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Hotel Schloss Fuschl
This legendary fairytale chateau is overlooking one of Austria's grandest lakes within the Salzkammergut region and was built in 1450 as a hunting lodge
By: Mary Gostelow
Hotel Schloss Fuschl, in Austria's Hof bei Salzburg countryside, is so addictive my husband said he could move in permanently, says Mary Gostelow.
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The journey was horrendous, thanks to a cancelled flight, inadequate and inaccurate information at Heathrow, and then the flight we were put on was another hour late. But the hotel's concierge Norbert had been super-efficient, the 1965 Rolls was waiting at Munich airport and Victor from Romania, in the full loden gear that everyone, including management, wears at Schloss Fuschl, drove us two hours to the hotel.
We purred up to a door of Hotel Schloss Fuschl at 9.30pm. A young woman was already standing outside, and we drove another two minutes to what looked, in the dark, rather like a single-floor Hobbit hut with sloping roof of larch shingles. Inside was a revelation. Thanks to designer Brigitte Freyberg, who with architect Johannes Wegmann had updated the 141-room hotel before owner Stefan Schörghuber re-opened it in July 2006, we were in the latest-design home, Lakeview Cottage 604.
We entered a vision of soft-sand coloring, with nothing grating. Shoes off, down 16 satin-smooth limed oak stairs to the limestone-floored lower level. A real log fire burned in a glass-fronted grate. A round table, covered in crispest white linens, had a tall white candle which our minder lit. The table was set with specially-commissioned white Fürstenberg porcelain, tall stemware and an ice bucket with a bottle in it. It also had a tray of crustless toasts, ramekins of butter and mustard sauce, and a silver platter of smoked fish, gravadlax and a fish cream. Another loden-suited young man appeared, skilfully opened what turned out to be 2006 Smaragd (12% or more alcohol) Jamek Ried Achleiten Güner Veltliner, offered still or sparkling water from an icebox hidden in the wall - and disappeared, with the words 'bon appetit, call reception when you want it cleared'. We ate, everything with gusto and mucho appreciation. We also devoured a fruit bowl that included perfect figs and strawberries, though we did refrain from the chocolate torte. After pulling a main window curtain in the bedroom upstairs slightly back, we collapsed into bed.
I was woken by light streaming in, and was entranced by a magical view. Red haze behind mountains beyond the lake gave a stark silhouette. Wisps of mist came up from the lake, empty apart from ripples where fish were doing early morning leaps. The lake's edge was a mere three meters from our downstairs terrace, which I could not see had more stone flooring, and lots of seating. I looked around at our bedroom, dominated by the bed, with its four wood corner posts joined at the top by wrought iron rods. In the centre of the bedhead shelf a sliding panel had been opened, to show into the bathroom, which you can enter from either side of the bed. The bathroom has twin basins: pull the aforementioned sliding panel across and you have a wider expanse of mirror. There is a big shower stall, with an opaque panel that also gives light, on its other side, to the main foyer. The oval freestanding tub is encased in granite. There is a big sauna, a separate toilet stall, an electric towel rail, and easy-open My Island toiletries. This is all very thoughtful: back in the bedroom there are two separate, identical walk-in closets, no need for any storage dispute, here.
By daylight, downstairs looked completely different. I noticed the wrought-iron stair rail, the somewhat Japanese simplicity of the room, its cream walls inset with wood banding around edges of cupboards enclosing DVD, the kitchenette, and so on. A cream panel pulls down over the Metz television, to hide it completely. The four palest-cream leather chairs around the dining table have discreet W labels, for Neue Wiener Werkstaette. The comfy seating is soft dark brown leather, the cushions all woven leather strips. A ceiling-high living palm gives colour, as does a Redouté-like arrangement of soft old-pink roses and wispy greenery. There are logs in an open holder, wrought-iron like the tongs hanging next to it. Open the kitchenette area and you have an LG microwave, a Neff hob, a Silva kettle and clever Ronnefeldt tea bags that are about six inches long, to hang over the white Fürstenberg porcelain cup. The adjacent icebox has Fürstenberg beers - one of the 11 brands in the Schörghuber portfolio, which also includes shares in Heineken and Paulaner - and the hotel's own-label Szigeti sparkling. There is a Bosch dishwasher beneath. The terrace had wrought-iron upright seating and Dedon loungers. A small Automower discreetly patrolled and trimmed the lakeside lawns.
