March 2018

Journalist Heinz Bayer, in an article in the Salzburger Nachrichten, has brought to everyone's attention a surreptitious change in Maria Alm - a preponderance of Anglicisms to the possible detriment of the local Pinzgau dialect. In our search for our Austrian home we conducted a simple test - if we went into a shop, spoke German with our English accents and the reply came in English, then it was not the place for us. We wanted the best environment in which to learn German and that was, perhaps, unlikely to be a place where the locals were keen to practice their English. Maria Alm, which passed our test 11 years ago with flying colours, can't get enough of dear old Blighty now. The Schischule is now the Ski School, the ski instructors live in the Team Lodge and local boy Sepp is building a new hotel emblazoned with the promise that 'it's gonna be exSEPPtional' when it opens in 'SEPPtember'.