Walking in the Alps Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mittenwald to Garmisch-Partenkirchen

There are a couple of companies that organise walking tours, where they take your luggage - apart from a day pack - from one hotel to the next, while you walk along valley and mountain paths, averaging about ten miles. We did several of these, all in Bavaria, and this one was exceptionally good. Mittenwald has been the home of famous violin, viola and cello makers since the 17th Century.

There is also a cable car - the Karwendalbahn - up to high mountain walks. Hitler forced the neighbouring towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen to merge in preparation for the 1936 Winter Olympics, and the Olympic sports stadium is still in use, mainly for ice hockey.

Answer: Brand

This was our first visit to Austria, and we discovered that the local tourist office ran a scheme to encourage walking in the surrounding mountains. They gave us a card with spaces which you got stamped at each mountain hut or other tourist destination. Each was worth a number of points, the harder to reach places earning more points, of course. We found this scheme in other resorts too, and they are a wonderful incentive to walk to remote places. We got used to reaching a place and asking "Haben sie ein Stempel, bitte", or "Gibt es hier ein Stempel, bitte?", looking for the stamp to mark our card. We earned a gold medal here in Brand.

Answer: Zell-am-Zee

Zell-am-See is on the shores of the Zellersee, a typical tourist town, but once we found the Schmittenhohebahn (gondola/cable car) that took us up into the mountains, we were away!
The Schmittenhohe like many other mountains has a cross erected at the peak, and a box containing a visitors book, which we duly signed. I don't know what they do with these books when they are full, but somewhere in a dark archive you may find some books containing the signatures of Ann and Dave Jacobs.

Answer: Fuschl

One of the many Austrian lakes ringed by hills and mountains, the Fuschlsee does not allow boats with engines, but we were able to rent one with an electric motor which was quiet and fun.
The Sommerrodelbahn is a summer toboggan run, consisting of a steel track and one-person sleds with a rudimentary brake. It was silly of me to let my wife take the sled ahead of me, as she had her brake on a lot of the way, which made my ride less exhilarating than I might have hoped.
Our walk over the Drachenwand was exciting too, where parts of the track had wire cables cemented into the rock to help you up - or down.

Answer: St Gilgen

While we were staying in Fuschl we took a bus to the neighbouring town of St Gilgen, which is one end of the Wolfgangsee. Here we took a ferry that went down the lake to the town of St Wolfgang, famous for being the setting for the 1920s musical comedy "White Horse Inn".

The local inn gets a lot of tourist trade from that connection. From the town the cog railway takes us up to the top of the mountain called the Schaffberg, where you have a magnificent view of the Mondsee over the other side of the mountain.

This area is called the Salzkammergut, or Austrian lake district.

Answer: Obergurgl

On the steep hillsides around Obergurgl (and a great many other places) you can see rows of what look like fences, that seem to follow contour lines. These are avalanche barriers, that will slow the snow and stop the village being engulfed should an avalanche happen.
The glaciers or icefields (ferne) were shrinking then, in the 1980s, so they may almost be gone by now.
Here too we walked accompanied by the whistling of marmots, which are like European ground-hogs.
Mutters, Natters and Fulpmes are stops on the Stubai railway out of Innsbruck.

Answer: Fulpmes

The meter-gauge railway, that links Innsbruck to the town of Fulpmes in the Stubai valley, was built in 1904. It was here we signed up for an organised walk of 10k or 20k; we felt so good after 10k that we went on and completed the 20k, rewarded with medals, schnapps, and gluwein.

It was here we stopped at a mountain hut (the Starkenberger Hutte) where I had a "Tee mit Rum" to fortify myself before we walked to the top of the Hoher Burgstall for an inspiring view of the entire valley.

Answer: Lech

Lech, or Lech am Arlberg, is in the winter a rather exclusive upmarket ski resort, but for us walkers the range of ski lifts make it easy to get up high into the mountains for magnificent walking. By luck, the time we were there they held a balloon "race" for hydrogen balloons that had entries from all over the world. We spent a morning watching and photographing the pretty balloons being filled and taking off. I think the winner landed somewhere in Italy a couple of days later.

Answer: Kaprun

When we were there in the 1980s the road to the head of the valley was not complete. At one point vehicles had to be driven onto an elevator and be taken up a couple of hundred feet to where the road continued!
One day we rode that train up through a tunnel to a mountain hut, and from there did the "Alexander Enziger Weg", a ridge walk back along the side of the valley (the Kaprunertal) which was spectacularly narrow in some places. You can follow this walk yourself on Utube to get some idea.

Answer: Heiligenblut

Heiligenblut (or Heiligenblut am Grossglockner) has been described as a legendary mountain village, which lies at the foot of the highest mountain in Austria, the Grossglockner.. The name translates as "Holy Blood", and refers to a relic brought here in the 10th Century from Turkey.

The tiny flask of the "Blood of Christ" was formerly in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and was carried here by a Danish knight who died in an avalanche nearby. His body was found in the spring when three ears of corn (which appear in the village coat of arms) sprouted through the melting snow. The church of St Vincent here contains, among villagers' graves, a memorial to adventurers who were killed on the mountain.