Located in a wide sunny valley only 15 km (9 miles) from the German border, the favourable location of Soll, both in terms of how easy it is to reach and how well placed it is in the centre of Austria’s largest lift-linked ski area, has led to its fame greatly exceeding its size. Indeed, whilst Soll is no longer a tiny village, it has successfully endeavoured to maintain a “village feeling” whilst at the same time introducing modern leisure and accommodation opportunities for guests.
New building has been completed to traditional architectural style and the village centre is now pedestrianised, making the whole effect even more pleasant. It is still centred on its impressive onion-domed church and maintains a relatively healthy ratio of almost 1:1 for locals-to-tourists. Four centuries ago this was a village of farmers with very few tourists, today Soll still has its farmers but they’re now second to tourism as Soll’s major employer. Long popular with British, as well as German visitors, English is widely spoken, including by all ski school staff.
It is part of Ski Welt, Austria's largest linked ski and snowboard area. Local slopes are the highest and steepest in the Ski Welt and north-facing so keep their snow well. Massive recent investment in snowmaking has paid off. Plenty of cheap and cheerful pensions for those on a budget. Here are pretty villages with lively après-ski
Ski:
Söll has long been popular with groups of beginners and intermediates. Its pretty scenery, gentle slopes, small attractive traditional village, good-value accommodation and lively nightlife attract a mixture of young singles looking for a fun time and families looking for a quiet time. In the 1980s it gained notoriety as prime lager-lout territory; it still has some loud bars but has calmed down a lot. Many visitors find the village surprisingly small and are disappointed by the distance between it and the slopes. Its main drawback has always been snow. Because of its low altitude and sunny slopes, slopes have often been slushy or bare, not just in Söll but also throughout the extensive Ski Welt circuit it is part of. But this problem has been tackled by a massive investment in snowmaking and half of the Ski Welt's 250 km of slope are now covered by snowmaking - more than in any other Austrian ski area. This ensures the region's main slopes and links stay open.
marks the location of the property in Wilder Kaiser-Brixental
