Innsbruck: Austria's ski-and-city break

We find our snow legs on the wide slopes of Patscherkofel, one of nine ski villages around the city within a short bus or train ride. There is plenty here to challenge the most accomplished of skiers: it hosted the Winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976, and there’s an Olympic downhill piste, training centre and resident champion and coach, Werner Margreiter, who has won dozens of medals, nurtured many more champions, and gives lessons to the type of skiers who don’t need lessons. He will shave milliseconds off your best time, or simply help you learn to love the sport with his infectious enthusiasm. My shaky parallel turns soon become more con dent, my carving more graceful, and I’m feeling really rather pleased with myself until a school of tiny children bomb past me at 100 miles an hour.

Also at Patscherkofel is an Olympic bobsleigh run. We wander over to watch, and are surprised to find that any idiot with €90 can have a go. They claim it is entirely safe, but within two seconds you feel sure that you are about to die horribly. You hurtle, unbelievably fast, along a flue of ice that whirls you around and upside down and flings you from side to side in the metal cage until, breathless from the speed and disorientated by the centrifugal force, you think you cannot take another second. Then suddenly it’s over. It lasts just a minute – a very long, adrenalin-fuelled minute that is terrifying and exhilarating. What a buzz, what a rush, what a thrill!

And what a contrast when, a couple of hours later, after dinner in the Old Town, we are sitting among the city’s dowagers in their furs and pearls and velvet at the Tyrolean State Theatre. It’s an old-fashioned theatre, ringed with boxes and lit softly, and a genteel place to spend the evening after a day of exercise. A good thing that tonight’s performance is not Brahms, then, but a modern- dance interpretation of Wagner’s rousing and dramatic Ring – four epic operas reduced, thankfully, to a more manageable three hours.

Brunch seems like a civilised way to start the day, and there is no more uplifting place for brunch than the restaurant on top of Bergisel, the late architect Zaha Hadid’s soaring, swooshing high-heel of a ski jump. Bergisel is where Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards took flight, albeit disastrously, in 1989. In 2003, Hadid designed a remarkable new ski jump and put a modern restaurant on the top, with breathtaking views across the mountains and cups of hot chocolate to warm your hands. From the roof you can lean over for a vertiginous, jumper’s-eye view down the 37o-incline run. (Just beyond it is a cemetery; ‘So if you don’t make it, there’s a place for you at the bottom,’ laughs the manager Harry.)

Spread out below is the city, with the higgledy-piggledy roofs of the Old Town and, in contrast, Hadid’s Nordkettenbahn train station, which looks like an ice sculpture melting in the morning sun. It takes 20 minutes for the funicular and then a cable car to speed you upwards to Hadid’s station at the top of the mountain, from which you can see Italy on one side and Germany on the other, stretching out before you.
Whatever the locals think of Hadid herself (‘Late for her own opening ceremony,’ tuts one), they are justifiably proud of their new architecture. In some ways, Innsbruck is in a world and a time of its own: sleepy, gentle, old-fashioned. But there is nothing old-fashioned about its daring modern construction, which seems to have jolted the city awake after 100 years asleep.

Alongside the many traditional restaurants, for example, an increasing number of contemporary options are beginning to open, some within the listed buildings, serving international dishes in stylish settings. On the menus you’ll find pan-Asian and modern European, as well as local cuisine. It’s no longer just dumplings with everything, although they do feature almost everywhere, as does the Austrian speciality Wienerschnitzel, about which Innsbruck’s waiters are inordinately enthusiastic. Worth ordering, certainly, though perhaps not for every meal.

The city’s bars are a similar mix of old and new, we discover that evening. After a super-caloric dinner of tender pink barbary duck and a wonderful roast guinea fowl stuffed with truffled quail in the pine-panelled restaurant of the Grand Hotel Europa, justi ed by an afternoon on the tree-lined slopes at Muttereralm, we decide to forgo pudding and head out in search of a digestif or two. There’s no shortage of good bars, from the typically Tyrol of the Old Town (wooden benches beneath low vaulted ceilings) to the Scandi-style Sitzwohl and all-glass 360º on the roof of the modern city hall, which was overhauled in 2004 by French architect Dominique Perrault. The city’s up-and-coming bar culture feels exciting, and the people are friendly and refreshingly unselfconscious. And we certainly have no trouble finding a decent Martini.

