St Johann im Pongau to be in the snow

After a few days of snow in Salzburg, we really wanted to find an area which didn’t just have a few wet puddles left over but had actual snow. We decided to head to St. Johann in the Pongau region, south of Salzburg city, a well-known hub for tourism, skiing, and Alpine activities, to see the snow up close and enjoy the crisp, snowy landscape.

The train only took 1 hour and then the bus up the hill was another 15 minutes and it was a balmy 5 degrees but inside the train and bus was nice and warm.

There were 2 young guys sitting on the train with us with their snowboards and fully clothed in skii gear ready to hit the slopes. They were speaking in English but I couldn’t quite decide if they were Australian, Irish or American. My curiosity got the better of me and I struck up a conversation and they were happy to chat and explained they were from Las Angeles living in Salzburg and studying business. Bens radar went wild when he heard this especially as Austrians can pretty much study for free and he was then toying with the idea of doing the same business course.. For the life of me I can’t remember their names but they were going to Alpendort to ski which was 15 minutes out of town.

We didn’t really have an agenda of what we were going to do in town so we jumped on the same bus as them and went up to Alpendorf.

At the top we wished them all the best and off they went to skii.

Ben and I had no intention of skiing that day but we found the area very pretty and discovered there was a gondola you could take up to the summit to look at the views (which we plan to do when dressed appropriately when we return) and there are a variety of ski runs, blue, red and black runs.

After wandering around and exploring we were ready to catch the bus, but it wasn’t due for another hour and I wasn’t going to wait, so we decided to walk back down to the town and the train station. The route was all down hill and there was snow on all the hillsides and there was even a few little streams of water along the way running down the hill.

We could also see the town gradually unfolding below us with all the roof tops covered in snow like a blanket of smooth white with just the church steeples peeking out above the rooftops.

In town we were going to find lunch somewhere but this was the quietest town we have been to and everything was closed and I mean everything. Well it was Sunday after all but there was perhaps a pub open and not much else.

We decided not to get lunch and luckily Ben brought our staples of salami and Krak crackers with him so we snacked on those.

Then when we walked back to the train station we found the cutest path winding through the mountain and it was covered in snow. It was icy slippery and a whole lot of fun which we enjoyed the challenge of making our way along. I only think we liked it due to the novelty and newness of the walk in the snow in snow shoes.

Back at our apartment we had a brew of the newest thing we were enjoying which is a steamy mug of beef broth and its very tasty and warm you up nicely.