140 GOURMET TRAVELLER
owner Florian Moosbrugger. He and his wife Sandra
host weekly cocktails to welcome new arrivals and
outline the coming week’s activities. These might
include an outing to the hotel’s hunting hut at
Lake Formarin for cheese noodles, wine tasting
(Moosbrugger’s brother owns an excellent vineyard,
Schloss Gobelsburg) and dinner in the revamped
dining room with panoramic village views.
Any stay in a top Arlberg hotel is underwritten
by the hospitality of its hosts. Running a hotel in
these parts is a vocation, not a job. Moosbrugger
talks of “the philosophy of hosting people” and later,
over Champagne in the bar, gives me a first-hand
demonstration of what he means by recounting
the hotel’s storied history.
His grandmother Fanziska, a woman fond of
whisky and cigars, bought the Post in 1937. The
stuffed ibex on a rocky plinth outside the bar was,
it turns out, shot by his mother Kristl to mark the
successful reintroduction of the species to the region.
Florian took over the hotel in 1988 after his father’s
sudden death from altitude sickness in the Himalayas.
He runs it in traditional Austrian style with great
warmth and a twinkle in the eye. If you imagineClockwise from
above: Lechtal
Valley; the
Kaiser suite
at Hotel Gasthof
Post; Bürstegg’s
Norbert and
Franziska
Bitschnau;
cows and
lederhosen
at Bürstegg.Austrians as dour Germanic types then think again.
“We are friendly, positive, fun, singing people,”
Moosbrugger assures me.
That’s certainly my experience. The following
morning I set off on a mountain ramble with Harald
Rausch the wanderführer (hiking guide). He is a lanky,
instantly likeable man who says things like, “When
I look at this area through other people’s eyes who
have never been here, I can appreciate it even more,”
as we amble through spruce forests towards Bürstegg.
He leads me through lush fields painted with gentian,
rampions, bright fuchsia bursts of knapweed and
pink autumn crocuses, past munching cows in
settings straight from a chocolate ad.
The tiny township of Bürstegg was founded in
the 14th century by Swiss migrants who fled to the
mountains to avoid taxes. At 1,800 metres it was
the Alps’ highest settlement for 500 years, until
a priest convinced the last holdouts to relocate to
the valley in 1890.
There’s still one couple who migrate here every
summer to pasture their cows. They also operate a
simple kiosk from a 500-year-old farmhouse, serving
jause – an in-between meal of cheese, speck and bread