Dear Guests, Friends and Kristiania Family,

Some places understand drama better than others. Salzburg is one of them. It is not only the music, although of course it is the music. It is the arrival, the stone, the light, the bells, the sudden feeling that the city has been waiting for an entrance. A narrow street becomes a corridor. A church becomes a stage. A summer evening becomes an overture. Perhaps this is why Salzburg has always stayed with me.

In 1992, my mother and I sat in the Felsenreitschule for Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise — Peter Sellars staging it, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, José van Dam in the title role and Dawn Upshaw as L’Ange. The opera had not been performed anywhere since its Paris premiere nine years earlier. Messiaen himself had died only a few months before, in April.

The work lasts more than four hours. The saint speaks to birds. The Angel arrives in a colour somewhere between lilac and salmon. In the interval, the Goldener Hirsch served dinner in the Karl Böhm Saal — a Baroque hall of mirrors, frescoes and chandeliers, only steps from the great stone hollow of the Felsenreitschule itself. It was a kind of evening that only Salzburg knows how to compose. And it was one of those evenings one never quite leaves. The memory is not exact in the practical sense — memories of music rarely are — but it is exact in feeling. The sound rose into the rock in a way that made the space seem larger than itself. The music did not simply happen at the Felsenreitschule. It seemed to belong to it.

There are moments when one understands culture before one understands anything about it. One does not yet know the history, the structure, the interpretation, the arguments people will one day have over tempo and phrasing. One simply feels that something important is taking place. For me, that evening of Saint François was such a moment. It had grandeur, but not glamour. It had darkness, but also light. It had discipline, but also surrender.

Much later, I would understand that the best places are often like this too. They hold contradiction. They allow beauty and discomfort, memory and surprise, stillness and intensity to exist in the same room.

Kristiania, in its own way, lives in such contrasts. A mountain house with art. A ski day followed by candlelight. A serious conversation interrupted by humour. A perfectly laid table that still leaves room for life.

Opera understands this very well. Nothing in opera is moderate. Someone is always arriving too late, loving too much, forgiving too little, dying beautifully, singing when speaking would be more practical. It is, in many ways, unreasonable. And yet sometimes the unreasonable is necessary.

We travel for such moments. For a voice in a room. For a festival evening. For the walk back afterwards, when the music is still somewhere in the body. For the dinner where everyone speaks a little more intensely than usual. For the strange luxury of giving oneself to something that does not need to be useful.

The mountains have their own version of this. They do not sing, but they do change the scale of things. They make human drama both smaller and more vivid. Weather becomes plot. Light becomes mood. Silence becomes an event.

Perhaps that is why Salzburg and Lech belong, in my mind, to the same Austrian language of feeling. One is theatrical in stone and sound; the other in snow, height, weather and return.

Both remind us that place matters.

The Salzburg Festival this summer offers opera, theatre, concerts, voices, rooms, rituals and reasons to dress beautifully. For those drawn to Messiaen, to the Felsenreitschule, or simply to the particular charge of Salzburg in festival season, it is worth looking at the programme slowly — not only to choose what to see, but to choose what kind of evening one wishes to have. Because that, too, is part of the art. Not every evening should be efficient. Some evenings should be composed. A train, a dress, a courtyard, a glass before curtain, the hush before music, the walk afterwards. A little ceremony is not the enemy of freedom. Sometimes it is what allows us to feel the moment more fully.

At Kristiania, we believe in such rituals. Not stiff rituals. Not grand rituals. But the small forms that help life become more memorable. A table laid with care. A book chosen for a guest. A playlist for a season. A fire after the mountain. A letter written from the house. And sometimes, somewhere beyond the house, a hollow in the cliffside filled with Messiaen.

With warmest regards from Lech,

Gertrud Schneider

PS. A small note for those drawn to Salzburg: this summer’s Festival opens today and runs to 30 August. Among the season’s events, Saint François d’Assise returns to the Felsenreitschule for the first time since 1992, in a new production by Romeo Castellucci, conducted by Maxime Pascal with the Vienna Philharmonic — marking the 800th anniversary of Francis of Assisi.

On my birthday, I find myself thinking not only about years, but about places.

The places that shape us. The rooms we ran through. The mountains we returned to. The houses that became part of who we are.

For me, Kristiania was never simply a hotel.

As a child, I spent almost all my school holidays in Lech. Winter did not begin with a date in the calendar, but with the feeling of arriving back at the house: the snow outside, the grown-up world inside, familiar faces, polished wood, wool, movement, and something delicious coming from somewhere.

Kristiania felt like a castle to me.

Not in the grand, formal sense. More in the way children understand castles: a place full of rooms, stairs, corners, rules, secrets, and possibilities. A place where something was always happening. A place where one could feel both very important and very much in the way.

