Closed for good

End for popular excursion restaurant in the Rax region

Bernd Scharfegger has been the tenant of the popular "Am Wasserwerk" pub in Kaiserbrunn in the Höllental valley for the last five years. Now the building is to be demolished.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/ZVG Wiener Alpen)

The popular excursion restaurant "Am Wasserwerk" in Kaiserbrunn in the Höllental valley in Lower Austria is closing its doors for good. For five years, Rax cable car operator Bernd Scharfegger ran it with much love and dedication. Unfortunately, it was then too unprofitable. New solutions for excursionists are being worked on. 

"Unfortunately, I now have to put away my baby, which I raised during the coronavirus pandemic." There is a lot of melancholy in these words from Raxseilbahnen operator Bernd Scharfegger. He had taken over the popular excursion restaurant "Am Wasserwerk", at the end of the wildly romantic water pipeline path in the Höllental valley, from the city of Vienna as a tenant just before Corona. During this time, the restaurant was still able to keep its head above water with take-away dishes and numerous "lockdown tourists", but unfortunately business slowed down again after the pandemic.

Hotspot unfortunately only in midsummer
The problem: "We were overrun during the summer vacations. In the months before and after, however, most of the action took place on the mountain itself and in the mountain huts."

Scharfegger praises the cooperation with the City of Vienna. They now want to have the building demolished. Scharfegger himself knows that the building is extremely difficult to use and that renovating it would cost an enormous amount of money. "But now we have to put our heads together to think about an alternative." After all, the Höllental is still a popular destination for motorcyclists and hikers.