Bregenzerwald, Austria: How to Spend 2 Days

Two days in the Bregenzerwald buy you one day of craft and mountain in Andelsbuch and Bezau, and one day of golf and village walking around Riefensberg and Mellau. The Bregenzerwald is the valley region in Vorarlberg, in the far west of Austria, where contemporary timber architecture sits in working farm villages rather than in a design district.

One thing has changed since this itinerary was first walked, and it changes the practical planning. The chairlifts of the Bergbahnen Andelsbuch stopped running on 12 August 2023 and were dismantled from summer 2024, with no replacement planned. The Niedere is still there and so is the mountain restaurant on it, but you now reach both from Bezau.

Day 1: Andelsbuch and Bezau

Day 1 runs from a craft museum in Andelsbuch up onto the Niedere ridge and back down to Bezau, and it ends with dinner in Bizau. Day 1 needs the Bezau cable car, so check that it is running before you plan the middle of it.

Visit the Werkraumhaus in Andelsbuch

The Werkraumhaus is where the craft businesses of the Bregenzerwald show, make and sell their work together. The Werkraumhaus belongs to Werkraum Bregenzerwald, a cooperative of local makers built on collaboration rather than competition, and the building itself, at Hof 800 in Andelsbuch, is part of the argument.

“Craft” means more here than woodwork. The cooperative counts joiners and metalworkers, and also lighting specialists, ceramicists and jewellery makers. The house puts on exhibitions of members’ work, runs a shop and a café, invites makers from elsewhere for residencies, and stages the Handwerk + Form design competition every three years, with the next edition in 2026.

When I visited, the exhibition was built around the theme of hosting, with the space divided into the rooms where you might host someone: a dining room, a bar, a hotel lounge, a spa room, a bedroom. Every object in them had been made by a member, and each room had been put together with a local hotel or restaurant.

Opening hours and admission. The Werkraumhaus opens Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and closes on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays. Adult entry is €9 ($10, £8), with a reduced €8 ($9, £7) for students under 27, seniors and visitors with disabilities, and free entry under 19. Public guided tours run on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. and Thursdays at 4 p.m. Older write-ups still quote €7.50 and a Saturday closing time of 6 p.m., so plan to the current hours.

Walk part of the Umgang Bregenzerwald

The Umgang Bregenzerwald is a set of 12 circular walks through the region’s villages, each one designed to show you how the place was built and why. “Umgang” is about how people here deal with one another and with what they have, and the routes take between 1.5 and 4 hours.

The villages on the Umgang are Andelsbuch, Au, Schoppernau, Mellau, Bizau, Bezau and Reuthe, Schwarzenberg, Egg, Lingenau, Langenegg, Hittisau and Krumbach.

Waist-high rust-coloured steel columns mark each route. If you are working from an older guide, the columns have changed: they used to hold a magnifying glass with a button that revealed an object and a question, and they now carry QR codes that open the information on your phone. Printed folders are still available from any tourist information office and from Bregenzerwald Tourismus.

You can walk the Andelsbuch section straight from the Werkraumhaus, and the route and its buildings are set out on the Umgang Bregenzerwald Andelsbuch page.

Get up to the Niedere from Bezau

The Seilbahn Bezau is now the only lift that takes you up to the Niedere ridge. The Seilbahn Bezau runs its first ascent at 9 a.m. and then every 30 minutes from 9.20 a.m., with the last descent at 5 p.m., and it is a large modern gondola with a panoramic roof terrace and a café at the valley station.

This is the part of the itinerary that has changed. The two-seater chairlifts of the Bergbahnen Andelsbuch, which carried walkers up the Andelsbuch side of the Niedere for 52 years, were taken out of service on 12 August 2023 after a fatal accident and have been dismantled since summer 2024. Replacing them would have cost more than €10 million, and the operators decided against it, so they are not coming back. The three drag lifts on the ridge itself are now run by the Bezau cable car company. If a guide tells you to take the retro chairlift from Andelsbuch, it is out of date.

Prices and season. An adult return from Bezau up to Baumgarten costs €25 ($29, £22), a single ride up €17.30 ($20, £15) and a single ride down €16.60 ($19, £14). The summer season runs daily until 8 November 2026, with selected weekends after that. Winter operation runs daily from 24 December 2026 to 7 March 2027, with a maintenance break from 8 to 12 March and service resuming on 13 March. Nothing runs in the roughly six weeks between 8 November and 24 December, which is the gap that catches people planning a quiet late-autumn trip.

Have lunch at the Bergrestaurant Niedere

The Bergrestaurant Niedere sits at 1,600 m (5,249 ft) and is about a 15-minute walk from the Baumgarten mountain station. The Bergrestaurant Niedere is self-service, and the reason to go is the terrace at the back, which looks down the valley and, on a clear day, as far as Lake Constance.

