Life

Austria: positively logical

A visit to Austria wasn't a mere skiing trip for Geoff Hill who ended up getting his head in a twist and his liver taxed - and all in the absence of real snow

IN THE 20s and 30s, Austria was the home of the Wiener Kreis, a group of logical positivists who, having nothing else to do in the long winter evenings, invented the verifiability principle which stated that things were only meaningful if you could prove they existed. They suffered a serious blow when the Nazis arrived in 1938, since although you can't prove a stormtrooper exists, having one on your doorstep is still deeply meaningful.

However, they suffered an even more serious blow when they realised that they couldn't even prove that the verifiability principle itself existed.

At this point the heads of several members exploded, and most of the rest went to America to become taxi drivers, leaving only Ludwig Wittgenstein, who spent the rest of his life analysing language before realising that he couldn't really use language to analyse itself.

Faced with such a national predilection for imploding paradoxes, you can see why Julie Andrews thought it was far simpler to fling on a habit and skip down a mountain singing The Hills are Alive.

And yet, within an hour of arriving in the country I hadn't seen her once. Nor had I seen anyone slapping their lederhosen, playing the alpenhorn in an oompah band or wearing one of those little felt yodelling hats with a feather up the side.

Even worse, in spite of the fact that I had arrived for a ski trip, there was no sign as I arrived in Kirchberg of the small but crucial element of snow.

Still, since I couldn't prove it, there was no point analysing it, so I went on a sleigh ride around town with a delightful girl called Maria. Clever things, Austrian sleighs, with both wheels and runners that Maria could crank up or down depending on whether there's snow or not.

After an amiable hour of trotting around town I found a nice little hotel with a nice little bar, and ordered a nice little beer. It was so good I had several more, gazing out of the window at the twilight and the mist embracing each other around the mountains.

After a while the waitress seemed to be bringing more beers than she was taking away glasses, and at first I thought this was due to the effect named after the Salzburg scientist Christian Johann Doppler, who discovered that the frequency of a note changes as it approaches then leaves an observer.

But then I realised it was because Austrian beer was stronger than I had thought, and had reduced me to that absurdly happy state known as illogical positivism.

There was still no sign of snow when I woke the next morning, but according to Zem, my veteran guide, it was not a problem. "We have 280 big snowmaking machines, costing €30,000 each, and 430 smaller ones. We go up!" he grinned, as we swayed heavenward in the gondola.

And of course, he was right: even halfway up the mountain, the disturbingly green slopes had been transformed into a white wonderland, and it was, after all, December, so by the time you read this, all will be snow.

We spent the day happily swooshing down perfect pistes and tucking into hearty nosh in the lovely wooden mountain lodges that make skiing in Austria such a pleasure, and I was as content as a stuffed marmot when I said farewell to Zem for the day and took the bus to Brixen for a schnapps tasting at the 363-year-old Erber Distillery run by a relaxed Dutchman, Tonni de Man, who had come late to distilling after a career as professional ballroom dancer. As you do. Now, in most distilleries the product is more interesting than the process, but the glistening copper vats and winding pipes, the venerable white dials and Tonni's passion for his art made this a fascinating jaunt through a sort of Willy Wonka factory for drinkers designed by Heath Robinson.

A unique synergy of peerless raw materials, science and alchemy has seen Erber win 15 gold, seven silver and five bronze medals in the world spirits awards, so it was hardly surprising that after tasting most of the 43 different flavours of schnapps Erber produces, I somehow emerged into the

cold and starry night carrying several bags whose gentle clinking was a sign that I'd had another of those credit card blackouts, and a herald of many evenings to come in which my liver would get what it deserved.

After all, as we all know, livers are evil and must be punished.

And so to Kitzbühel, so upmarket that not only do all the men and women in town have full-length sable fur coats, but their dogs do as well.

Fortunately, there was a cheaper option: drinking glühwein from a stall in the cobbled square while listening to a male voice choir singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night), that loveliest of hymns, and probably the only song in the world that sounds better in German than English. Apart, possibly, from 99 Red Balloons, that is.

Afterwards, I somehow ended up in the casino, where I almost immediately lost my shirt in a game of Strip Snap and took solace in a delicious steak in the attached restaurant, washed down by a bottle of fine Merlot and with chips which were a lot more reliable than the ones in the casino. Next morning, I flung back the curtains to find that the clouds of the day before had gone to wherever clouds go and been replaced by blue skies and the sun glittering on the snow of the upper slopes. An hour later, Zem and I were standing up there, and after a day of exploring every single run on the mountain, we were sitting happily in front of a cold beer and a warm fire in the Tiroler Pub back in Kirchberg, feeling illogically positive.

Which, as any member of the Wiener Kreis would tell you, is a great feeling, even if they can't prove it.

* GATEWAY CITY: Salzburg, home of scientist Christian Johann Doppler and arrival point for Belfast flights