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!