When it is open. Mid-May to mid-October, from 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in good weather, and closed on Mondays in September and October. In winter the hours shorten to 9.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and depend on snow. Since the Andelsbuch lifts went, the alternatives on foot are long: roughly 2 hours 30 minutes up from the former Andelsbuch valley station, or about 2 hours 45 minutes from Bezau by way of Sonderdach.

Watch for paragliders while you eat. The shoulder next to the restaurant is a popular take-off point, and the coloured canopies drifting over the valley are what gave the panorama walk here its nickname of the butterfly hike.

Walk the Panorama trail

The Panorama trail is an easy circular walk of 4.4 km (2.7 mi) with 140 m (459 ft) of ascent and the same descent. The Panorama trail gives you the surrounding valleys and peaks for very little effort, and it used to be signposted from the Andelsbuch cable car, so start it from the Niedere ridge above Baumgarten instead and ask at the Bezau valley station for the current signage.

Bring water for this one. The walk is exposed in places and there is no fountain on the ridge, so a refillable bottle earns its space in the pack and saves buying plastic at the top.

Continue the Umgang Bregenzerwald in Bezau

The Bezau and Reuthe section of the Umgang is the long one, at 8.8 km (5.5 mi), and it passes through both villages. You do not have to walk all of it. I did the stretch between the cable car valley station and the bus stop in the centre of Bezau, then took the bus back to my hotel, which took 15 to 20 minutes on foot along a quiet road.

The route and its buildings are mapped on the Umgang Bregenzerwald Bezau and Reuthe page.

Have dinner at the Biohotel Schwanen in Bizau

The Biohotel Schwanen in Bizau serves non-residents, and its restaurant is worth the trip on its own. The Biohotel Schwanen is a family business that started as a village inn, and a 2009 renovation in Vorarlberg timber turned it into a certified organic hotel without losing the old parlour.

The kitchen cooks to the principles of the mystic Hildegard von Bingen, organic and seasonal, and the cooks call themselves the wilde weiber, the wild women. You eat on the large terrace, in the modern dining room or in the historic Bregenzerwälder parlour, and you choose between the multi-course wild women menu and the à la carte list.

I ate à la carte with Katrin from the Vorarlberg Tourism Board. The house is known for its fresh raspberry drink, so I had that instead of the usual aperitivo, then an amuse-bouche of char tartare, trout with peas and quinoa, and a camomile and raspberry ice cream I had not expected to like as much as I did. Main courses come in a small or a regular portion, which is a kindness if you want to leave room for dessert.

Book ahead and check the day. The restaurant closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Dinner runs Thursday to Monday from 5.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m., and lunch on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and public holidays from 11.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. The hotel itself closes between 8 November and 11 December 2026.

Day 2: Golf in Riefensberg and a walk through Mellau

Day 2 trades the mountain for a golf course at Riefensberg in the morning and a village walk in Mellau in the afternoon. Day 2 works as a rest day for your legs, because neither half of it involves much climbing.

Golfpark Bregenzerwald

The Golfpark Bregenzerwald at Riefensberg is an 18-hole course laid out by the architect Kurt Rossknecht, and it opened in 1996 as Vorarlberg’s first 18-hole course. The Golfpark Bregenzerwald runs across hilly ground with patches of forest and running water, and what makes it interesting is that it follows the landscape instead of flattening it: deep grass, bridges and bunkers are placed where the terrain already put obstacles.

The clubhouse has its own restaurant, open from 9 a.m. Lessons for beginners and for experienced players are both on offer, and current green fees and season dates are on the Golfpark Bregenzerwald website. The restaurant closes for part of the shoulder season, so check before you count on lunch there.

Taking beginner lessons

Beginner lessons here run about two hours and cover the driving range, the green and the putting, which is enough to tell you whether you like the game. I took mine with Daniel Green, a British coach who had moved to Vorarlberg years before, and yes, I noticed the name.

We started at the driving range, where he explained the swing. There is a particular way to hold the club, a particular way to stand, a particular way to move your shoulders, and almost none of it felt natural to me. I have been hip hop dancing for years and I am used to letting movement flow; golf asks you to rotate around fixed axes and to bend only certain parts of yourself. It felt like using my muscles in a new language.

I was no natural. I did hit a few clean balls, and those small successes made me concentrate harder, which is its own lesson about the sport: a lot of focus, while trying not to seize up completely.

From the range we moved to a green for different swing techniques, and then to the putting, which was the most fun. I had a small competition with Conny from the Bregenzerwald Tourism Board over who could sink six balls faster. I lost, 16 strokes to her 13, though I will point out that she had played twice before. That it was five years earlier is a detail I am choosing to ignore.

We finished with a drive round the course to see what a full 18 holes would look like. Daniel explained the scoring, how handicaps work and what happens when you put a ball into rough ground, and he answered questions rather than just demonstrating, which is what made two hours pass quickly.

