Summer bonfires, parades and flower festivals

The summer solstice is celebrated with flamboyance and flame in the Wachau region on the Danube, but also on many mountain tops and Alpine pastures. An experience enjoyed from a boat or the patio of a wine tavern, for example, no matter whether it’s known locally as Bergfeuer, Herzjesufeuer (Tyrol) or Sonnwendfeuer. If the weather cooperates.

The Samson is a symbolic figure in Salzburg’s Lungau, a heroic character from the 16th century, and is carried through the villages from summer through to autumn as a giant figure, flanked by dwarves and a band. By contrast, in Styria – for example, in Murau – the Samson appears only once each year: on 15 August.

The same question is on everyone’s lips in May of every year in the Ausseerland in Salzkammergut: will the weather hold? For days on end, tonnes of narcissi are gathered – children and guests also lend a hand – to stage the huge figures for the boat parade on the Grundlsee and the city parade in Bad Aussee as spectacularly as always. A first-rate event in Austria attracting huge crowds of onlookers.

One of the last men-only bastions among Austria’s customs: the Ranggler, or wrestlers, in Tyrol and Salzburgerland. Or put more attractively: a show of male strength – but is also accepted as a traditional sport. The wrestling was used in ancient times to settle border disputes between dairymen and farmhands or also to impress a dairymaid. The wrestling takes place every year around the feast of St James in July in Maria Alm at the “Hundstoa-Ranggeln” event.