Travel to Austria : Zillergrund

The lower Zillertal is tourist-mad, with the epicenter of fun at Mayrhofen--8,000 rooms for rent. Upstream, it's a different story.

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The valley turns peaceful, with a dead-end road.

Again, as in the Oetztaler, the pastures are a blend of plants.  Most dairy farms hereabouts are organic, an important strategy for survival in the unkind world of an expanded European Union, whose new members have lots of land well-suited to dairying.

Roadside raspberries, growing wild.

Cows wander.

On their way from the parlor to the yard.

Behind the house: a landslide deflector.

Too narrow for pasture development.

More worrisome than landslides?  The Zillergundl Dam, whose engineers it's best to trust, if you want to sleep well at night.  This dam is part of a clever pumped-storage project; see the next chapter for details.