Schruns

Geschichte

Schruns is a municipality in the Montafon valley in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg in the Bludenz district.In the west, one can see one of the most popular hiking and climbing mountains in Vorarlberg, the Zimba, which is called the "Vorarlberger Matterhorn".GeographySchruns is in Vorarlberg, the westernmost area of Austria, in the vicinity of Bludenz at 690 meters in the Montafon valley on the Litz river, a tributary of the Ill river. Another side valley named the Silbertal runs from Schruns. The area has a high mountain massif to which trains and ski-lifts are closed.Neighboring the area are Bartholomäberg to the north, Silbertal to the east, St. Gallenkirch to the south, and Tschagguns to the west. The nearest town is Bludenz, about 12 km away.About 45.2 percent of the area is forested, with 18.1 percent mountainous.Notable peopleSchruns was for a period of years in the early 1920s the favorite ski resort of Ernest Hemingway. He wintered there with his first wife, Hadley, and oldest son, who was then just an infant, where he revised the manuscript of The Sun Also Rises. In Hemingway's classic story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" the third scene in the first flashback sequence recounts memories of Shruns. (Ernest Hemingway. The Short Stories, Scribner Paperback Fiction: New York, 1995 pp 56–7) These images of snow and glacier skiing stand in contrast to the description of the Serengeti Plain in the main story and anticipate the coming journey to the snows of Kilimanjaro.