First things first included a run to check out the locale, which is marvellously unspoiled. The three semi-detached huts like ours, the Seehäusl, replace earlier fishing shacks - strict environment regulations will allow no additions. Past the hotel's own fishing centre, you come to a house that still belongs to the Grundig family, who sold Schloss Fuschl to Schörghuber. There are seemingly-endless hiking trails, all magnificently marked (how can they accurately write that one destination was a 3.5 hour hike away?). I headed up, up, into pastures with lots of healthy-looking cattle, and made my way back to the main hotel to find the futurist Carita spa, with a Technogym that
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looks right into the trees, a big indoor-outdoor sauna area, nine treatment rooms and a 40-foot indoor pool with blue, green and red-lit recessed recovery beds down one side (swim up and down and one end there is a full-size standing silhouette, black, of a nubile female, which makes any lady swim further just to look like her).
Back home and showered, it was time for breakfast, in the Schloss Restaurant looking out across the lake. Ladies in green dirndls with red aprons offered juice that husband said was the best he had ever had, and good strong coffee in delicate individual china pots. The buffet included arguably the world's most healthy slice-your-own breads, more seeds than bread. You could also order eggs scrambled over steam, with Salzburg mountain cheese, or fried in salted farm butter, or three-egg omelette castle-style, with truffles and green asparagus. European white rolls with fresh butter and black cherry jam reminded me of school ski trips years ago.
We took a tour round some of the 170 Old Master paintings that form the Fuschl Collection of art, put together by Schörghuber's longtime friend Konrad Bernheimer, owner of the Bernheimer gallery in Munich and co-owner of Colnaghi, London. First, Bernheimer's onsite curator Claudia Messner showed us paintings in public areas, and the few unoccupied bedrooms, including some in the original five-floor 1450 hunting tower of the Archbishop of Salzburg (no elevators in these rooms, no wonder the room maids are so trim).
I especially liked Jean-Baptiste Bosio's Portrait of Frédéric Donnadieu and his son Frédéric, a plantation owner showing his son his estate in Haiti: it reminded me of today's Patek Philippe ads, you are custodians for tomorrow. Bernheimer later recounted how Schörghuber asked him two years before the hotel's 2006 re-opening to put together a museum-quality collection: the pair used a Paulaner beermat to work out how many walls needed a painting, and the budget. Today the pieces hang in bedrooms and all public areas. Nearly all are behind museum glass, for insurance reasons, and every one has electric sensors behind: insurance and security costs should be met by selling one or two each year but, says Bernheimer, Schörghuber often does not want them to go, even to a world-class museum. The Gallerie is extremely busy, however, selling art-photographs from its constantly-changing exhibitions in other public areas here, including numbered photos by Lucien Clerque, Mat Hennek and the looks-old modern photographer Silke Lauffs.
Unlike visiting a Wynn art collection, here touring the unrivalled art is free. Your minibar, internet and television - no porn - are also free. This owner has strict criteria. None of his paintings should show anything religious, for instance - though he has a small shrine in his enormous grounds. There is also a museum concentrating on the Romy Schneider 1955 Sissi movies, of which the first two were partly shot here, although the wife of Franz Joseph I had no connection here (fortunately a Bernheimer-hung Winterhalter, in a main corridor, is very Sissi-like, which pleases Asian guests). The museum also records actual meetings here between Presidents Ford and Sadat, for instance, during the days when the hotel was owned by Carl Adolf Vogel (in 1977 it was bought by Max Grundig, became Astron, operated by Georg Rafael, 1998 to 2000, until it was bought by Stefan Schörghuber - and Wolfgang Greiner returned, as MD, in 2004).
Enough history. Today, we toured the wine cellar, a priceless collection with hundreds of sealed cases; one of Haut-Brion, marked 1980, when opened was found to contain the 1945 vintage. The wine list is only Austrian and French. The hotel's executive chef, Thomas Walkensteiner (author of two books on anti-ageing) apparently like pairing his menus with finest wines.
We hiked up to Schörghuber's other hotel, the slightly-less grand Jagdhof, nearly half a mile away past cows grazing in pristine green fields. Back at our home-hotel, it was time for lunch, in blazing sun, on a terrace surrounded by hotel guests and such quality day-visitors from Munich, Salzburg and Vienna as the COO of Leading Hotels of the World, and the head of all hotel operations of Regent cruises... A mélange of lake fish, from Schloss Fuschl's own fishing operation, tastes even better when you are looking down at the lake itself. There was no space for the hotel's own-label torte, which had even been popular on the breakfast buffet. Victor was waiting, to drive us back to the airport and reality, www.schlossfuschlresort.at.
Hotel Schloss Fuschl, Salzburg, Austria
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