As with any other skiing holiday, we had planned all kinds of pre-ski exercises to prepare ourselves; and, as with any other skiing holiday, we had put off doing them until it was too late. Consequently, by the third day, our muscles are protesting. More precisely, my husband is protesting, having spent a good deal of the trip falling off a snowboard. Secretly, I am delighted at the thought of wearing something other than ski boots and salopettes for a day. Wandering around the city would be exercise enough.

Innsbruck is easily small enough to cover on foot. Around Maria-Theresien-strasse and the Rathaus there are some good clothes shops, while the cobbled streets of the Old Town are crammed with boutiques, cafés, and the inevitable Tyrol kitsch. Don’t forget to look up, above the shops, to the centuries-old embellished façades. Once upon a time, Innsbruck was the hub of the glorious Habsburg Empire until, beset by madness, syphilis, tragedy and misfortune (no sons), the empire declined and eventually fell. You can have a lovely time wandering around by yourself, absorbing the history; or you can look behind the walls with a local who knows which doors to open. Tour guide Elisabeth Grassmayr’s family have lived here for 500 years. The tiny sexagenarian, who walks up mountains in the morning and skis down them in the afternoons for fun, has boundless energy and knowledge, and will talk all day if you let her.

A tour with Elisabeth is like following the White Rabbit. She darts round the city as though it is her own personal Wonderland: past medieval, baroque, rococo and Gothic walls at all kinds of angles but straight; past 15th-century inns where Mozart and Wagner, Camus and Sartre stayed; past other tour groups standing around looking cold as their guides talk on. At the candy-pink Spitalkirche church she pushes open the door and we tiptoe inside like thieves, our footsteps echoing round the ornate baroque ceiling. No inch is left unadorned: a great big iced cake, fit for a pope. The next moment Elisabeth disappears into McDonald’s, bizarrely. ‘Look, the ceiling is 500 years old,’ she says, pointing up at the original beams. It looks more hunting lodge than fast-food chain; beneath the mounted stags’ heads, incongruously, a few tourists chew Doppel-hamburgers in their coats. When we come to the golden-roofed house of Emperor Maximilian we go right in (the door is unlocked, to our surprise) and out the other side, into a hidden courtyard set within the city wall itself. Using both hands, Elisabeth turns the heavy brass handle (‘my family made these’, she beams) on another wooden door and suddenly we are through the wall and on the outside of the Old Town, and back to the present day.

On our final day, we are keen to make the most of the snow before we leave. Serious skiers head for Kühtai. Really serious skiers head for the Arlberg region, 100km away, a mustachioed Frankfurter tells me on the chairlift; but Kühtai is challenging enough for us. The ski area climbs from a 2,000-metre base, so the snow is reliable, and there are good red runs and some blacks. Kühtai was built around a 17th-century hunting lodge that was once a retreat of the Habsburgs and is now the Hotel Jagdschloss, owned by one of the last remaining royal descendents, Count Christian Stolberg-Stolberg, who strolls around the place in Tyrolean dress. It is a beautiful, authentic old hotel with the best restaurant in the village, and we ski right up to the terrace. It is tempting, after lunch, to get back on the slopes for a nal run down, before we have to head to the airport, and home. But the Prosecco proves more tempting still, and we order one more glass to enjoy before the sun sinks down behind the mountains. This, we agree, is how skiing holidays should be.

THE BEST HOTELS IN INNSBRUCK

Grand Hotel Europa
2 Südtiroler Platz (00 43 512 5931; www.grandhoteleuropa.at).
The city’s only five-star; the place to stay. Its new owners added a fabulous bar in the lobby and smartened up the rooms, many with 200-year-old wood four-posters. There’s a listed baroque hall and a fantastic restaurant that does a great breakfast, and a mix of international and Austrian dishes with local ingredients (lots of fish and game). A big spa is in the of ng; for now, there’s a steam room, sauna and treatment room.

The Penz Hotel
3 Adolf-Pichler-Platz (00 43 512 57 56 570; www.the-penz.com).
A rare modern option that’s part of Perrault’s glass town hall; its lively bar on the fifth floor has mountain views and great cocktails.

Hotel Goldener Adler
6 Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse (00 43 512 57 11 11; www.goldeneradler.com).
Historic hotel near the Golden Roof; past guests include Mozart, Wagner, several emperors, Goethe, Camus and Sartre. Doubles from €126

Schwarzer Adler
2 Kaiserjägerstrasse (00 43 512 58 71 09; www.deradler.com). Unashamedly chintzy; the Versace room features a Jacuzzi and lots of black satin, the Swarovski Crystal Dream a sparkly bathroom.

