Damüls, AT 02/01/15

Day 3: Damüls
As mentioned in yesterday's TR, I'm currently skiing in what's acknowledged as the snowiest part of the Alps and of course, the region is going to leverage that in its marketing to visitors. Thus, Warth-Schröcken proclaims itself the ski area with the most snow, while today's stop, Damüls, calls itself the snowiest village. They have similar snow totals and no other place in the Alps comes close other than Zürs.




Keeping that in mind, Damüls has come up with a great tagline: "Willkommen im Schneereich" -- "Welcome to the Kingdom of Snow."



The state of my car (the dark one) since my arrival late yesterday afternoon underscored that. I'm already looking forward to digging it out tomorrow morning.



There was a short break in the storm at 9 am this morning, when I did a warmup lap on a run that had just been groomed 90 minutes earlier:



And from there, snow came down all day long. The only places I could find people to take photos were on groomed runs back to the lift, so no pix of all the face shots. The afternoon was a total whiteout:







I've stayed the last two nights at the very comfortable and "gemütlich" (cozy, welcoming) Alpenhotel Mittagspitze, named after a famous peak that towers over the ski area:



Your day there starts with the de rigueur huge breakfast, including a big table of Brötchen: delicious little rolls that you slather with butter and jam. They're something I really miss from when I lived in Germany and Austrians take them just as seriously:



After 3.5 straight hours of powder with tough visibility, I was running on fumes and stopped in for lunch and ordered another dish that I miss: Spätzle, a type of noodle from southwest Germany (not far away), mixed with the local Vorarlberg cheese, roasted onions, and served in a traditional wooden container that's used to make cheese. Amazing:



Being Austria, guess what was on TV in the lounge:



As mentioned in the Day 1 trip report, getting to know all sorts of the local hosts is a really unique part of a trip to Austria and over lunch I met the owner of the family-owned hotel, Ingo Madlener, as well the head of the Damüls tourism office, Pascal Keiser. Here we are post-meal with me suffering through an advanced case of ski helmet hair. Check out those cool traditional Austrian jackets!
 


We had an interesting discussion about how the name of the region, Bregenzerwald (which refers to a forest), leads people to believe that the ski areas here maybe aren't as impressive as their neighbors -- now that I think about it, I had that same perception before I came and saw that they're definitely big league mountains.

After dinner this evening, Ingo invited me for a glass of amazing high-end schnaps: incredibly aromatic, almost like brandy and not at all sugary like the schnaps I've had before. He then took me on a mid-evening tour of the local sights, including the old town church. It's something that comes naturally to business owners here -- communicating to guests what makes their village unique and why they're proud of it:

I really like how the people in the villages (hotel/restaurant owners, etc.)  go out of their way to welcome people. In the States, you'd only see something like that at a small bed & breakfast, not a good-sized hotel. Definitely putting that region on my go-to list.

The rolls on the left look our standard "hard roll" or kaiser roll....just answered my own questions Kaiser duh your in Austria...