Austria 

Spotlight On Bad Gastein

Originally written for OnTheSnow.com)
by Ted Heck

Anyone into the lingo of today’s youth knows that “bad” is a good adjective. In German the word, when preceding a noun, denotes that the town is a spa, where all sorts of good things happen to you.

In Bad Gastein some residents claim they can cure everything from the heartbreak of psoriasis to the anguish of sexual impotency. Ailing people with assorted ills come here from around the world to take the cure, often approved by insurance programs.

The secret is in thermal waters that contain radon, a gas that makes us nervous in the United States, but which Europeans believe is safe and therapeutic. It’s an attitude traced back to monks in the Middle Ages and reinforced during World War II. Slave laborers in the local gold mine were healthier than their better-fed German guards. Today the mine is visited regularly by people who spend 50 minutes in hot “healing caves” containing the gas.

Some skiers come to cure bad habits in well-run ski schools, but most of them come to soothe their egos on interconnected mountains with great cruising terrain. The lift circuits link Bad Gastein and Bad Hofgastein, the former a classic Old World resort, the latter a modern counterpoint. At the entrance of the valley, above rural Dorf Gastein, another “circus” connects over the mountain with slopes descending into another valley. In all there are 44 lifts and 125 miles of prepared runs.

The most popular venue is the Stubnerkogel, a giant ice cream cone that looms over Bad Gastein. It is accessed by a gondola near the train station on the main street. (The town is on the route from Salzburg to Italy.) The front face of Stubnerkogel faces the sun, but many skiers go around the back for a run down through trees into the Angertal, then up onto the Schlossalm, another treeless white meadow. The final descent on this pleasant seven-mile journey deposits skiers in Bad Hofgastein, where they can sip a potent Jagatee while waiting for a bus or train to take them back to Bad Gastein.

There they replay their day with friends who may have opted for tougher stuff at Sport Gastein, still another area six miles out of town. A cross country loop also is located there; the entire Gastein valley has more than 60 miles of Nordic tracks.

After dark the vacationers swim in thermal waters of some hotels or in the community pool, where saunas are always nude and sometimes mixed. They visit a fine folk museum, congress center, casino, or browse in many shops. Or maybe they stand on the bridge and watch the waterfall that drops hundreds of feet through the town. Sometimes it’s only a trickle through the ice; in spring thaw it becomes a roaring torrent.

Bad Gastein is an hour south of Salzburg, two hours from Munich. It is reputed to have more overnight guests than any city in Austria except Vienna.