This week marks 60 weeks living in Austria and 1 week until Christmas!

To celebrate lockdown coming to an end we went to our neighbor’s Christmas party. We sat outside around a fire under the moonlight, enjoying delicious food, and what we assume were good and funny stories as we could not quite understand much of what was actually being said.

We drove to Filzmoos this weekend. With Christmas quickly approaching, I have been searching for festive things to do once lockdown ended. I found a popular event called “The Weihnachtsidylle Filzmoos”–A circular trail from the Unterhofalm and Oberhofalm up to the Almsee Lake lit with torches, and decorated with several advent scenes. I knew I wanted us to arrive around sunset so we could see everything lit up at night.

Filzmoos is a 90-minute drive from Gmunden in the district of St. Johann im Pongau in the state of Salzburg. To get to the starting point of the Weihnachtsidylle, you have to reach the Oberhofalm which is another 90-minute hike on foot (75-minutes if you are a fast walker like us).

There is a toll road to get to the Oberhofalm, but in the winter it is closed due to the high amount of snow this area gets. So you can either hike, take a horse-drawn sleigh ride or an experienced taxi service. We chose to put our ice trekkers on and enjoy the hike. There were several horses that passed us and we loved seeing each one prance by. To be on the sleigh seemed to add even more winter fairy tale vibes.

We believe the horses enjoy working, but a part of us also felt bad for them pulling hundreds of pounds of people up the hill all day long…

At about 3:00 pm, we started the hike and at 4:15 pm we arrived at The Oberhofalm, a 350-year-old alpine hut.

This hut is older than the United States of America…

Since we arrived just a bit early, we made our way around the circular advent trail before going inside.

The entrance to the trail was marked with a hanging sign that reads “Frohe Weihnachten” which means “Merry Christmas.”

The circular trail took about 30 minutes to complete and just as we made our way to the middle of the snowy field, all of the Christmas lights and nativity scenes lit up.

We finished the circular trail and made our way back to the Oberhofalm for dinner.

After dinner, we walked out into the night. Although the sun had gone down, the snow from the mountains, the full moon in the sky, and the Christmas lights lit up the trail back to the car. We also bought headlamps before coming to Filzmoos because we knew we would be hiking in the dark.