“Is this your first time in the Tyrol?” asks Jurgen, who has collected my partner and me at Munich airport and is driving us two hours south to a new luxury hotel in the Austrian Alps.
It is. Only in a way it isn’t. Ever since 1965, when I saw The Sound of Music as a six-year-old, I have thought of green pasture backed by snowy mountains as the pinnacle of natural beauty. And now, after six further decades in which I’ve watched the film dozens more times, I am finally visiting in person — spookily the same week a far-right party has emerged as the strongest in the Austrian elections.
But there will be no talk of fascism — or anything nasty — during my stay at Eriro. The point of this exclusive hotel, just opened and with only nine bedrooms, is not to dwell on politics or normal life at all but to get close and personal with nature. The hotel’s website shows a disembodied arm caressing a rock and a picture of a long-haired woman (who turns out to be one of the owners) walking barefoot round a lake. How ludicrous, I think, before reflecting that Fraulein Maria would surely have been up for some barefoot frolicking, and I should be too.