Western Austria is where experienced and moneyed skiers speed their way through the winter months, creating a snowbound playboy area with an enviable glitzy and international reputation. Vorarlberg, Austria's westernmost province, is a world unto itself in the winter season. Such is its renown that it resembles nothing less than a cover shoot for Hello magazine, complete with celebrities and lycra-clad royalty. As soon as the first snowflake lands the region rubs its collective hands with glee, and awaits the first of what is a continuous supply of flexible friends.
Being of sound mind and body, I decided to pass on downhill skiing, snowboarding and skwaling (like mono water skiing, except on packed snow). Instead, I ventured to the region just as it stretched its limbs and yawned itself out of hibernation into a state of sleepy-eyed awareness. While the region is breathtaking in sheet-white winter - it's a picture-postcard landscape moulded by Ice Age glaciers, with hundreds of miles of finely combed ski runs ranging in altitude from 1,000 to 3,000 metres - in summer it is a cornucopia of colours.
The area opens itself up to noise as well. Throughout the winter season, the blankets of powdered snow muffle the crunch of ski boots and the searing swoosh of ski equipment. In summer, the sky clears, the snow melts (eventually), and the mountain peaks take on a third dimensional depth and perspective of their own. It seems pedantic to point out that the mountains generate year-ound tourism. While the winter season is prone to bouts of hard play and even harder post-piste relaxing, it's inevitably less hectic during the summer, and altogether more amenable to gathering your stray thoughts.
From Zurich, a train journey to Bregenz (during which a Buddhist monk in a sweat-soaked rush to catch a further connection provided the only ironic moment of the trip) affords the first clear glimpse of populated Western Austria: the sky is azure blue streaked with cloud formations that look like stray cigarette smoke.
The capital of Vorarlberg, the cultural metropolis of the region, and the seat of the provincial government, Bregenz is bordered by the summits of the Alps and the rolling hills of southern Germany. The Austrian part of Lake Constance is the largest freely accessible strip of shore on the lake. These make the town the owner of extreme geographical bounty and variety.
Dominated by the 1,064 metre-high Pfander, Bregenz was Christianised by the Celtic monks Columban and Gallus. They called the town the Golden Bowl, a possible reference to the Lake Constance basin, which is said to have been formed by a meteorite. These days, Christian iconography still abounds (Austria is 80 per cent Catholic; a further 5 per cent is Protestant), particularly in the tiny but impressive old section of the town.
Medieval buildings and archways, half-timbered framework structures, and archetypal cobblestone paving provide another, somewhat more romantic side to a town that is at the cutting edge of European art forms. Throughout July and August, the world-renowned Bregenz Festival transforms Vorarlberg's provincial capital into a multicultural stronghold. Opera, concert and theatre lovers from around the world converge on Bregenz for a unique event: performances on the world's largest lakeside stage. The setting for this year's opera, Porgy and Bess, is on a dramatic and perfectly realised reconstruction of a derelict community. Viewed from an auditorium that holds over 6,000 spectators, the result is a compelling audio-visual extravaganza that never teeters into pomposity.
From Bregenz to the Arlberg region resort of Lech. Once again, a train journey into the ever upward and increasing reaches of Langen Am Arlberg (the nearest station to Lech) provides the necessary vantage points and perspectives. As you pass Bludenz, at the intersection of the Ill and Alfenz Rivers, the mountains - just as you're becoming accustomed to their apparently benign, chilly magnificence - suddenly rear up at you, as if ready to pounce. Within seconds, you are engulfed by them. The effect is astonishing, a reminder that the snow fence barriers you see dotted all over the mountains are there to protect the villagers from avalanches. Somehow, you don't feel as cosy as you used to.
LECH, however, quells such a queasy feeling. To begin with, it is populated by the slimmest, healthiest collection of people I've seen outside the pages of upmarket holiday brochures. Everything else seems to slot neatly into place. Nestling in an altitude of up to 2,750 metres (making arable and fruit farming impossible: cattle breeding and dairy farming are the norm), Lech has been integral to the international development of skiing, something that the villagers are immensely proud of.
During the summer, which is shorter than usual at such a high altitude, the erstwhile snow slopes are bedecked with an abundant sprinkling and variety of alpine flora. Lech's wide valley floor is at almost 1,500 metres altitude, its mountains rising ruggedly along each side to form a panorama as picturesque as any you could imagine. It might have been because I arrived at the very beginning of the summer season that the locals were sincerely friendly, but there was no evidence throughout my stay to suggest the contrary - the people are as genuine and wholesome as the scenery. It is, however, primarily an adult's resort, especially for those who like to combine healthy day time activities (hiking, mountain biking, tennis) with relaxing night life and nothing in particular.
While this means that the prices can be as high as the mountains, it also means that young children (say, less than 10 years of age) could well be bored out of their darling little heads - especially if they're kids who are used to typical day-glo sun holidays with all the beaches, swimming pools, toy shops, and pasta-fuelled restaurants such destinations offer. For older children, somewhere like Lech could well be the opening to a wider appreciation of what constitutes the essence of a holiday with a difference.
The beauty of places such as Bregenz, and especially Lech, is that the swift pace of life slows down to flatline level, where the only thought you have to consider is whether, following a knee-quaking mountain hike with a guide who has probably walked the Inca Trail, to chase a cool local beer with another one. Or perhaps a cappuccino? Or maybe read another chapter? Decisions, decisions.