Vera's World Is A Small World

Monday, February 13, 2006

Skiing Holiday In Austria

Well, I am back from my ski holiday, all safe and sound!!

This will probably be a long post, so try and stay with me here people!

Saturday 4th February

I went to sleep at about 10pm on Friday, so I would be nice and tired, and able to sleep, on the trip there.
Didn't work though.
Anyway, I got woken up at about 1am by Dagmar, I had to get changed, we ate a little bit and drunk some warm tea, packed the car and left.
I'll tell you what, the streets here are so beautiful and quiet, at 2am. The sky was totally cloudy, and it was cold, but...it felt so...nice. Free or something, I can't explain it.

We drove and drove and drove.
I couldn't sleep at all, and I was cold and uncomfortable.
We got into Munich at about 6am I gather, it was still dark.
Saw some cool stuff in Munich, like this stadium, "Allianz Arena", which can be either red or blue, and this showroom of Mercedes, which was totally cool.
We only drove past it, but it is this massive building with basically all glass windows, and the whole place is filled with Mercedes, because they wanted to compete with BMW, as Munich is the BMW city.

We crosses the German-Austrian border a little later, and it was such a disappointment. there wasn't anything, no sign or anything!!
Pulled into a petrol station and tanked up, bought some card for the roads and left again.

We got to our hotel in Obergurgl at about 9am. It is called Hotel Muehle, and it was so nice.

>>Hotel Muehle<<

That is the hotel I was staying at. I know that it is in German, but if you go a little under and press skip intro, then it goes into English, and you can all have a look around, the fancy place that I spent my last week at!

>>Obergurgl-Hochgurgl<<

That's the whole area, where I was. It was totally cool, and if you click at the top on the English flag it'll go into English for you.
That is literally where I was, it was so cool!

Anyway, we pulled in, got out of the car, drunk a nice warm hot chocolate and got settled in. Unfortunatly we couldn't get into our room until 1pm, so we decided to go and hit the slopes already.
An hour later we had our ski clothing on, had our ski stuff and hit the slopes.

I can't ski.

Well, at least I couldn't ski, at all, when I was there before.
I tried on this little hill and just stacked it, it was great. In front of a overcrowded café, as if it was embarrasing enough.
After a little while of practise I got used to it again and we caught the lift up to a blue ski slope. It wasn't easy, for me, because I am a retard, but, what can I say?
A few goes later and I was literally exhausted.
One time I fell over and it killed me. I thought that I had broken my knee, it hurt so much.

We caught the ski bus back and got into our Hotel, got our ski boots off and carried all our luggage to our room.

Drunk a little bit and ate a little bit, and lay ourselves down, being so tired.

We woke up a little later and went to dinner.

I tell ya, dinner was fancy. It was gourmet food, every night!!
You can eat salad, then a little soup, the main meal, and desert. Sometimes there was another course in between somewhere too.
It really was rediculous, and the waiters and everything...I honestly can't explain it well enough.
It was fancy, the kind of place that super rich people go to.

After that we went to sleep, only to find out how uncomfortable the beds were.
Nina's and mine, they were so horrible. You could feel the springs through the padding, and it hurt so much to lie down.
Of course, Oliver had to complain about how "hard" his bed was.
We tested it a little later, and it was so great. Our beds were so much worse, his bed was heaven compared to ours.

Sunday 5th February

Today we woke up a little late, and went downstairs to eat breakfast a little later.
For breakfast it is basically a really huge buffet, you can pick out cereals, fruits, yogurts, bread rolls, cheese and meats, different types of spreads, juices, tea. You can also order eggs and bacon and stuff too, but I am not sure if that costed extra.
The main thing is, every day I came away from breakfast being fairly well fed.

On Sunday we went to the ski slopes in the other direction, which is Hochgurgl. (There are two slope areas, Hochgurgl and Obergurgl, and our hotel was situated right in the middle.)
That was really nice there, there was quite a few slopes which were good for me to practise my skiing on, and they were nice and long as well, which the other ones weren't.

Now I have to check in my diary to actually see what I did on those days, I have forgotten most of it already. I confuse the days.

We went up with the Gondola, which was really cool, that is always fun. Back was easy too, we went halfway down and then I went down on the Gondola again, because it a harder slope after that point, and I odn't think I could have done it.

Monday 6th February

Today we all woke up and it was snowing. It was a bit of a bummer, but we took our time with breakfast.
After breakfast Nina and I got bored sitting at the table, so we went and asked the guy who was folding napkins if we could help him.
We learnt how to fold about ten different types of napkins throughout the whole time, which is really cool.

Today we played the Siedler von Catan again, which was quite disheartening.
I wasn't even allowed to play, I swear. They didn't roll my numbers at all, so I didn't get any cards and couldn't do anything.
I ended it a little quicker by giving all my cards to Nina, so that she coudl win the game.

It had stopped snowing by then, so we went up to our room quickly and got changed.
We had 10 minutes to get to the bus stop, otherwise we would've waited for an hour or something for the next bus.
This time we went to the same place as Saturday, but Nina didn't come with us, because she was sick.

It was really windy when we got to the top of the mountain, so windy that they took all the chairs off one of the lifts for the fear.
I skiied under relatively well, compared to two days earlier.
I skiied on the big slope, and I only fell over one time or something, which was pretty cool.

One time I went up the lift by myself, and a lady came with me, on my seat.

We didn't speak to each other at all, but then the lift stopped and she was like, "It's really cold."
She spoke English to me.
There was alot of English people around, maybe it is a really popular destination or something, but the accents were great to make fun of!!

