Words by Kasra Lang

Austria really looks like Austria, if you know what I mean. It looks exactly as you’d expect, exactly as you’d hoped, like a quote of itself. There is an exact one-to-one ratio between the Austria of the mind and its rock-and-soil reality. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place that corresponds so precisely with my preconception of it. There it is, heaven’s tricolour flag in the frame of my vision - green of greens on the valley floor, a holy blue up top, and in between, a more complicated shade of limestone silver: the Alps sheared upwards.

Every bad picture I take is a solid contender for the cover of a major international travel magazine. I swear it’s that easy - take aim, tap, and a marvel appears on the cracked screen of my phone. It’s as if the very concept of photographic skill disappears here. The real challenge is to take an ugly picture, and I just don’t have that sort of talent. Even a downward shot at my mud-speckled boots in the grass looks gorgeous. It’s uncanny, this self-referential image of beauty, as if I’ve been here before: a lingering memory of God’s garden.

Though in this Eden nothing is forbidden. (There is even an abundance of apple wine). There’s mountain biking in the summer, skiing in the winter, and year-round lounging about in the sauna, three sports which attract athletes of a professional standard. Nobody’s embarrassed at their nakedness in the spa, not even me, though admittedly it took me a moment to adjust to my renewed state of grace.

The local Leogang museum tells me the town relied on the salt trade for centuries. It was a terminally poor place, materially if not spiritually, until the miners and farmers reinvented themselves as hoteliers. The family-owned Naturhotel Forsthofgut (where I’m staying) hosted their first guests in 1990. Seven years later they sold their last cow. Despite this transformation the old spirit of the place remains, particularly in the 350 year-old farmhouse.

Given that I’m here during an Austrian autumn, I set out on a hike. Orange and red trees dot the otherwise evergreen mountain face, full of birch and spruce and coniferous larch. The constant hiss of the river follows us up the gorge. The higher you look, the rockier it gets above the treeline. Below us are alpine pastures, home to the most absurdly healthy-looking cows, well-fed and moaning.

My guides leads me to what they are tentatively calling a glacier. I say tentatively because there is apparently some debate whether this accumulation of ice - the result of successive avalanches over time - qualifies as a glacier at all. It is the Pluto of glaciers, so to speak, vulnerable to the caprice of human categorisation. One thing is certain: it’s vanishing. For decades the Bavarians, ever conscious of life’s priorities, used to drag huge blocks of ice over the mountains to cool their beers in the summer. Now, in October, there isn’t much permanent ice left.

The next day my guide bundles me into the ski lift. Above a certain elevation we vanish into the fog. It blocks the panoramic view, but I enjoy the atmosphere it imposes on us, the faint thrill of knowing what is there but can’t be seen. We walk for a few miles in the fog and drizzle, our anticipation heightening, until finally the sun breaks through the clouds, exposing the entire limestone massif drawn shut over the horizon. A wild, purple mountain.

The valley is its own contained world. The luxury restaurants never stray too far for their ingredients. That evening I am presented with a twelve-course meal, which is at least seven courses more than I have ever eaten in a single sitting. I was well-raised, so I obediently finished the whole dozen, even the fish (which I dislike) and the liver (which I despise) - but ten out of twelve courses are delicious, even on a full stomach. The main attraction is ultimately the irrepressible chef himself, who emerges from the kitchen to narrate the details of his concoctions. There is more than a twinge of madness to his brilliance. As the night progresses his English understandably deteriorates, until ‘goat’ and ‘God’ begin to sound like the same word, and after four hours of delirious eating, it’s not inconceivable that he is actually feeding us something perfect and holy, morsels of the divine.

God knows I’ve been treated well here. I spent my 20s camping in the mud in far-flung places, longing for my middle-of-the-road comforts, and admittedly I’m not opposed to this change. I’m a useless skier (that is, I’ve never touched a pair of skis) but somehow I’m already dreaming of a winter return, a day on the slopes, an evening in the spa. Normally I try my best to temper my expectations but on the available evidence - Austria’s autumn idyll - it feels safe to indulge in runaway anticipation, in good days delivered.

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