An afternoon in Mellau

The Mellau section of the Umgang Bregenzerwald is 4.1 km (2.5 mi) and takes about an hour and a half. The Mellau route is the easiest of the three I walked, and one of the buildings on it is a restaurant, which makes it a good pre-dinner loop rather than an afternoon commitment.

Have dinner at Naze’s Hus in Mellau

Naze’s Hus is a tavern with guest rooms and the only listed building in Mellau. Naze’s Hus was built centuries ago, though nobody can date it exactly, and a full renovation in 2004 and 2005 brought it back without stripping out its history.

The name comes from a previous owner, an Ignaz who made washtubs and wooden barrels on the premises. Two syllables were two too many for the local farmers, so he became Naze and the workshop became Naze’s Hus, and the name outlived him.

I ate on the terrace and ordered a pancake soup followed by a chicken salad. I had underestimated the soup, which arrived closer to a main course than a starter, so my advice is to order one main and add dessert afterwards if you still have room. I did not.

Where to stay in Mellau

Hotel Bären is a small family-run design hotel on the village square in Mellau, two minutes’ walk from the bus stop. Hotel Bären has large modern rooms with a terrace or a kitchenette, a sauna and relaxation room facing the mountains, a sitting room for reading or working, and a ski and bike room with tools and a washing station.

Breakfast deserves its own line. It is a buffet, but one built around freshly made local dishes: cakes, breakfast salads, bircher muesli. Much of the interior was made by local craftspeople using durable materials, which ties the hotel back to the architecture and craft the valley is known for.

The one weakness during my stay was the wi-fi. It worked well in the first-floor sitting room and was unreliable in my room, in an outer corner of the third floor, where it dropped out completely in the evenings. If you need to work, plan to do it downstairs. Rates and availability for Hotel Bären are on Booking.com.

The Bregenzerwald Guest Card

The Bregenzerwald Guest Card is free with any stay of three nights or more, and it saves more money than anything else you can arrange here. The Bregenzerwald Guest Card covers cable cars, buses and outdoor swimming pools at no charge, and adds discounts at museums, baths, activity providers and shops across the region.

Season and conditions. The card runs from 1 May to 31 October 2026 and applies to stays of three nights or more at a participating property in one of the 27 partner municipalities. It is valid from the day you arrive to the day you leave, your accommodation issues it automatically, and there is a smartphone version you can load before you travel. Because cable car tickets alone run to €25 ($29, £22) return, three nights and two lift rides already cover it. Full conditions are on the Bregenzerwald Guest Card page.

How to get to the Bregenzerwald

Drive if you can, because the Bregenzerwald is a region where a car saves a lot of waiting. Villages are strung along the valley and the bus network is good but infrequent outside the main hours.

Flying into Zurich is the practical alternative. There is a direct train from Zurich Airport to Bregenz, the journey takes about two hours with one or two changes, and Bregenz to Mellau is roughly an hour by bus, either direct or changing in Bezau. European rail and bus routes are searchable on Omio.

For buses inside the region, the Austrian vmobil timetable is the one to use, and remember that the Guest Card makes those buses free. For flights, I check Trip.com, which lets you set price alerts and shows which month is cheapest for your route.

Travel insurance for the Bregenzerwald

Travel insurance covers the things planning cannot: a cancelled booking, illness abroad, a camera dropped on a mountain path. I have carried ongoing cover since I started travelling, though if you take only a few trips a year you can insure each one separately instead.

If you do not have cover yet, look at SafetyWing. Their plans are flexible enough to sign up for after you have already left, they were the first travel insurer to cover COVID, and when I had COVID they reimbursed my costs without an argument.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Five things are worth knowing before you plan these two days, from what has changed on the ground since the itinerary was first walked.

1. Do not plan anything around the Andelsbuch chairlift. It closed on 12 August 2023 and was dismantled from summer 2024, and the Niedere is now reached from Bezau instead.
2. Avoid 8 November to 24 December. The Bezau cable car shuts between the summer and winter seasons, which takes the mountain half of Day 1 off the table entirely.
3. Check the Biohotel Schwanen’s closing days before you drive to Bizau. The restaurant is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the whole house closes between 8 November and 11 December 2026.
4. Stay three nights rather than two if the dates allow it. Three nights triggers the free Guest Card, and two cable car rides already cost more than the extra night saves you in lift tickets.
5. Ask for a room on a lower floor at Hotel Bären if you need wi-fi. Mine was in an outer corner of the third floor and dropped out in the evenings, while the first-floor sitting room was fine.

I visited the Bregenzerwald as a guest of the Vorarlberg and Austria tourism boards. As always, the opinions here are my own.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her two days in Andelsbuch, Bezau, Bizau, Riefensberg and Mellau. The team covers Austria and Vorarlberg for independent travellers, including the hotels, mountain restaurants and cable cars worth booking, and updates this page when prices, opening days and lift seasons change.