I learned to ski in Lech, early and properly, and I skied with the children of our guests. Some became friends. We ran through the hotel, invented worlds, disappeared into corners, reappeared at the wrong moment, and occasionally caused more movement than the house required.

I was only allowed to be in the hotel if I behaved well.

This meant: no fighting with my sister, no disturbing the guests, and being properly dressed. At the time, these rules could feel terribly demanding. Looking back, they were probably my first lessons in hospitality.

A house may be full of personality, but it also needs grace. Freedom needs form. Warmth needs consideration.

And good service, I learned early, is often the art of noticing when to step forward — and when to quietly disappear.

Of course, I did not always succeed.

There was, for example, the lift.

I remember with a mixture of guilt and amusement that I once managed to ruin it, which meant that all our guests had to walk the stairs. I cannot say this was one of my finer contributions to hotel life. But it did teach me something useful: in a hotel, everything is connected. A child’s adventure can become a guest’s exercise programme rather quickly.

Perhaps that is why I never saw hospitality as something abstract.

It was never only about service standards, procedures, or perfect table settings. Those matter, of course. But before all of that, hospitality was a feeling.

It was the mood of the house when guests came back from the mountain — the way someone remembered your favourite breakfast — the ski instructor who made you brave — the waiter who knew when to make a joke — the housekeeper who restored order as if by magic.

It was my parents, the staff, the guests, the children, the conversations, the snow, and the rhythm of a place that was always alive.

Growing up in a hotel teaches you that people arrive with many invisible things.

Expectations — tiredness — joy — worries — celebrations — habits — longings — sometimes even grief.

A good house receives all of this without making too much noise about it.

This is still how I think about Kristiania today.

For me, true hospitality is not performance. It is presence. It is the courage to be personal without becoming intrusive. It is elegance with warmth. It is precision with humanity. It is knowing that every guest should feel held, but never handled.

And perhaps it is also about allowing a little life into the room.

A hotel that is too perfect can become forgettable. A house with memory, character, and a few well-kept stories has a different kind of beauty. Kristiania has always had that for me. It was, and remains, a place shaped by people — by those who built it, those who worked in it, those who returned to it, and those who became part of its story without quite knowing when it happened.

When I think back to those childhood winters, I realise that many of my values were formed before I had words for them.

Dress well, but do not show off — be playful, but not careless — look after people, but let them breathe — respect the house, but do not make it stiff — let beauty be present, but never let it become cold.

That is still the Kristiania I believe in.

A house with taste, warmth, and personality. A house where elegance lives lightly. A house where guests are not processed, but received.

And, perhaps, a house where a child once broke the lift and learned that hospitality is not only about making everything perfect.

It is about caring deeply when it is not.

With warmest regards from Lech,

Gertrud Schneider

“ith winter now behind us, the house has entered another rhythm. The snow begins to loosen its hold, the days stretch a little further, and what remains is often not only a memory of the season, but a particular feeling — of mornings, conversations, candlelight, mountain air, and all the small details that somehow stay with us.

That felt like the right moment to begin these letters. Not as a newsletter in the usual sense. More as a way of writing from the house, from time to time, with notes from Kristiania, from the mountains, and from the changing seasons around us. Each winter leaves something behind.

A mood. A memory. A certain light.

This past season brought familiar faces back through the door, new guests into the rhythm of the house, and many small moments that gave Kristiania its warmth: ski mornings, long breakfasts, late conversations, books left open, candles burning low, boots drying after snow, and the particular pleasure of returning from the mountain into a house that knows how to receive you.

Kristiania has always lived through such details. Not only through rooms and views, but through atmosphere. Through art, music, flowers, food, service, humour, memory, and all the little gestures that make a stay feel personal rather than arranged. Now, between seasons, the house changes its pace. It becomes more private. More reflective. A little slower, perhaps. But not empty. There are plans being made, ideas being gathered, small improvements taking shape, and the first thoughts of next winter beginning to find their place. The house is never entirely still. It is simply listening.

This is partly why Letters from Kristiania begins now. We wanted a place for the things that do not always belong in a traditional hotel letter. A place for atmosphere, reflections, house notes, mountain thoughts, cultural discoveries, playlists, books, rituals, and the small things we find worth sharing. From time to time, these letters may bring you a memory from winter, a note on skiing, a glimpse into the house, a piece of music for a slow morning, a book for the bedside table, or a thought from Lech when the village has changed its season. Less newsletter, perhaps, and more letter. A way to stay close to Kristiania when you are not here. And a way for the house to continue speaking, softly, beyond the dates of the season. For now, we send this first note with gratitude.

Thank you for being part of Kristiania — whether you returned this winter, discovered us for the first time, recommended us to someone dear, or simply follow the house from afar. The mountains are still here. The house is here. And the next chapter is already beginning.

With warmest regards from Lech,

Gertrud Schneider