Austria and Prague

It has been awhile since my last blog entry. I have been enjoying Austria too much to have time to write about it! Most of my time has been spent getting to know some really amazing locals as well as snowboarding. Austria is so incredibly beautiful with so much to explore that words and pictures cannot begin to do justification for the region where I have been spending time. Innsbruck is a town surrounded by mountains...my paradise. It's not too small and not too big. It is clean and extremely safe. (This is for you family members that are worriers: I have never been in a city in the US where I feel safer than I feel in Innsbruck...literally!) I absolutely adore this place.

During my time here, I have been lucky enough to only have to rent a snowboard one day so far which I am very thankful to everyone for letting me borrow their boards. I have had amazing powder snowboarding experiences that far top any snowboarding I have ever done in my life. Josh and I joined Tim and his friend for another day in the mountains at Alpbacher with the perfect amount of powder and even untouched areas that made for quite a day. We had the best currywurst I have had thus far too. After arriving back in town that day we headed up to Cloud 9 which is an igloo bar on the top of Nordkette that you take a gondola to get up to. It is funny how taking shelter in an igloo can be so warm. The following day was a lazy day and we visited more new friends, Simon and Luba, for dinner and drinks at their place which has an immaculate top floor view of the mountains with floor to ceiling windows lining the condo.

On Sunday Josh decided to head for Prague while I opted to remain in Innsbruck for another week in which time I spent snowboarding, socializing, and sledding from Maria Waldrast (monastery) down the mountain again. I snowboarded with Kersten (one of the Austrians that I have been staying with) during the week. On the weekend I went with Michael (other Austrian I'm staying with) and his friends Clemens and Melena. Clemens had mapped out an area out of bounds in the backcountry that he wanted to try from Axamer Lizum ski resort. We started the morning early and did some powder searching while doing runs. Fresh powder was rather far and few between on the resort, so Clemens, Michael, and I decided it was time to hit the backcountry in search of epic powder and endless fun. It turned out to be more than any of us could have imagined. Endorphins were at an all time snowboarding/skiing high, and we were all three grinning tremendously from ear to ear. There were only two other lines anywhere in sight from any other people. The powder was perfect, although starting a little thin at the top of the mountain, it continued to get better. I took a rather amusing fall after bailing to the left when I saw some thin snow and rocks. After that the powder adventure began. We reached some tree skiing and had to break down a branch or two to get through only to find another field of pure, endless, white, fluffy heaven. We traversed some, jumped a small creek, and found our way to the sledding trail that would take us to the next town to catch a bus back to the resort. It was great seeing the looks of sledders as we came out of the woods since it is apparently a rarely skied part of the backcountry. While at the bus stop, an older Austrian gentleman (who I don't believe spoke English and talked to the boys in German) had a feeling where we just came from solely based on the excitement in our voices as we spoke English :-). When we arrived back to the resort another gentleman who worked their was talking to Michael and immediately knew where we had been and who the other two tracks we saw were from which goes to show how tight knit the ski towns around there are. Back at the resort we enjoyed food, beer, and some local Austrian music before heading back into Innsbruck. We ended the night by taking the train to a town called Seefeld for a snow festival and mulled wine on the streets. The next morning we set off on another adventure hiking off trail up towards the monastery in the mountains for dinner and to rent sleds to ride down. Have I mentioned I love Austria?

Yesterday, January 28th, I decided it was time for me to see Prague. When I arrived last night, I set down at the bar for dinner and met a naval helicopter pilot that had been stationed in Italy for a couple of months. He is on a 40 day leave now traveling Europe. We explored the city a little last night and did a very informative tour of town today. One interesting story was about a very well known thief back in the day who broke into a church to steal an apparently valuable necklace off of a statue of Mary. The statue came alive and grabbed him by the arms. The man struggled and struggled until he passed out. The priest came into the church the next morning to find this man hanging in the air by the hands of a statue. He confessed he would never steal again if they let him go. They decided to release him but cut his arm off to free him. The statue then released his arm and it still remains in the church as a reminder to all of what happened. The end.

Prague

Germany and the Beginning of Austria

On January 1st we arrived in Frankfurt and found our hostel near the train station. This is really random, but surprisingly they had the best showers I've ever used. As for Frankfurt itself, it seemed to be a ghost town. It is one of the few cities in Europe with high rises, so we utilized one to access the roof and see the town from above. After that we walked to Old Town which appeared to have some cool bars and shops but nothing was open. We walked around to kill some time until meeting up with my friend Teresa at the airport. Josh and I had an interesting experience on the underground train while heading to meet her. We jumped in the end car of the train and at one stop the train security personnel stepped on and asked for our tickets. We provided them and apparently we successfully screamed tourist and they cited us €20 each for being in a first class cabin. Who knew they had first class on the underground anyhow?! We made it to the airport to meet Teresa after spending a little more than expected. Teresa works at the army base as a civilian contracted pharmacist in Landstuhl which is about an hour southwest of Frankfurt. We spent two nights with her and checked out the base to use their indoor climbing wall before heading out to Munich.

