Bregenz
After a forty minute train journey, our double Decker train pulled into Bregenz. It is the only Austrian town on the Lake of Constance. It has an open air theatre next to the lake, and the first time I was here many years ago, I walked all the way from here to Lindau, a good 10km away alongside the lake. Today we would go up the cable car to the summit of Mountain Pffander, which is 1,065m high (€8 for a return ticket). From up here you get amazing views of the lake and Swiss Alps, and in the far distance you can make out the island of which Lindau is on and maybe Friedrichshafen, but it was impossible to see if there was any airplanes taking off from the airport.
After walking out of the cable car station, the pathway was surrounded by snow.
Bregenz
The snow was about 6ft high, as tall as me. Wow! The local play park which had some swings was covered, and when I went to the viewing air with a telescope, you can just about make out the top of the telescope. There is a small eagle show which takes place up here, but during the winter, there are no performances. But you can see mountain goats and wild boars performing head butting movements against each other. A snow plough rushed by nearly killing me and Ollie. Ollie thought he lost his glove to the snow plough, while I had to dive into the snow to one side of the road, which lead to a sheer drop and I could of fell about 50ft. Stupid snow plough. Not the snow plough king I know like the one on the Simpsons.
Walking down to the nearby bar, there was a few families sledging and skiing.
Danik on Mountain Pffander
Ollie and I decided to do some movie stunt movements in the deep snow for some action photography but this landed up turning into a snowball fight. I then got fed up with this and wanted to go on a wander. I noticed a path in between a gap in the trees and had a walker’s marker painted onto one of them. Let’s go for a walk. Up and down the track, making sure we didn’t lose the path, we walked quite some distance. At one point, while Ollie needed to sort him self out, views of the Alpine mountains to the east came into view and look fantastic. I could also see small white clouds floating in the sky. I was looking down at them. Amazing! I love been high up in the mountains. It is so quiet and peaceful. It gets me a way from working in the busy city life back home in London. After Ollie returned, we carried on walking, when a Austrian walker came past and noticed that Ollie had carrier bags in his trainers over his socks and made a funny remark.
Danik on Mountain Pffander
After about ninety minutes, Ollie decided to take a path which I wasn’t sure about as it didn’t have any markers. Ollie was certain that this was a path and that someone had walked down this route before the snow covered 80% of the tracks up. We climbed upwards up the steep mountainside. I kept questioning myself, talking out loud when Ollie made an angry remark. But I was to be proved right. This wasn’t a path and Ollie got himself into trouble. I was walking (mainly climbing) behind him when he got stuck on this really steep side of mountain. He was kind of stuck. I came up beside him and said what’s wrong. He wasn’t sure if he could climb anymore as it looks dangerous.
Danik on Mountain Pffander
He also said he has also looked down and noticed it was a sharp drop for about 50-80ft. No ground underneath us. I thought silly man. I told him to follow me, as we only had 15ft to climb upwards and then it looked like flat land or the summit of mountain Pffander. So I just climb across and made it to the top within two minutes. I just sat at the top waiting for Ollie, which in the end got the strength and pulled himself together. He got to the top. His near death experience was over. I still questioned him on why did he look down? He didn’t really want to talk about it.
When we started walking, we noticed we weren’t far from the pffanderbahn (cable car station). We could see the huge red signal mast and to be honest, looked like a twenty minute trek away.
Danik on Mountain Pffander
It was still daylight with blue clear skies. We weren’t in any danger anymore. We sat down for a while getting ourselves together as it is really hard work to walk in the deep snow, and noticed that we had a very good view of the Lake of Constance. I loved it. I just love my mountain views. Also great for photography as well. After a while we kept on walking, pass the ski lifts until we reach the pffanderbahn. We walked up to it from a different passage (different from the passage we walked from earlier) and when we reached it, we turned around and noticed that the alpine views which we found earlier during the trek was better position to take some shots from here instead. So we being walking three hours to get the best photography shots and the best ones were a thirty second walk to the west of the station! Dam! Oh well, I loved the walked anyway. It was time to head back down to Bregenz and make our way to the train station.
