People

When Covid-19 restrictions made life in the city hard to take, our author grabbed his laptop and headed for the hills to set up his very own home office in a mountain hut. Here's how he got on.

Far from civilisation, the highest huts in the Alps have always exerted a special fascination. These mountaineering basecamps are a gateway to an otherwise inaccessible world of sheer rockfaces and eternal ice. Among the most eye-catching and awe-inspiring high-mountain huts in the Austrian Alps is the Brandenburger Haus. Perched at 3,277 metres above sea level, it can be reached on foot in six to eight hours either from the Kaunertal Valley or the Ötztal Valley.

The French have their cottages, persons from Berlin their weekend homes – and Tiroleans have a paradise on their doorstep. Five locals tell us about their personal secret escapes: the perfect places to relax, recharge your batteries or just have fun.

Fire, water, cattle and wood. Essentially, this is all Sarah Kofler, Janis Pönisch and their two children need each summer, when they leave their work and city life in the valley to spend two months on an ‘Alm’ high in the Austrian Alps. Tending 34 cattle in a world that you thought was long gone at the heart of Hohe Tauern National Park.

Wood is a key element of Tirol's landscape and lifestyle. While the valley is dominated by large industrial sawmills, the mountains are still home to a few smallscale businesses which have been around for decades, if not centuries. We travelled to the Alpbachtal Valley to meet one of Tirol's last remaining master sawyers.

Tirol is home to more than a dozen remote end-of-valley communities. These small villages hidden away deep in the mountains have retained their original character. What is life like there? We met seven people who live at the end of a valley road (and none of them wanted to swap for a life in the city).

For many visitors to Tirol, contact with the locals is limited to the ski lifts, hotels and supermarket checkouts. But what are Tiroleans really like? We headed away from the pistes and bars to find out more about the lives of locals.

We asked international couples about the role the mountains have played in their relationship.

Daniel Sperl, 38, and his Columbian wife Carolina Osorio Rogelis, 41, live in Innsbruck. They are both involved in the Climate Alliance Austria and import fair-trade coffee from Columbia, transported across the seas on sailing ships.

Timna, 31, and her Argentinian husband Juan, 34, first met on a beach in South America. Today the family lives in Innsbruck.