In Munich we stayed with my friend Veronika who did a year of high school and played volleyball with me. As always, I loved Munich, even with the rainy, cloudy skies. We checked out the part of town where Veronika was living which had lots of coffee shops and restaurant/bars. I took Josh to see the river surfing where we found two dedicated surfers in wet suits while I was bundled up in my winter clothes. On one rainy day we walked to the massive climbing gym for a bouldering workout followed by yummy beer and German food from the Hofbrauhaus. We also found another beer hall which was less touristy near Veronika's and enjoyed more local grub and beer. Bavarians (in southern Germany) and Tyrolleans (people from a region in Austria) love their Radlers which is beer mixed with something similar to Sprite. It's an incredibly refreshing 50/50 mixture. Two of the nights we met up with my friend Tim who is a local that I met in New Zealand a few years ago, traveled Europe with summer 2011, and snowboarded with in Colorado last winter. We have been averaging about 8-10 miles of walking and sightseeing every other day and maybe 3-5 miles on the other days.

On January 8th we got a train to Innsbruck, Austria. Innsbruck is a small mountain town that thrives on college students and tourists. I honestly can't believe I've never been here before. We've been here five days now and I don't want to leave! Our first two days we snowboarded at Stubaier Glacier and Axamer Lizum. Since we are traveling cheap we have been staying with friends as often as possible. The first three nights we stayed at Josh's friend Melissa's flat. She has exams the next two weeks though so we relocated to another friend's place (Michael). Michael and his two roommates are great as well as their friends. We hung out with them all day Friday when taking a day off from snowboarding. The mountains got more snow that day and over night so we headed back up to Stubaier on Saturday and met Tim and his friend to snowboard for the day on about 10 inches of fresh powder. When we arrived back in town we went to meet some of Michael's friends for drinks. It was a late night so we took Sunday off of snowboarding but ended up going sledding in the evening with Michael and his friends we met Saturday night. It consisted of us walking about 2.5 miles up the mountain to a monastery where we had dinner and a Radler before renting sleds. This sledding was intense too in my opinion. Michael ran his GPS and he went about 25 miles per hour although I didn't have the nerve to go that fast! Overall, awesome experience. We will be back on our boards tomorrow!

Amsterdam

Amsterdam immediately reminded me of what I dislike about America but not without also reminding me of luxuries I take for granted. My biggest pet peeve was the trash on the streets due to the fact that they don't have the space that most places in America have available to properly accommodate it all. However, by day two or three, I had already subsided taking notice. Other than that, it was a charming and delightful city. I could walk around daily in awe of the tall, narrow buildings along the canals. Old houseboats line some of the canals with residents inhabiting them. Although this leads to my second annoyance which was the American twist on some of the houseboats that reminded me more of a small double wide afloat, some painted hideous colors. Luckily there weren't many of these atrocious dwellings! Bicycles lined the streets with the bicyclists having the right of way over pedestrians it seemed with their mild horns going off if you were walking in the bike lanes or in the way.

Most European cities I have been to lack the overabundance of corporate life and chain restaurants which is one thing I love so much about being outside of the US. Big clothing brands thrive in Europe too though, which I generally overlook due to most of them not being present in the US. I did have my classic horrified expression though when walking by an Abercrombie which literally had about a 40 person line awaiting entry. Josh's local friend Tom explained that it was only two weeks old which gave me some relief and an excuse for a line. None the less it made me want to go shake every person in line back to the reality of what they were encouraging and who they eventually leave out of business by not shopping locally.

Josh and I walked about five to ten miles daily just enjoying the streets and exploring. We visited the public library which was in a very nice, bee building with a restaurant on the top floor allowing for a spectacular view of the city. At Amsterbed, where we stayed, Corinna (the owner) cooked us breakfast every morning. On New Year's Eve there were fireworks being set off all over the city also causing car alarms to go off which was entertaining since you generally don't see fireworks going off in the streets in the US. Unfortunately it was raining and a bit of a nasty night but still fun. We had oliebollen (deep fried dough balls) which is a traditional food on new New Year's. They were quite tasty!

Next adventures....Frankfurt and Munich before heading to Innsbruck for a couple weeks of snowboarding!