Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Skiing Austria


Location: Wald, Austria


Rundown: Spent a week in a chalet in the Austrian Alps skiing, Christmasing, and being generally merry.



Drove seven hours south in a caravan of cars towards Munich, and then into the Alps. In a great snow we found our little chalet in the mountains!


Several dozen strings of Christmas lights courtesy of Dave and Chelsea lit the place up pretty nice.


Opened presents Christmas morning, forgoing the skiing for the day.













Started a Christmas tradition of several dozen German beers for breakfast. Felix was our resident expert on the matter.













Made tons of food and ate like crazy.














Drove through the quintessential ski town with wooden beam architecture and heavy snow piled on the steep roofs.


Got a pretty good snow dump the day before Christmas, so the mountain was well covered for our first ski day.


Nice long runs down and gondolas going up kept us toasty all day. Super fun skiing!


Compared to Chile, there is so much infrastructure on the slopes in the Alps. I loved the crisscrossing lifts on the hills.


One of our days on the slopes was in a heavy snow. Most people went home, but we got to plunder the fresh powder on and off piste. Sweet!


And a good time was had by all!



Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christmas in Germany



Location: Oberursel, Germany

Rundown: Pre-Christmas celebration!

Flew into Germany after school was dismissed for Chilean summer break. Spent our first days walking around Oberursel amongst the old buildings


Although it was overcast the first day, the next morning woke up to brand new snow!


Hiked up into the Taunus, hills outside of town to Fuchstanz, or Fox Dance, where there are a couple of little places for a beer and flamekuken in the woods! Fun hiking in the heavy falling snow!


Back at Chelsea's we made a big pot of soup and ate good bread and, of course, drank good hearty German beer.


Spent the next day at Liza's making Peirogi for our Polish Christmas dinner the next day! It's a little bit art and a little bit science.



Had Christmas dinner the next day with our homemade Pierogi and Polish mushroom soup! So good!