This website uses cookies We use cookies to personalize content and ads, to provide social media features, and to analyze traffic on our website. In addition, we use tracking tools such as Matomo and/or Google Analytics to collect anonymous usage data. You can block tracking on our Privacy Policy page. We also share information about your use of our website with our social media, advertising, and analytics partners. Our partners may combine this information with other data that you have provided or that has been collected as part of your use of the Services. For more details on how Google processes personal data, see the Google Business Data Responsibility site.
Data Protection This website uses cookies to offer you the best possible user experience. Cookie information is stored in your browser and enables functions such as recognizing you when you return, and helps our team understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies Strictly necessary cookies should always be enabled to save your cookie settings.
Marketing & Statistics This website separates statistics from marketing. Choosing "Allow statistics only" enables only reach and usage measurement such as Matomo or analytics. Only when "Accept all" is selected are additional marketing, remarketing and advertising signals for services such as Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising or Meta enabled.
Google Tag Manager This is a tag management system. Using the Google Tag Manager, tags can be centrally integrated via a user interface. Script codes from other tools are integrated via the Google Tag Manager. The Tag Manager allows controlling when a specific tag is triggered.
Notice on the use of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems may be used on this website to support the creation, editing, translation, structuring or presentation of content and the provision of individual functions.
Unless otherwise stated directly with the relevant content or function, texts created with AI support are reviewed for content by a natural person, editorially approved before publication and published under the responsibility of the website operator.
Where users interact directly with an AI system, for example via a chatbot, voice assistant, avatar or AI agent, they are clearly and understandably informed no later than at the start of the interaction that they are communicating with an AI system.
AI-generated or AI-manipulated image, audio or video content that could be perceived as authentic or truthful, as well as other content subject to labelling requirements under Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, is clearly and perceptibly labelled as artificially generated or manipulated directly with the relevant content.
Existing technical or machine-readable provenance and labelling information is retained where possible when content is processed further.
Where personal data is processed through AI-assisted functions, the processing is carried out in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. Further information on the purpose, legal basis, recipients, storage period and possible transfers to third countries can be found in this Privacy Policy under the relevant service or function.
Today I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine who supported my father-in-law on the alm for a few weeks last year. She’s a professional musician in Düsseldorf, a particularly lovely person—down-to-earth, warm-hearted, close to nature—and last summer she discovered a love of alm life. I’d like to share her impressions because they reflect so much of why an alm can give you so much for the heart, even if it’s hard work. Enjoy reading. Katharina
My time out on the alm
After incredibly turbulent, loud and communication-intensive weeks in my big-city life, I longed for fresh country air, silence and a breathtakingly wide view over the mountains. To feel solitude and look at the world from above for once—that was my plan…
I was incredibly lucky to spend a few weeks this summer living—and above all working—with Hias, the Alm Grandpa, and Nelli the sheepdog, on the Zittraueralm at 1,872 metres above sea level.
A stay on the alm is definitely not for late sleepers or morning grouches, because the work-filled day begins with the sun coming up and a quick wash at the fountain in the early hours.
Since Hias did the stable work on his own, in the morning—after usually bringing the cows in together—I was responsible for keeping the household running smoothly: fetching wood, lighting the fire to warm the parlour and heat the water, cleaning the rustic hut, watering the flowers, and then preparing breakfast were my first tasks of the day.
After breakfast together with homemade products such as ham, various jams, home-baked bread and filter coffee brewed on the wood stove, different tasks were on the agenda depending on the weather, such as: chopping wood, collecting herbs, clearing scrub … until in the afternoon the animals had to be driven down from the mountain to the hut again for milking.
While Hias looked after the animals in the stable, I prepared dinner after lighting the fire again, which we often ate with enjoyment—tired, but with a big appetite.
As early as a day on an alm hut begins, it usually ends just as early. Exhausted from fresh air, sun and lots of physical work, you fall asleep peacefully early in the evening.
For me, the stay on the Zittraueralm was just right: no fear of solitude, mosquito bites, muddy clothes, the odd splinter from chopping wood or a blister on my foot from a too-tight hiking boot, and longing for emptiness of people, peace and slowing down in the magically beautiful mountain idyll—simply wonderful.
Follow us: