The mountains of Austria are the backdrop of a fairytale. Dotted here and there with small farmyards, pockets of spruce, and slender church steeples, a string of storybook towns are woven together by narrow roads winding through the foothills of the Alps. Among these picturesque hamlets rests our very favourite—the tiny village of Gosau.
With a dramatic blend of rolling hills and craggy peaks, this breathtaking landscape begged us to undertake several unique challenges, including but not limited to: discreetly changing into our bathing suits on a public beach and following an elderly nun 500 arduous stone steps to a hilltop church.
Nestled between the forested cliffs are small, shimmering lakes, easily accessible in a fairly lacklustre rental car.
Being from Canada, it seemed more than a little bizarre to wade into a mountain lake in nothing but baggy, very non-European swim trunks (after all, a dip in the Canadian Rockies doesn’t come without feeling like a sausage in an 8mm wetsuit). But the small children who ran into the water ahead of us gave us courage, so in we went.
It was glorious.
For more reasons than we can count, Gosau and surrounding area makes the list of our all-time favourite places.