In the snow flurry, in the twilight, with narrowed eyes, the illusion lasts for a while. It smells of cows, and the supposedly simple huts stand in an oval shape around the village square, their dark wood flickers behind the snowflakes and smoke comes out of a chimney, as if the mountain farmer’s family were just heating up the potato soup in the kettle over the fire. And in front of a crooked fence there is an empty wood basket, as if Peter the goat had to go chopping wood.
But this Heidi romance is a facade and an illusion, a Potemkin village that presents false facts, only with the subtle difference that it does not feign prosperity, but hides it. Above the town of Leogang in Salzburger Land there is no old mountain village at an altitude of 1100 meters, but rather the “Priesteregg Premium Resort”, a luxury chalet village with 18 huts that are anything but simple, especially not since the last expansion stage last year.