G & J away from home

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Yesterday Beth told us that an Austrian architecture student would like to meet with us and talk about the Alpenhof Hotel.  Julia arrived at 10am, bearing a food parcel from her family's bakery.  She chose the Alpenhof as one of her coursework projects and while researching it online found references to the Chalet School books.  She hopes to read them to discover any links or mentions of the hotel. (The first book, The School at the Chalet, is set in the mid-1920s, so in the hotel's heyday.)

Julia visits (Photo: Gary)

After Julia left three of our party were inspired to go and look around the hotel again, this time going inside to find it had the appearance of a place that had been abandoned one day, right in the middle of things, with no attempt to pack things away or dispose of them.  From Marianne's research we understand this might have been in the late 1950s or early 60s.

Overgrown Alpenhof sign (Photo: Marianne)

Old luggage label

As we felt yesterday, this is a sad end for a wonderful building and, apart from the area where the roof has collapsed, taking down each floor below it right to the cellar, it seem possible to restore it to life. One of things we've noticed about the buildings (mainly the hotels) in Pertisau is that they have undergone many changes and expansions over the years (Hotel Post has a whole display of the changes to the building and another hotel has a series of such photos on the windows of their building).  If somewhere like the Alpenhof, which has largely avoided these changes, was restored to its 1920s or 30s style (with suitable mod cons, says she who can't live without them) it would be a delightfully nostalgic asset for Pertisau which has a good 120+ years of tourism history.


In the afternoon Beth, Marianne, and Gary went off on the boat to visit Scholastika at the northern end of the lake.  It's quite a small settlement but appears in the books as the location of the 'rival' school, St Scholastika's.

Hotel Scholastika (Photo: Marianne)

After returning home for a cup of tea Beth and Marianne set out to take photos of another model for the original Chalet School building - a chalet closer to the southern end of the valley.  This not only looks like what is described in the books but the location is in some ways more suitable.

Side view of the chalet (Photo: Marianne)

Older view of chalet (postcard)

Another old view (postcard)

As well as taking photos of the 'chalet', Beth fulfilled another of her ambitions - to swim in Achensee.  It was cold, just like we'd been telling her it would be, but she did it anyway, making her way carefully down some stone steps into the lake right in front of the chalet - so where the Chalet School girls might have swam if they weren't so darn fictional!  Since even ambitions have to have rules she did swim out and duck right under and then returned (frozen) to the steps to find that while she was achieving a goal half of Pertisau seemed to have appeared and the quiet section of lakeside path was now teeming with audience.  Probably stunned to see anybody so crazy daring!

Beth swims! (Photo: Marianne)

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