QUICKLY ON THE COUNTRYSIDE

Hochstrass is secluded, but at the same time easily accessible, about a 15-minute drive from the A1 highway (exit/entrance Böheimkirchen). It is only 25 km to St. Pölten and only 55 km to Vienna. Behind Stössing the road leads right from the L110 and then up to Hochstrass on a narrower road. A few hundred meters after the intersection you pass the invisible portal into the convent’s 167-hectar-large cosmos.

 

Refugium Hochstass Pferde
Refugium Hochstass Birnenbaum
Refugium Hochstass Steinbruch

A WORLD IN ITSELF

Through bright mixed beech forests teeming with game, the road takes you along lush meadows and pastures with grazing cows and horses past the Old Forge and several barns on the knoll, with the convent and its adjoining buildings. From here the view spans across the gentle ridge of hills into the expanse, where the Vienna Woods change into the fertile Mostviertel region.

 

Refugium Hochstass Waldweg

WAY OF THE CROSS PATH THROUGH THE FOREST

The convent’s cosmos can be accessed on various walking and hiking paths. One of them is the Way of the Cross path, laid out in 1914, from the Old Cheese Dairy to the Forest Cemetery. On the way you pass the tapped wells of the estate, the Marian grotto and the fruit orchard. Likewise located on the path is the Old Quarry, where the stones in all the buildings on Hochstrass come from. Just a few steps behind the modest cemetery with the nuns’ graves, a passage leads you out of the forest onto open land full of meadows and trees that stretch to the horizon.

 

Refugium Hochstass Friedhof
Refugium Hochstass Steinbruch
Refugium Hochstass Landschaft

SUMMER LIKE BACK THEN

When it got really hot, the nuns took a refreshing dip into the spring-fed swimming pool below the present-day paddock. Unlike the nuns’ makeshift changing room, it still exists today. Following this bathing tradition, we laid out a new, large biotope. Not only is the summer already taken care of: An outdoor Finnish sauna is being built next to the biotope. After going to the sauna, it is also possible to refresh yourself in the cool times of the year in the water.