Perfect for the winter vacationer
The ski resort (www.bergbahnenmellau.com) Mellau invites you to take part in sporting activities. The valley station is only 600 metres from our house, the shuttle bus is free, the bus stop is 150 metres on foot next to our house. From the valley station you can reach the skiing area with over 100 km of slopes and 30 lifts in just a few minutes. In the village, next to the valley station, there is an excellent children’s ski school. Non-skiers will find many kilometres of prepared hiking trails around Mellau and various possibilities for tobogganing or sledging. The passionate or ambitious cross-country skier will find a cross-country trail with different degrees of difficulty and a length of 22.5 kilometres.
Summer
The Bregenzerwald is as if created by God for summer activities. The gentle hills of the Vorderwald invite you to take long walks, and the striking and beautiful peaks in the Hinterwald offer every mountaineer a challenge tailored to their needs. Those who prefer to take to the skies will find two flying areas – Niedere near Bezau-Andelsbuch (www.paragliding school.at) and Diedamskopf at Au-Schoppernau (www.gleitschirmschule.at) – thanks to gentle upwinds and good-natured thermal conditions, the best launch possibilities.
Culinary recommendations
The Bregenzerwald is widely praised for its traditional, down-to-earth cuisine, and anyone who is enthusiastic about Kässpätzle & Konsorten is guaranteed to be right in our region. In addition, you will also find restaurants of the finest cuisine, two “hood” restaurants (www.biohotel-schwanen.com, www.alte-muehle.cc) and countless top-class restaurants and cafés bear witness to this. Among them are numerous, in which cultivated hospitality goes hand in hand with the solidity of old, rural living culture.
Culture
The Bregenzerwald has a lot to offer as a cultural landscape, especially for lovers of old and modern architecture. Those who are enthusiastic about traditional handicrafts will meet very special masters of their trade who will present their handicrafts and craftsmanship in their own museum (www.werkraum.at). Lovers of sophisticated entertainment get their money’s worth every year at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg (www.schubertiade.at), and those looking for something special in everyday life should get to know the Frauenmuseum Hittisau. It is the first and only women’s museum (www.frauenmuseum.at) in Austria and one of the few in rural areas. Musically, one always gets one’s money’s worth in August, when on the occasion of the Bezau Beatz Festival (www.bezaubeatz.at) top-class musicians from the fields of jazz, singer/songwriter and world and pop music meet beyond the mainstream in Bezau for a musical get-together.
Art
Numerous churches house valuable paintings, a very special gem is the church in Damüls with frescoes from the 15th century. The apostle paintings in the parish church Schwarzenberg bear witness to how talented the world-famous artist Angelika Kauffmann (1741 to 1807) was when she was 16, further works by the Bregenzerwald baroque painter are on display in the Angelika Kaufmann Museum in Schwarzenberg (www.bregenzerwald.at). In the Franz-Michel-Felder-Museum (www.bregenzerwald), on the other hand, you can experience a completely different art genre in Schoppernau, where you get a deep insight into the life and work of a man who was both a farmer and a social reformer, who understood the art of the literary disc, and who in his short life (1839 to 1869) was in tireless correspondence with the intellectual greats of his time.