Anyway, I talked to her for a bit, started talking random German etc etc.
A few minutes later she was like, "but you can speak very good English."
I just smiled and said, "Yeah, I'd hope so, because I come from Australia."
She laughed, and said that I speak with a German accent. It's true.
I can't speak English very well anymore, but typing is easy. When I speak the German words come out of my mouth, but typing is alot easier.
When I talk to Mum it is OK, I just go into English mode, but otherwise...the results are funny.

Oliver also cut me off one time when we were getting out of the lift, he tried to go left and I wanted to go right. That was a disaster, we both fell over right there, next to the lift.

Tuesday 7th February

Today I skiied down my first red slope, which was really cool.
OK, admittedly, I did go really slow, and carefully, but I got down, and I only fell over once.
And it wasn't really falling over, more like sitting down.

It snowed again, and we read on the forecast at the reception that it should snow for the next few days, which we were all really bummed out about.

It actually really snowed today, like, so much that we could barely see anything for half of the time.
I tell ya, it was a little cold.

We also saw a guy who had orange pants on, and brown marks all down the back of them. We just laughed our heads off when we saw it, it was hilarious! (He shat his pants!!)

Wednesday 8th February

We woke up today and it wasn't snowing, which was luck and a half!!
It was a beautiful day, sunny and not windy at all.

We went right to the top of the mountains, which was 3082m high.
It was totally cool, I could see Italy form where I was.

Italy looked exactly like Austria, mountains covered in snow.

Skiing down was OK, it was only a blue, but it was really deep snow in some areas.
Oliver wanted to take me on the black slope, because he said it would have been easier than the blue one.
We saw one guy ski down one of the areas, and he fell over and lost his skis...twice.
But I didn't fall over at all.

We also went on one of those tow lifts, you know the ones you half sit/half stand on?
They are horrible.

But the slopes there and back were really nice, nice and wide where you can ski nice and fast.

It was supposed to be night skiing today, but we didn't get to go, because it was snowing.
We went down to eat breakfast at 6pm, so we could be on the slopes by 7:15, with nice lighting and fireworks and a display and stuff, but it started snowing really heavily, so we didn't get to go.

Thursday 9th February

We woke up again and it was another beautiful day.
that seemed to be the rhythym for the week, snow in the night and beautiful in the day.
This time we went all the way up to Festkogl, which is the lifts that they took down when it was really windy.
The slope there was nice, it was really, really long, and nice and wide, with lots of opportuniities to go in other directions if you wanted to go.
Lots of places where you could go really fast too.

I didn't fall over once today!!

After we got back form skiing I got bored and went in the Sauna, which I had been avoiding the whole week because of my fear of naked people being in there.

I scored though, and the whole place was empty!!

I went in the three saunas, the one with herbs, the wet one and the hot one.
I also had a shower, lay down in the waterbeds and swum in the pool.
It was great, so relaxing, and I had the whole bottom level of the hotel to myself!!

Oliver was still on the slopes, but when we went and ate a little bit he came.
then Dagmar and I walked into the town to buy souvenirs, just before it got dark, which was a mistake in itself.
It is hard to walk through deep snow. And when it snows it is even worse.
But, on the bright side, I did get some souvenirs!!

Oliver got totally drunk in one of the bars on the snow.
He came back, and he stunk. Gluehwein, which is basically red wine heated up and with some crazy spices or something.

We also had a gala dinner that night, which was horrible.
We had to eat this stuff, and I just wanted to throw it all up.
(Most of the food was pretty fancy, not very good for kids.)
It was OK, apart from the fact that Oliver was completely drunk the whole time.

Friday 10th February

Today was our last day skiing, and I milked it for all it was worth.

OK, so we went down another slope, this one was red as well. It wasn't so bad, just really steep, which wasn't so bad as I thought it would be.
That was my last ski slope for Austria, probably for my life, because I will never have enough money to go back there again.

We got back and I got rid of my ski boots and skis and stocks, and said goodbye.
Next thing I know they were gone. :'(

Anyway, that night Nina and I went around taking photos of everything, which was funny. We got into the kitchen somehow.

I slept in that horrible hard, springy bed for the last time, and I was so glad for that.

I also didn't fall over, even on the red slope!!

Saturday 11th February

I was woken uo by the door opening and a red light staring at me today.

Turns out that Oliver was filming me. I yelled at him for a bit, then he got bored. He went and got a wet towel and threw it at me.
Then he got snow and threw it at me. Great. It was cold.

I tried to sleep, but I couldn't, so I listened to music, packed a little bit form my bags away, and got dressed and stuff.

Ate breakfast for the last time, took heaps of pictures, got packed and set off home.

That place was really nice, the hotel. There was alot of snoe there, and it was so great, the only bummer is that I didn't get a chance to build a snowman.

We drove a little bit, and then got caught in a massive traffic jam.
2 hours later we had driven 2kms.
It was boring, I wrote in my diary, and wrote a letter to my Grandmother.

We finally got out of the jam, got driving a little faster and got out of Austria.
Austria is a great country, but the German they speak is so bad!!

It is so hard to understand, it has such an accent, and...yeah.

Anyway, we stopped for lunch at about 2pm, just outside of Munich.
We only stopped for about ten minutes, because we wanted to be out of Munich before 4, when all the rush hour traffic would start, but, we did it easily enough.

It got dark, we got home at about 8.

Got all the stuff out of the car, ate a little, got changed and slept. It was a nice comfortable bed...=D

My holiday is over, the thing I have been looking forward to for so long. =(

Anyway, today I didn't do much, talked to Mum, wrote this.
It is late now, and I have been typing this for a really long time now, so I really should go and get in bed, ready for my first day back at school tomorrow!!

Hope you guys are having fun at school, tell me who the teachers are, who the new ones are, contact teachers and new kids and which classes you guys are in. I really would love to know!!

Lotsa love, till next time,

Vera was here at 7:03 AM

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