winter. He can not imagine living in the lowlands.

Lisilis organic farm

For almost 30 years, family Kühne have been organically out of conviction. This means more manual work, so during winter.

Vorarlberg

Six Welcoming Regions

Shaped by different landscapes and forms of living, every one of the six holiday regions has a distinct character of its own.

Do you enjoy music, dance, contemporary art and architecture? Delightful holidays in the Lake Constance-Vorarlberg region with the cities of Bregenz, Dornbirn, Hohenems and Feldkirch are both stimulating and exciting.

Want to discover something new on holiday? Bregenzerwald features beautiful villages, harmonious architecture and imaginative regional cuisine.

Want to escape your daily routine? Take a deep breath of clear mountain air? Recover and relax in the beautiful mountain world? Enjoy this and more in the Kleinwalsertal.

Looking for a variety-packed family holiday safe in the knowledge you’ll be perfectly well looked after? Then it’s off to the three friendly Alpine valleys near Bludenz!

Want to feel the flow of energy in the mountains? Enjoy the silence of nature? Hike to your heart’s content or glide over magnificent ski slopes? Think Montafon!

When it comes to where you stay and what you eat, you will appreciate the highest quality. Couple this with plenty of space to maneuver while skiing and hiking? The choice is clear: Lech Zürs am Arlberg!

Kleinwalsertal

Want to escape your daily routine? Take a deep breath of clear mountain air? Recover and relax in the beautiful mountain world? Enjoy this and more in the Kleinwalsertal.

Bregenzerwald

Want to discover something new on holiday? Bregenzerwald features beautiful villages, harmonious architecture and imaginative regional cuisine.

Bodensee-Vorarlberg

Do you enjoy music, dance, contemporary art and architecture? Delightful holidays in the Lake Constance-Vorarlberg region with the cities of Bregenz, Dornbirn, Hohenems and Feldkirch are both.

Alpine region Vorarlberg

Looking for a variety-packed family holiday safe in the knowledge you’ll be perfectly well looked after? Then it’s off to the three friendly Alpine valleys near Bludenz!

Montafon

Want to feel the flow of energy in the mountains? Enjoy the silence of nature? Hike to your heart’s content or glide over magnificent ski slopes? Think Montafon!

Lech Zürs am Arlberg

When it comes to where you stay and what you eat, you will appreciate the highest quality. Couple this with plenty of space to maneuver while skiing and hiking? The choice is clear: Lech Zürs am .

Related Posts

Like this post? Please share to your friends:
Christina Cherry
Leave a Reply

;-) :| :x :twisted: :smile: :shock: :sad: :roll: :razz: :oops: :o :mrgreen: :lol: :idea: :grin: :evil: :cry: :cool: :arrow: :???: :?: :!: