Reutte, Austria
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
May 17, 2009 – Reutte is south of Fussen, about 20km into the Alps in Austria, in a large green valley surrounded by snow capped mountains. Just fantasticly beautiful.
I had found out about Reutte in the Rick Steve’s guidebook, the main interest point for me being the ruins of several castles around the town known collectively as the Ehrenberg Castle Ensemble.
We left all the Asian tourists behind in Fussen (there are a lot, many from Hong Kong), and took the 74 bus through some impressive geography. It was a milkrun; the bus circling the countryside, picking up kids at the kindergarden in one town and dropping them off at the next. We were the only tourists – the only other people on the bus were a bunch of elderly ladies chatting and laughing with the bus driver. One got the sense that it was all a daily routine.
In Reutte we checked into our hotel (Hotel Das Beck – more on that later), had lunch, then proceeded to the Ehrenberg castles.
It is a bit of a walk, through beautiful fields with magnificent views, to get to the path that goes up to the castles (if pressed for time, better to take a taxi to the Klause Valley Fort and start from there). Once at the Klause Valley Fort (above pic – nothing special), we started climbing the 30 minute pass to the most important castle, the Ehrenberg ruins. It’s a nice path, not too steep that has been very well organized by the Austrian tourist authorities – there are interesting and informative signs in both German and English. This was true for all signage around the Ehrenberg Castle Ensemble, it was all very well organized.
We arrived at the Ehrenberg ruins. Incredible. The ruins themselves but also the location. There we no other tourists. The castle was built in the 13th century and was the seat of power in the area. Many battles were waged here, most against the Bavarians. In 1632 the castle fought off 16,000 Swedish soldiers in defense of Catholicism. The location is spectacular and you wonder how the residents of the castle braved the elements. We wandered the fort for almost an hour, each view seemingly more impressive than the last.
Further up, another half hour, is the Schlosskopf. We almost went but were running out of time. That also must be impressive – higher than Ehrenberg, the castle would have even more imposing views on the valley.
A remarkable day and we really enjoyed Reutte!
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Hotel Das Beck was great and relatively cheap (70 Euros/night). Run by Hans who runs both the hotel and cafe (which specializes in wine, none of which we sampled). He was a very friendly and interesting guy who had visited Canada a few years ago, visiting the Yukon of all places (he mentioned having canoed up to Dawson City). Clean, large, nice balcony on a good day (too darn cold when we were there). Just perfect for us. 4 out of 5 and I will be here again if we come back to Reutte.
We met some interesting and very friendly characters in Reutte who were very willing to talk. At Markt Asshaeur (a bio food market) we met Ms. Asshaeur who was incredibly friendly and helpful. I just like saying Asshaeur. She had also travelled to Canada, including Montreal (she speaks French but said she had a hard time understanding French Canadian French…understandable). She had the most amazing tomatoes and advocados as well as cheese, bread, and salami – we brought these back to the hotel and had a picnic supper.
The one negative; we were shocked to see that Austria still allows smoking in bars and restaurants. Once you’re used to a smoke-free environment you just can’t take the stink and the smoke anymore.
Interesting to see the reaction to Lissette. They’re not used to tourists here and we at times caught people staring. I think we almost caused a couple of car crashes.
f_thomae