The Thrills are Alive

Trying to pronounce Turracherhoehe even after you’ve visited it is almost impossible. But Peter Morgan has reason to list the Austrian mountain village among a few of his favourite things

Charles has asked me to write some words about skiing in Austria and my favourite skiing-chase sequences in films. I am slightly bewildered by this commission, partly because I don’t consider myself an authority on the former, and because I am not remotely interested in the latter. But an editor’s wish is a writer’s command and, let’s face it, Charles is not just an editor, but a cigar-chomping proprietor – so, in deference, I close my weary, bloodshot eyes from the heat of a Santa Monica hotel room and start to try and think of fancy places I’ve never been to ending in “-gurgl” or “-stein”…

But before I do that, allow me to squeeze in a word for the tiny Austrian mountain village where my wife, children and I have a house where we summer, winter and Easter, and where, come early December, it’s possible to ski – not extravagantly or fashionably, but just how we like it. It’s called Turracherhoehe (I know, but please don’t hold that against it), and it’s on the borders of Styria, Carinthia and Salzburg. Given that I am obviously biased, and that there’s nothing more tedious than listening to someone droning on about some off-the-beaten-track dump they hold dear, it might be valuable to pass on what friends say when they stay.

What they generally like is the lack of queues, the intimacy, the “old-fashioned-ness” and how inclusive it is – in that you can ski separately from the rest of your group all day, at your own individual level (in ski school or not) and yet still run into one another every hour or so. They like how we eat lunch together every day at vast tables, children and adults, without booking or worrying but just by rolling up around 1pm – and paying almost nothing. They also like how beautiful it is (much of it is below the tree line, so you ski through forests), how unspoilt it is and, most of all, they like dinner at the local (I should say only) inn.

Gasthaus Bergmann is so authentic, it has to be fake. It really is of the creaking-wooden-door, heads-turning-to-stare, hostile-to-outsiders American Werewolf variety, full of gamekeepers, local drunks, hunters and what look like startling products of dubious couplings. This is Herr Maier’s country kitchen, the heart and soul of Turrach. Apart from the church, the corner shop and the local aristocrats’ hunting lodge, it’s the only building in the village, the only light burning at night and, most commonly for our guests, the only place to go to ask for directions to our house – given in broken English – or to be towed out of a snowdrift.

Dressed eerily like a set from a 1970s vampire movie, it’s complete with blood-spattered walls – everything is stalked, slaughtered and fished to order by the chef, his gun-toting sons or those gamekeepers and it is served in a cigarette-smokey cabin (no ban here) by someone with either a glass eye or a finger missing, or both (accidents with a wood-saw being a fact of life in Turrach). It’s sort of Twin Peaks with more snow. Or League of Gentlemen in Lederhosen. And I think it’s heaven. But don’t take my word for it. Ask our friends or check the ski resort out on Turracherhoehe.at (no pictures of Herr Maier’s kitchen here – animal welfare groups would demand to have it shut down in a flash).

What guests generally don’t like is: you can’t tell anyone about it when you get home because you can’t remember or pronounce the name; the limited number of pistes (only about 25, so if you’re a ski bore who likes skiing with a piste map in your hand, forget it) and it’s a bugger to reach on anything other than a packed Ryanair flight, which has got to be one of the nastiest, more brutal experiences you can expect anyone to go through as an act of free will.

So there you have it. One recommendation at least. (Forgive me, Charles, I’m still struggling to think of a single ski-chase sequence I’ve ever seen or, more importantly, remembered. I’m assuming that for this sophisticated, cine-literate readership Roger Moore in a dodgy back-projection at Pinewood in some Bond movie doesn’t count.)

– Peter Morgan’s latest film is Frost/Nixon

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