WoodPrint House & Café — Lofer, Austria
Lofer, Austria 🇦🇹
I love farm stays. When I consider visiting a country that is known for its beautiful nature, with country and farms all around, I make sure that I arrange a part of my stay to be in a farm. This is what I was blessed with a few years ago when I planned my trip to the land of enchantment, Austria. My search took me in a tour to so many beautiful places in the region of Salzburg. After screening several of them, I decided to go with a farm home near Lofer.
The proud buildings, the inviting restaurants, cosy cafés and the massive backdrop of the Loferer Steinberge, Lofer is a popular holiday destination where you can find peace and quiet as well as follow your sporting passions. One of the main players is most definitely the Almenwelt Lofer. Skiers have fun in winter in the family ski area and spend magnificent days in the mountains; in summer one of the most beautiful hiking areas in the Alps opens up. Down in the valley, where the raging waters of the Saalach thunder through the rapids of the Teufelsschlucht, water sports enthusiasts find a true paradise for kayaking, rafting and canyoning
— Lofer Web
You might wonder why would I choose a farm stay over a five-star hotel. The first reason that most people know for a fact, is about experience. When you lock yourself in a five-star hotel, you mostly will have an experience that you can find anywhere in the world. This might as well be at your home city. Hotels, in my opinion, are great for business travel. But when you seek leisure, choosing a spot that represents the sole of your destination is crucial.
The second reason for choosing a farm stay, is simply to experience the local culture and atmosphere of your destination country. Since, Austria is known for its nature and country life, then choosing a stay that is in the middle of a farm will ensure you really get a good scoop of the nature day-and-night. The third reason for my choice is purely financial. Farm stays, or home stays for that matter, are usually inexpensive compared to luxurious and serviced hotels. Moreover, they are usually more spacious. So, your stay will be cheaper taking a dollar-for-square-meter factor.
WoodPrint House & Café — Pin 📍
The Lofer area presented me with so many options for a cafe stop. I wanted something that can get you a unique experience whether indoors or outdoors. I found WoodPrint Café an interesting place to consider. Not only it has a cozy area for a cup of coffee, but it also has an exploration center of wood carvings and works. They also have a nice showroom where you can see their wood works in furnished sets.
The WOODPRINT Café combines know-how from the printing sector with specialties from the region and, in addition to coffee and cake, spoil you with chocolate snacks from the 3D printer and cappuccinos with your own selfie laughing from the milk foam. A hip atmosphere, vintage seating and two roof terraces facing the sun and the “Loferer Steinberge” mountains invite you to relax in comfort. A small but fine specialty store invites you to browse.
— Stainer Sun Wood Website
With about 11 kilometers, a 16-min drive, from my stay, the WoodPrint Café is a perfect spot for a morning or afternoon coffee. The lovely terraced outdoors make it possible to take it all in, with the the view of mountains of Lofer. This is a place that can carve itself into your sole, with an experience that can last forever and ever.
Grained Experiences
The beauty around Lofer in general, and this cafe in specific, made me think again about great and enduring experiences. The wooden works tell stories, and those stories are grained into their beautiful contrasting wood veins. This is what happens when you live a great experience. A great experience (or a devastating one —for that matter) can be grained into yourself, coloring your veins with the good (or the bad).
Senses help us perceive the world around us. They are the basic input channels to our brains; the sight, the hearing, the taste, the touch, and the smell. They help the brain paint a meaning and structure to the things we become in contact with. They can become stronger or weaker, aroused or numbed, and that makes all the difference in our experiences. Some experiences stick around and endure a forgetting memory. Other experiences can be forgotten the minute they were perceived.
The interesting thing is how our senses contribute to both our good and bad experiences. You might be remembering a day out with your family when you were a child, remembering the smells of the outdoors, the taste of the hotdogs, and the warmth of your family around you. On the other hand, you could also remember that accident you had years ago, with all the smells, sights, and sounds carved in the horrible memory of it.
When you travel, and especially with your family along, you would like to visit places that can take all your senses by a swirl, aroused and hopefully positive. This can make your experience and the experience of your family grained in a good way. You would like to reach a point where a smell in the air, a snapshot or a sight, or a familiar sound, can take you to that place, as if you are going through it all over again.
The Power of Your Senses
We have a rational brain and an emotional brain. Our emotional brain is the quickest of both. When it registers something, it carves it in our memories tagging it with our feelings of the moment, however pleasant or unpleasant those feelings are. The senses are but input channels that trigger markings on those feelings, registering with them in our own memories. Our rational brain kick in a little later usually, trying to put a rein on our emotional brain, making sense of or controlling whatever is happening.
An interesting book that I found around the topic is called “The Power of Your Senses” by Russell Jones. The topic of senses and how they affect our experience is taken by research and application in this book. I was thrilled to see a book that can explain, using science, the effect of our senses on our own experiences. Not only that, but it also gives you ways to create better experiences by tweaking your inputs, the five senses.
The Power of Your Senses
Which scents can lower stress?
What music can make you more productive?
And why does coffee taste better from a red cup?
Our senses have a powerful effect on how we think, feel and behave; yet we don't use them to anywhere near their full potential.
Using his extensive knowledge of sensory science, multisensory expert Russell Jones shows you how to make small changes to your day and experience life like you never have before.
So, whether you want to feel energised in the morning, get the most from your exercise, be efficient at work, really enjoy your food or have the most restful night's sleep possible, read this book and discover the real power of your senses.
Previously published as Sense.
For some reason, I couldn’t get hold of a Kindle edition of the book, so I bought a hard copy. Here are a couple of the passages that got my attention. I hope they can get you excited to grab the book and read it for yourself.
“As we go through life experiencing the world and forging memories, we learn to associate different feelings with the sensory elements around us. For example, the smell of sun cream makes us feel happy, because we’re always happy when we use it. Or the color green reminds us of nature and is connected with notions of healthiness. These smells, colors and sounds become triggers for their associated feelings and meanings, and it’s always the emotion that comes first, before you are able to acknowledge where the memory is from or what sparked it.”
— Russell Jones, The Power of Your Senses
“An old adage for this is ‘the rider and the elephant’. The rider is the rational part of the brain – the prefrontal cortex – and the elephant is your emotional brain – the limbic system, to which the senses, especially sound and scent, are the superhighway. If the elephant catches wind of something that sparks its interest, then off it will go, and the rider can’t do a thing about it. Maybe a scent in the air reminded it of being a calf, exploring the jungle to its heart’s content. Nostalgic feelings of adventure and curiosity rise to the surface of its mind, and all the rider can do is go along for the ride. If we understand what emotions motivate the elephant and which sensory stimuli will spark certain thought processes or behavior, the rider can take back control.”
— Russell Jones, The Power of Your Senses
Member discussion