Villa Lukashansl

Located on the bank of the Salzach river, just 75m from the main building of the Hotel Lukashansl, you will find the haven that is the 'Villa Lukashansl'.

With 15 tastefully decorated rooms and 1 family apartment, the villa is a peaceful retreat with most of it's rooms offering a quiet balcony overlooking the river and with views towards the mountains of the Hohe Tauern National Park.

Two of the rooms are offered as adjoining rooms suitable for a family, or maybe companions travelling together, requiring a seperate entrance. These rooms are fitted with en-suite shower rooms incorporating a WC.

The family apartment, on the top floor, has a hallway leading to a bathroom, also with Jacuzzi whirlpool, a seperate WC, 2 double bedrooms and a living room which can also provide sleeping accomodation. If it is specifically booked, there is also a kitchen leading off the living room for those who wish to do their own catering. An extra charge may be made for this.

All of the other rooms in the Villa have a small hallway or vestibule leading to an en-suite bathroom with Jacuzzi whirlpool bath, a seperate WC and the bedroom.

In all cases, all of the rooms in the Villa are equipped with direct dial telephone and 32" digital flat screen TV.

Although the villa does not have specific rooms for our disabled guests, the ground floor rooms are spacious enough to be accessible to wheelchair users.

During the winter season, we have Apres-Ski in the main hotel bar with snacks provided, free of charge, for our hotel and bar guests. A free of charge ski shuttle service from the hotel to the Areitbahn is also provided in cooperation with the local Town Hall and a large ski room with heated boot racks in the hotel celler for all of our guests. The villa also has its own ski and boot room in the lower ground floor.

While, during the winter, breakfast is provided in the lower ground floor dining room of the Villa, all of our guests are welcome to have breakfast in the main hotel if they prefer, while dinner is always served in the hotel itself.

Rosmarie

The Rosmarie is our smaller guest house and can be found abount 200m from the main Hotel Lukashansl. Inside, you will find 11 rooms on the ground, 1st and 2nd floors. Each of these rooms has a 32" digital flat screen TV. There are a further 4 rooms in the basement which are equiped with smaller 26" digital flat screen TV's.

All of the rooms have an en-suite bathroom with WC.

On the ground floor, our guests are served breakfast in a comfortably appointed dining room, while dinner is always served in the main hotel.

During the summer months, the whole house can be rented out with access to a kitchen so that our guests can do their own catering. In this case, all of the bed linen and towels are provided so there is no need to worry about bring your own.

Although the Rosmarie does not have specific rooms for our disabled guests, the ground floor rooms can be accessed with relative ease by all but wheelchair users.

During the winter season, we have Apres-Ski in the main hotel bar with snacks provided, free of charge, for our hotel and bar guests. A free of charge ski shuttle service from the hotel to the Areitbahn is also provided in cooperation with the local Town Hall and a large ski room with heated boot racks in the hotel celler for all of our guests.

While, during the winter, breakfast is provided in the ground floor dining room of the Rosmarie, all of our guests are welcome to have breakfast in the main hotel if they prefer, while dinner is always served in the hotel itself.

Trauneralm

Built in 1890 by Johann Mayr, the Alpengasthof Trauneralm is found high up in the Hohe Tauern National Park.

Originally built to provide overnight shelter and accomodation for wealthy guests before they attempted to cross into neighbouring Karnten the following morning, the Trauneralm would have been the height of luxury in its day.

Today, the Trauneralm is still a beautiful place to visit, whether you intend to just come up to us for the walk followed by a drink and some food or if you are planning to stay overnight before, perhaps, attempting to follow the path over the Pfandlscharte into Karnten like so many who have done the same before.

Walking into the Alpengasthof Trauneralm is like taking a step back in history. The house has been maintained but not modernised, except for the essentials such as WC's and hot water so that you can have a shower! The dining room still has the original Thonet chairs and the beds are authentic with lovely warm duvets to keep the cold at bay during the night.

At 1530m above sea level and with no public roads nearby, the nights are only disturbed by the sounds of cow bells and running water from the streams and waterfalls which surround the house and, on a clear night, without all of the street lighting which we have now come to expect in so many places, the sky glistens with more stars then you could ever believe.

During the day, the views are dramatic. The valley surrounding the Trauneralm is framed by many mountain peaks which rise to over 3000m and 6 glaciers can be seen, hanging on the sides of those mountains.

During the summer, the Trauneralm is also the home to our dairy cows and a visit to the milking parlour opposite will give a real insight into how milk is produced in the mountains. It also serves to ensure that the milk served to our guests is as fresh as possible. Lets face it, it doesn't get much fresher!!

