Hubert Schonger

From Trento to Chamonix, via Zermatt; from the Morgiou cove to the Eiger's north face; from Planica to the Lavaredo peaks, the Alps are depicted, illustrated, and magnified in all their unique and sublime beauty, through the sports practiced there and the most typical customs and traditions of their inhabitants. A helicopter rescue and a parachute jump from the Red Wall by Wolfgang Weizenbocks are experiences not to be missed.

During the winter, the grandfather tells his grandchildren the fairy tale of Mother Holly: A widow lives with her two daughters—the hardworking and beautiful Blondmarie, who, as an unloved stepchild, must do all the chores, and her own lazy and wicked daughter, Blackmarie. When Blondmarie enters the realm of the weather fairy Mother Holly and diligently performs her duties there, she is richly rewarded for her efforts: Blondmarie returns home in a golden dress. Now Blackmarie dreams of the same wealth, and so she enters Mother Holly's service, but her laziness earns her nothing but a shower of pitch. Blondmarie, however, knows how to make the most of her good fortune: she gifts her gold to the fields, now bearing a bountiful harvest, and so she is able to marry her beloved shepherd, Kaspar Franz, as a simple farmer’s wife.

Snow White's mother, the Queen dies when she is born. Her father, the King, remarries a beautiful but vain lady. The new Queen has a magic mirror that she asks every day, who is the fairest one of all? When it answers Snow White, the Queen is furious. Will handsome Prince Charming and the Seven Dwarfs be able to save Snow White from the wicked Queen's wrath?

Franz, a Tyrolean mountain farmer's son and passionate poacher, loves the beautiful Sanna. A hunter, who is also interested in her, catches Franz poaching, shoots him and leaves him alone. On the way back to the valley, he falls into a crevasse and dies. When Franz returns home seriously injured by the shot, he is mistaken for the murderer of the missing hunter and is put on trial. Although he is acquitted for lack of evidence, the village community cannot prove his innocence. Everyone turns away from Franz, only Sanna sticks by him. They live in seclusion with their two children on a farmstead. Only when the children get lost in the mountains at Christmas time years later can the supposed murder case be solved.

The prince’s marshal sends word throughout the land: a seamstress is wanted at the royal court! But neither the widow Berta nor her lazy and wicked daughter, Pitchmarie, can spin—so who will provide the finest yarn in the land? Goldmarie, the kind and hardworking orphan who has come to live with them, must do it! But when her spindle falls into a deep well, she follows it and finds herself in the magical realm of Mother Holly, the weather fairy. There, she carries out her duties with such diligence that she is richly rewarded with gold. Now the lazy Pitchmarie longs for the same fortune, and she, too, enters the service of Mother Holly ...

Ever since a little girl received a red cap from her grandmother—which she loves to wear—everyone has called her “Little Red Riding Hood.” Little Red Riding Hood lives with her mother and her five brothers in a little cottage on the edge of the forest. Since their father passed away, Little Red Riding Hood’s brothers have been working as lumberjacks to support the family. The little girl helps her mother with the housework as best she can. When Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother falls seriously ill, her mother has to take care of her, while the girl handles the chores at home and also prepares meals for her five brothers.

A Brothers Grimm fairy tale involving siblings finding a gingerbread house in the middle of the forest owned by an evil witch who captures them and by fattening them, intends to have them for her meal.