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From chocolate box town to hip resort, Zaha Hadid's new train terminals have transformed Innsbruck, the capital city of the federal state of Tyrol in western Austria, writes Chris Madigan.
Tonight, a brass band will be playing in the Golden Roof, the 16th Century gilded balcony which is Innsbruck's best known monument.
Below, shoppers will drink traditional mulled drinks amid candle stalls in the market, and the day's last light will glow from the snowy mountains that loom over the city. However, if those shoppers walk down a medieval alley called Hofgasse and turn left past the vast baroque Imperial Palace, they'll come to the River Inn. And, it will appear that an alien troop ship has landed on its banks.
The amorphous, glowing glass structure is in fact one of the stations on the Nordkettenbahn and designed by architect Zaha Hadid. The 100-year-old mountain railway, which now has four uniquely-designed stops (but all of them with the same look, hinting at the curve of the mountains, glacial flow and other echoes of nature), winds up the mountain on the city's northern edge to the village of Hungerberg.
It is here that you can see how willing Innsbruck is to accept architectural culture clash. Opposite the futuristic funicular terminus is a typical late 19th-century Tyrolean Landhaus, all dark wood and ornate eaves. Beyond that, the first of the wonderful cable car stations for the Nordpark ski area.
The Nordkettenbahn was not Hadid's first project in the city. In fact she now has landmarks either side of the Inn Valley. Her 2002 Bergisel ski jump is an asymmetric, shimmering, metallic tower, somewhere between a raised gauntlet fist and a helping hand, with an attractive cafe and spectacular views - the jumpers have to look down into a cemetery!
And, it is not only in architecture that traditional perceptions are being overturned. Tyrolean food is no longer all dumplings and meat knuckles cooked by fat moustachioed men. At Pavilion, the hottest restaurant in town, chef Mansour Memarian puts Iranian spices in the celery soup, serves shoulder of lamb with a pistou, artichoke hearts and broad beans, and sprinkles pomegranate seeds over the chocolate souffle.
Pavilion has a wonderful location between the Imperial Palace and the Landestheater and tables in the glass cube have views on to this floodlit grandeur.
Elsewhere, in a cellar in the medieval quarter, Klaus Dengg has stripped out his father's dark, trad stube (leaving a bright series of dining rooms, despite being underground), and has also started playing with the menu. Dengg's a Tyrolean name, but in a pun on its Asian sound, he serves good dim sum, scallops with a green coconut salad and mock turtle soup.
It is perhaps surprising that Innsbruck has such good restaurants as you rarely see anyone overweight. Young or old, everyone seems to be rushing around doing something. Students around the world carry their books in rucksacks slung over one shoulder. Not here: they all have proper technical packs, strapped at chest and waist, as if they're ready to strap on a snowboard or scale a mountain at a moment's notice. Which they are. Christiane Rossler, a languages student from near Linz, says she chose Innsbruck for the skiing and climbing. "I know Germans who come to university here mainly to get a half-price season's ski pass," she says.
Nordpark (which has a huge 1,400m vertical and one off-piste route so steep you get a certificate and a T-shirt if you complete it) is not the only ski area reached by public transport. Trams reach Igls - a lovely village (home to a lot of artists) and site of Franz Klammer's famous downhill victory at the 1976 Olympics - and the charmingly named Fulmpes, which accesses the undeservedly little known Schlick 2000 ski area.
Further afield, the Stubai glacier is arguably the most extensive and varied glacier in the country. And Axamer Lizum is a freerider's paradise - with gullies and jumps and plenty of off-piste.
NOTE: Stay at the Hotel Penz (the-penz.com) in the Rathaus Galerie complex, doubles from EUR180 (BD95) per night; or in the astonishing-looking Ibis (ibishotel.com) by the railway station, from EUR76 (BD40) pn.
