Seiser Alm (the largest high altitude Alpine meadow in Europe and generally a cool place to visit) in late October appears as dead as the rest of South Tyrol. During my four-hour walk I passed by at least fifteen hotels, restaurants and huts, and not a single one of them was open. I was getting desperate when I saw a couple of people leaving a wooden house not far from the cable car station, so I decided to try my luck. My luck brought me to the strangely named Tschon Schwaige (is Tschon a weird misspelling of John?), which is one-half a farm and one-half a simple snack place.
Upon my entry I immediately met four cats, which has raised my opinion about the place straight away. When I sat outside, enjoying the sun (which fortunately came out again after half an hour of a heavy snowfall), one of them jumped on my bench, and although it moved away each time I attempted to stroke it, the moment I turned my eyes back to the Hüttenbrettl, the cat shifted slightly closer. It ended up eating a few slices of dry thinly-cut Speck (very good), some cheese (unexceptional) and quite a few pieces of Kaminwurzen (which were not bad, but a bit too hard for my teeth, so I did not mind sharing them up to the point that the cat puked one of them out on the bench).
One thing the cat did not get was Salami, partly because it was the most original part of the Brettljause, and I did not want to waste it, and partly because the hut’s owner came out with plates of cat food, causing two other cats to come out of somewhere, and all six of them leaving me alone for a while.
Apart from the stuff mentioned above, the Hüttenbrettl contained only some creamy horseradish and a pickled cucumber. Still, despite a rather simple dish, the overall experience turned out more enjoyable than expected, if a bit too cold at the end. There might be better Brettljause places on the Seiser Alm, but cat-wise, Tschon Schwaige is unbeatable.
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