Hotel Weisses Kreuz
31 Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse (00 43 512 594 790; www. weisseskreuz.at). Another Old Town hotel to have had Mozart as a guest. This one dates from 1465 and is good value. Doubles from €99

HOTELS IN THE MOUNTAINS NEAR INNSBRUCK

Hotel Jagdschloss Kühtai
(00 43 5239 5201; www.jagdschloss.at). Former royal hunting lodge high in the mountains, with 18th-century panelling, cosy lounges and a sun terrace. Doubles from €115

Lanserhof
153 Kochholzweg, Lans (00 43 512 386660 www.lanserhof.at). Futuristic mountain spa 10 minutes’ drive from the city. Roman Abramovich recharges here.

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK IN INNSBRUCK

Dengg 11–13 Riesengasse (00 43 512 582 347; www. dengg.co.at). One of the city’s most stylish restaurants, with an international menu. Its sister café, Katzung, is around the corner at 16 Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse and is popular with well-dressed ladies having coffee and cake. Café-Bar Moustache 8 Badgasse, Herzog-Otto- Strasse (00 43 680 216 39 08; www.cafe-moustache.at). Named for the personable young owner’s magni cent facial topiary, this new bar is buzzing. A jumble of vaulted, catacomb-like rooms: one room has table football, one has live music, another is full of young, arty types hooked up to hookah pipes.
Pfefferkorn 8 Seilergasse, Old Town (00 43 512 565 444; www.pepper.at). Sleek, modern bar/restaurant in a historic building. An older, more sophisticated crowd eat and drink cocktails in low velvet chairs, under a huge, Swarovski-crystal chandelier.
Dom Bar 3 Pfarrgasse (00 43 512 23 85 51). Crypt-like bar with whitewashed walls, original beams, modern furniture and chic antiques.
Fischerhäusl 8 Herrengasse (00 43 512 583535; www. scherhaeusl. com). Hidden away behind the cathedral, this restaurant and bar is in an atmospheric old house with a courtyard.
Hudelist 5 Seilergasse (00 43 512 56 27 28; www. jazz-restaurant.com). Jazz, a well-stocked bar and a cosy monochrome interior. sitzwohl Stadtforum (00 43 512 56 28 88; www. restaurantsitzwohl.at). Design-savvy contemporary restaurant upstairs, cool bar and a deli downstairs. Housed, along with an art gallery, in a former school.
Lichtblick/360º Rathaus, Maria-Theresien-Strasse (www.restaurant-lichtblick.at). Go past the shops near the Rathaus and take the lift to the seventh floor, where the all-glass restaurant and bar have 360o views of the city and mountains and a viewing terrace round the outside.
Stadtcafé 1 Universitäts-strasse (00 43 512 90 88 00; www.tag-und-nacht.at). Light, modern café-bar next to the Landestheater, which gets lively at night and spills out into the square in summer.
Café Sacher Rennweg 1 (00 43 512 56 56 26; www.cafesacher.com). A sister café of the Vienna original. Warm up on your sightseeing stroll around the Old Town with cake and hot chocolate.
Alfred Miller’s Schöneck6 Weiherburggasse (00 43 512 272 728; www.wirtshaus- schoeneck.com). Award- winning restaurant on the other side of the river.

BEST THINGS TO DO IN INNSBRUCK

Bergisel ski jump (00 43 512 589 259; www.bergisel.info). Take the cable car up for vertiginous views of the city and mountains from the Zaha Hadid-designed structure. The restaurant at the top serves contemporary food; admission free if you buy brunch. Open 9am–5pm
A tour of Innsbruck Guide Elisabeth Grassmayr offers lively, informative tours of the city (00 43 512 267205; innsbruck-guide@utanet.at).
Tiroler Landestheater 2 Rennweg (00 43 512 520 744; www.landestheater.at). Varied cultural programme, from contemporary dance to classical recitals.
Shopping For fashion, try Rathaus mall and the streets around Maria-Theresien-Strasse. Good boutiques in the Old Town: horologists, gifts, curiosities, homewares and culinary specialists.
Markets In the Markthalle, a farmers’ market is open Mon-Sat mornings; in the Old Town during December is a Christmas Market. Museums and galleries Find details at Innsbruck Tourism (00 43 512 59850; www.innsbruck-tourism.at).

GETTING TO INNSBRUCK

British Airways (08444 930787; www.ba.com) flies to Innsbruck from Gatwick. EasyJet (0905 821 0905; www.easyjet.com) flies to Innsbruck from Gatwick, Bristol and Liverpool.