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Gateway: Munich/Salzburg Saalbach-Hinterglemm, the site of the 1991 World Alpine Ski Championships, is a quintessential European ski town-a hamlet of Heidi style chalets complete with a bubbling stream and miniature town square and surrounded by soaring peaks. This Austrian village so impressed the International Ski Federation (ISF) with its track record of hosting World Cup meets that it aced the championships on the first bid. Hemmed in by mountains that soar more than 3,000 feet above, the host town is wedged at the end of a tight valley that's carved by the Saalach River. Its interlinked lift network is tremendous (60 lifts). You can start at any of the main lifts and complete all the major runs on both sides of the valley in a day. Saalbach's 130 miles of groomed runs amount to a lot of skiing, most of it just right for intermediates. The upper portions of all nine major summits consist of expansive snowfields and sweeping bowls. Most packed pistes are marked blue for easy and red for intermediate. The handful of black runs are found on some north-facing slopes. Try your hand at ice-curling, take a horse drawn sleigh ride, discover cross country skiing, tobogganing, paragliding or spend the day in nearby Salzburg or Zell am See - the alternatives are endless! Enjoy a dinner with friends or make new ones, try vodka figs or hearty pork knuckle-aprés ski to suit every taste-the ski circus never closes!