For those seeking a quiet and intimate location for a party, or for a conference or seminar without the distractions of the outside world, the Trauneralm is the perfect spot with a variety of rooms available for any size of group.

The Trauneralm is open from from early June to early October, weather dependant. Don't be too surprised, though, if you find that we have snow in the middle of the summer. It is quite possible that we can get snow, even in July, if we have a cold storm pass through.

From the Hotel Lukashansl, we organise a guided hike most weeks during the summer with a supporting shuttle bus service for those who don't feel that they can walk the whole distance. Once up in the Trauneralm, settle back and enjoy a well deserved meal and enjoy the music and atmosphere that makes the trip such a rewarding experience.

Or perhaps join one of the guided tours orginaised by our partners. For example...

To find us:

Head up to Ferleiten and park at the toll gate for the GrossGlocknerstrasse. Then, rather than going through the toll gates, follow the road opposite and continue up the valley until you come to a bridge which crosses the river on the left. You will see signs to the Trauneralm at the bridge so you will know that you are going the right way. Cross the bridge and follow the road as it climbs up the the Trauneralm.

Walking time:     approx. 2 - 2.5 hours

Alternatively, go through the toll gate and up to Hochmais where you can park your car. There is then a path which leads you down from the side of the car park to the Trauneralm

Walking time:     approx. 30-45 minutes

Both of these routes are also ideal mountain bike routes, the route to and from Hochmais being a little more advanced than the route along the valley floor.

Our Farm

Like many old Austrian Guest Houses, The Lukashansl has always had a farm and land on which the animals would live, thus providing the food which would have been served in the hotel. Many years ago, the Lukashansl would have employed a number of people to work on that land and you can still see the bell enclosure on the roof of the old part of the house. This would have been rung to call the workers in from the fields for their meals, after all, it was a long time before people would have had mobile phones!

Although we do not rely so much on the farm for our meat these days, we do still maintain a herd of cows which are milked twice a day by our farm workers. Some of this milk is used in the hotel for making Yoghurt, sometimes for making cheese, cream, ice cream, butter and other dairy products but mostly for our guests to drink in their tea and coffee or on their cereals in the morning. The rest of the milk is collected by the local dairy and used in their cheese making.

During the summer, from the beginning of June until the end of September, the cows are all moved up to The Trauneralm which normally means loading them all into trailers and driving them to the summer pastures. The dairy cows will then spend their summer on the lush grassy areas surrounding the milking parlour at The Trauneralm while the non-milking animals will be moved higher up where the grass is maybe not so lush but there is plenty of it over a greater area.

Towards the end of the summer, the grass will begin to fail and it is then time to bring the animals back down to the stables. Years ago, we would have made the traditional headresses for them and walked them home but with the number of cars on the roads and the distances involved, it is 22km from the summer pastures back to the stables, it takes so long, causes so much disruption and is so tiring for the cows that we do not do it very often.

Once the cows are back in the stables, they will stay there for the duration of the winter, where they will be fed with Hay, Silage and other feed to keep them healthy while the weather means that there is no fresh grass for them.

If you are interested to visit the stables, they can be found right in the centre of the village, just across from the church. We would be happy to take you over to have a look, just ask at the reception.

Of course, there is more to running the farm than simply milking some cows. At the end of the winter, when the cows go up to the mountain pastures, we have to cut the grass to make silage. Up until the last few years, the grass would have been cut 3 times during the summer but we now cut it 4 times, depending on the weather. This generally will give us all of the silage which we need as the basic feed for the animals. We might then buy in Maize Silage, Hay, Straw and pellet feed stuffs to add to the variety.

There is then the question of dealing with the end result of cows eating grass. In Austria, we are not permited to spray the slurry on the fields from the beginning of November through until the end of March or until the snow has melted from the fields. This means that there is not so much contamination of water courses due to melt water washing the slurry off the fields and it also means that the snow lying on the fields is a pristine white, so making best use of the winter wonderland that this area of Austria becomes in the winter.

It does though give us a bit of a problem: Where do you store it all? Well, the slurry is stored in 2 tanks, one outside the stables which holds about 300,000 litres and a second one in one of the fields which holds about another 250,000 litres. Any straw waste, of which we do not have so much as we use foam rubber mattresses rather than straw for most of our bedding, is stored in the corner of one of the meadows on a concrete storage area.

Each time the grass is cut, we will then spread some of the straw waste and spray some of the slurry onto the meadows. This is then washed into the ground, providing much needed nutrients to the grass and so the cycle starts over again.

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