Almost 100 years ago Hemingway did spend the winter in Schruns, Austria. Besides skiing, hiking and drinking he worked there on turning his first novel The Sun Also Rises into something readable. Before they (Hadley, his first wife and his son Jack “Bumby”) left Paris he had written it down in a six week sprint and had taken it with him to Schruns in the winter of 1925/26 to make a real novel of it. It was the hardest job he ever had to do according to himself, but as we all know it turned out wonderful.
In Schruns they stayed in the hotel Taube right in the heart of the little town. It is still there and it is only a 2 minute walk from the small train station where he mentioned he saw Hadley and Bumby standing waiting for him when he came back that winter from one of his trips to Paris. During that winter he did fall in love with what later became his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. Much later in his memoirs A Moveable Feast, he regretted having ever loved anyone else than Hadley. In his own words: ‘I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her’. But, obviously that was too late.
Hotel Taube 1925
As I found myself in Schruns and Tschagguns (Montafon) last week, I came to the conclusion that almost 100 years on not much had changed. The valley is still wide and open and gets a lot of sun, the hotel and the station are still there more or less untouched and it is still what Hemingway would use to say, ‘good country and a healthy place to stay’.
Schruns station 2025
Skiing the area Hemingway decided to grow a beard and not to have a haircut as that would be the best sun protection he could get up in the high mountains where the sun could really scourge you. This earned him the nickname The Black Christ by the locals. Other locals by the way regarded him as a foreign devil that should stay out of the high mountains in the winter.
He never returned to Schruns after that winter.