Kirchberg
Another night of heavy snowfalls meant that we were able to appreciate a bit of a lie-in this morning, with no group commitments at all until dinner time. The breakfast seating situation still hadn’t resolved itself, and given we were guaranteed to be the last ones down, we figured we’d skip it entirely and head down to explore the village of Kirchberg instead.
Our first stop was the village church that gives Kirchberg its name (translated to English, Kirchberg literally means church on a hill). For a small church, it was incredibly ornate inside, showing just how wealthy this area really is. The small graveyard outside of the church is also very picturesque, especially when it’s covered in nearly a metre of snow.
Our tour leader had warned us that the stairs down from the church to the village were a bit precarious, but we’ve learnt to take the things he says with a pretty large grain of salt, and looking at the steep, snow-covered footpath that wound its way along the side of the narrow road, the stairs certainly seemed like the better option. So we made our way down them, slowly at first, but picking up the pace a little once we realised how shallow and stable they were.
Right near the point where the steps from the church meet the main road through the village, the River Aschauer Ache also crosses the road. Its banks have been canalised with high rock walls on both sides where it flows through the town, to prevent flooding. A walking/cycling path follows it for much of its length above the village – in better weather it provides miles of navigable track above the town. Today it looked an absolute treat, with the water flowing rapidly around snow-covered rocks as it made its way down to the Kitzbüheler Ache below Kitzbühel, and eventually into Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria, Germany.
Walking through the snow was actually not too bad, largely because the majority of the roads and paths are regularly ploughed and gritted by a large maintenance team in what looks to be a mammoth operation, especially given the proximity to Christmas. As we walked into town, we were passed by countless snow ploughs, gritting teams and tractors hauling trailer loads of dirty snow from the roads to be dumped in large piles elsewhere.
We had a quick look around the village before deciding to make the walk to the outskirts of town where we had spotted a Billa and Spar (two supermarket chains something akin to our Coles and Woolworths). Given the price of items in the mini bar (€6 for a 300ml bottle of Coke, or about $10 AUD) and considering that it was Christmas Eve, we wanted to pick some soft drinks and some bubbles to cover us for the next few days. Of course, it was round about this time that the clouds that had been threatening to come down from the hills finally did so, and soon it was absolutely pelting down with snow.
The snow eased off slightly as we reached the supermarkets, but was soon back in force as we trudged our way along the road back into the village to look for somewhere to have lunch. Many of the restaurants were shut, given that Christmas Eve is the big celebratory time for Austrians, but we did find a Chinese Restaurant that was promising to be open until 3:00pm. When we asked the proprietor if that was because they were closing to have Christmas dinner, she said that it was in fact because they close at 3:00pm every afternoon in winter, so that the whole family can head up the mountain to go skiing. The food was absolutely delicious, and we were so full afterwards that we couldn’t even go for dessert, despite the banana fritters sounding like they were something special. We made a pact to come back at some stage later in the week to try them out, and slipped outside to walk through the snow again, back to the hotel.
We looked briefly at the road heading up passed the church, all slushed up with patches of ice forming at the sides, and thought “stuff that”, heading back to climb the stairs past the church. With steady snow falling again, we reached the hotel and headed straight up to the room. There were pre-dinner drinks of hot Glühwein on offer in the lobby, but by that stage we were more interested in checking out the indoor pool. The water in the pool was slightly on the cool side, but the heat from the rest of the hotel was so stifling that it was actually a welcome change once you’d taken the first plunge. We spent the best part of an hour enjoying the facilities before heading back upstairs to shower and get changed for dinner.
Once again the dinner was buffet style, but this being Christmas Eve, there was a lot more to choose from, including steaks and schnitzels. It was actually very tasty. There was still an issue with the cramped table set-up, but Ness and I had actually arrived a bit early, so we had first dibs on the 4 person table, leaving it to the later arrivals to sort themselves out on the squishy table. Hard to believe that Christmas is almost here!