“It’s a big plank with quite a lot of stuff,” a friendly waiter warned me. “No problem, I am hungry,” I lied, realizing that there was no “light” version of the Brettljause I was about to order. I was in Obertauern for the second time in my life, and a lot was pointing towards the fact that this time could very well be the last.
Obertauern must be a fantastic location in winter if you ski. It might also pique your interest as one of the locations where the Beatles’ “Help” was shot. Yet, in summer, it’s a bloody construction yard. Most of the hotels and restaurants are closed, and there are construction cranes everywhere, spoiling the nature already irreparably raped by countless ski lifts. You can make nice photos there, but that requires a painful search for a perspective, for the stupid lifts are everywhere.
Dikt’n Alm had its own construction crane, and it was anything but pretty. The visitors were either motorcyclists, who were allowed to ride here, or the lazy hikers like me, who were walking down from the top station of the cable car or up from the village itself, neither activity requiring a significant effort.
If you are planning to become one of them, listen to my advice: forget this Brettljause. You can easily make one by visiting a BILLA supermarket, for all the ingredients were extremely industrial and readily available. It was quite a letdown, because the menu claimed that the restaurant’s burger was made out of the owners’ cows. The owners kept no pigs, obviously, because the Brettljause was as big as it was boring. I can literally take you to the supermarket’s shelf where each ingredient came from, with the possible exception of the Graukäse, and that only because that not-so-tasty cheese is hard to find in Vienna.
There were only two things that distinguished the Brettljause of Dikt’n Alm. The first was the presence of chestnuts, which were completely useless. Either you serve chestnuts with strong cheese, grapes and spicy chutney, or you forget about them. The second was the whistling of the marmots, which I found most surprising, considering the noise the on-going construction must be making. However, having returned my plate (with quite a few things uneaten) and paid, I walked a short distance towards a mountain’s slope and indeed saw a fat marmot walking around on its business before finally noticing me and disappearing in a hole. That guy made my day.
So, to make things plain and clear: marmots – yes, the “Alm-jause” – no.
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