If you want very late-season skiing, Ischgl, in Austria, is still cold and, for a ski resort, rather cool, too. Conor Goodman reports
What an excellent Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, I think, as I first hear my ski instructor speak. Only when I've spoken to four or five other locals do I realise that everyone around here speaks like the Governator - to my foreign ears, at least. It's a little disappointing. Arnie, for all his idiocy, always seemed so damn singular. I had always assumed that his accent was unique to him and that his fellow Austrians sounded no more like him than, say, Danny DeVito does.
But that's how they speak in Ischgl, a high-altitude ski resort in the Austrian Tyrol. When skiers elsewhere in Europe are hanging up their boots for the summer, people here are still strapping theirs on. On April 18th, 2005, I walk on to my balcony and let soft snow swirl around me. This kind of snow, the kind that makes you understand just what "deep and crisp and even" means, never falls in Ireland. I'm having a King Wenceslas moment, and it ain't no Feast of Stephen: it's well after Easter.
The phrase "party capital of the Alps" is one you hear a lot on ski-resort marketing: Val d'Isère, St Anton and Verbier all bandy it about with varying claims of legitimacy. Ischgl has as much right to the title as any, with its numerous bars and clubs, excellent restaurants and innovative Top of the Mountain concerts. Each ski season begins and ends with an open-air performance by a major international musician: Elton John, John Bon Jovi, Madonna and the Corrs have all played on the piste. Lionel Richie opened this year's season, and on April 30th Pink will bring it to a close.
The MOR character of most of these acts shows that Ischgl isn't a particularly cool village. Central European ski resorts as a rule aren't cool; they're cold and they're fun, and Ischgl knows how to have fun. The resort's unique selling point, according to one of the marketing staff, is not the number of lifts it opens or its tally of "bed nights" per season; it's that "people here are completely crazy".
The place is certainly a few vowels short of an alphabet, in more ways than one. Successful pronunciation of the village's name is best achieved by getting drunk - a straightforward task in this town - and trying to utter the words "It's a giggle".
In a bar one night, en route to exactly that state of being, I spend a long time studying a series of charming black-and-white photographs, probably taken in the 1930s. In them, local pioneers of downhill skiing plunge through virgin snow on ungainly planks, middle-aged farmers wearing nothing but woolly jumpers and expressions of snowball-fight glee.
The photographs sum up everything that's great about skiing: the adrenalin rush, the breathtaking scenery and the childish delight of the experience. They are also a reminder that, until recently, this was a simple, remote mountain village and that, in transforming itself into a lucrative ski business, it must have lost much of that wide-eyed innocence.
It's notably absent. One of the reasons I find the photographs so mesmerising is that they provide the perfect excuse not to stare at the scantily-clad podium dancers, who seem to be a fixture in almost every bar in town. Are they from Ischgl, I ask a tourist-office rep. "No, dey are from Russia," he replies, in fluent Californian governor.
On the last evening I walk through the town - past designer hotels and gourmet restaurants - to its less touristed quarter. There is a church that's full to capacity and even has a few blokes standing outside (they'd probably squeeze in, but then they wouldn't be able to smoke). It could be rural Ireland 30 years ago.
Something else reminds me of rural Ireland: a certain aroma. I walk a little farther, past rustic wooden structures, and peep through the window of one. Two beautiful, wide-set eyes stare back at me, and their owner greets me with a "Mooooo!" So that was the familiar smell. The beasts have spent the winter in these cowsheds, and they will soon be brought back to the mountainside. I recall a conversation earlier that day with my ski instructor, who was looking forward to the end of the season so that he could get back to his real job, as a farmer.
But, until then, the skiing goes on. And the skiing - between one thing and another I almost forgot to mention it - on the morning following the deep-and-crisp-and-even snowfall was second to none. As I write, it's still good on the resort's upper slopes. As Arnie would say: I'll be back.
Conor Goodman spent three days in Ischgl as a guest of Ischgl Tourist Office and . Inghams' season to Ischgl finishes this week, but you can still ski there for another three weeks. Book direct on reservation@ischgl.com. See also: www.ischgl.com