Q&A with

Magdalena Jöchler, who fulfilled a long-held dream by swapping her life as a big-city journalist to manage a mountain lodge in the Pfunderer Berge mountains

Magdalena Jöchler splits her time between a bustling big city and an idyllic mountain lodge.

You spend your winters living in Vienna and your summers managing the Brixner Hütte mountain lodge at 2,282 metres above sea level. What made you choose this lifestyle? In Vienna, I often joked to my friends that one day I’d run a mountain lodge. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of living and working in one. If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that we have to make our plans and dreams a reality while we still can, instead of constantly putting them off until tomorrow. So when I was asked if I would like to run the Brixner Hütte together with Christoph Giacomuzzi and Simon Baumgartner, I leapt at the chance – and I’m happy to report that I haven’t regretted my decision so far! This is my second summer here. At the start of June, we’ll trudge up the mountain through the last patches of snow and get everything ready for our guests, and in October we’ll shut up the lodge for winter and return to our “normal” jobs in the valley. How do the three of you cope with living in such close quarters in such a remote location? Do you ever lose your patience with each other? To be honest, yes, we’ve come close a few times. Spending four months working long hours without any privacy, we’re bound to annoy each other sometimes. In our first year, we had a lot of important decisions to make. What will it take to manage this lodge successfully? What should we put on the menu? How should we organise our everyday tasks? We got to know each other very quickly during these discussions. And we all got on each other’s nerves at times. But we’re friends – still. We’ve grown as a team and we complement each other well.

What dish would you recommend from your menu? As run-of-the-mill as it sounds, dumplings with coleslaw. Our buckwheat dumplings are hard to beat! Even our predecessor, Martha, said they were exceptional when she taste-tested them. And that must mean something because Martha’s buckwheat dumplings were once applauded by award-winning South Tyrolean chef Herbert Hintner.

Suggested hike:

Fane Alm – Wilder See lake – Brixner Hütte

The Fane Alm Alpine hamlet is just a few minutes’ walk from the Fane Alm car park. From here, you can hike along path number 17 through the Valler Schramme gorge. Branching off to the left, path number 18 takes you to the Labesebenalm Alpine pasture, from where a narrow path leads to the crystal-clear Wilder See lake at 2,532 m. Finally, take path number 17B across the Rauhtaljoch pass (2,800 m) and descend to the Brixner Hütte.