Austrian Ski Week

We just returned from a week of skiing in Lech, Zurs, and St. Anton, Austria with our friends Kyle, Tiffany, Alan, Liz, Katie, and Ben. We stayed at Haus Theresia for the third year in a row (2008 trip, 2009 trip). On our first night, Walter and Janine (our B & B hosts) provided Sekt (like champagne) for a toast. They are such warm, friendly people and the house is perfect for making your own evening meals and playing games in the common dining room. We highly recommend Haus Theresia to anyone traveling to this area of Austria. If we had more time in Europe, it would be great to return in the summer for a week of hiking and frivolity in the Alps.

On the first two days, we took lessons in Zurs from a great instructor named Siegi who took us all over the place- on and off piste (another word for ski run). This picture was taken immediately following the most challenging afternoon of off-piste skiing we've experienced...

Our second day of skiing was beautiful. One of the main highlights was watching a helicopter land not more than ten to fifteen feet from where we were skiing, pick up two passengers, and nose dive toward a different mountain, presumably for some heliskiing. 

Although Matt skied for all SIX days of our trip, several of us took Wednesday off to give our bodies a rest. In the morning, we rode the Galzigbahn (gondola) up a mountain in St. Anton to take some pictures...

By coincidence, we ran into the skiiers atop the same mountain. Our friend, Kyle, the mannequin...

We spent the remainder of the afternoon at the St. Anton spa. It was very surreal to swim laps in an outdoor pool at the base of the Austrian Alps and to enjoy at least five different saunas...yes, I know this is an experience I should NOT get used to, but it was sooo nice!

On Thursday, we skied the Weisse Ring, a ski route that links Lech and Zurs. Unfortunately, visibility was very poor (see the whiteout below), but we enjoyed skiing in the fresh powder.

In lieu of mail service: Happy Birthday, Brandon!

On our final day, we skied the Wiesse Ring again, in hopes of better views...mission accomplished!

This was a great kick-off to the 2010 ski season. For more pictures from the trip, check out Alan and Elizabeth's photo album.

So Long, Farewell

It's official...Adam, Melanie, Calvin, Kurt, Carrie, and Emma are headed home (tear). Before they left, we hosted a little farewell party for them at our house. Here are some pictures...

Everyone brought food and drink to share, with a little touch of red-white-and-blue...

Look out America, you have two really cute kids headed your way...

 

It's true what they say; when you're this far away from home, your friends become more like family. From our trips to Salzburg, Vienna, Lech, Madrid, and Toledo...to our Luxembourg half-marathon training/race and Frankfurt marathon relay...to Settlers games (and resource apparel)...to watching you welcome your first children into the world...to celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter, Fourth of July, and everything in between...it's been a pleasure.

Thanks for the memories. We'll never forget our CMT adventures in Europe!

Updates

The blog is officially up-to-date. Check out November's posts for pictures and captions of our trip to Venice and Milan, as well as December's posts for pictures of the Wiesbaden Christmas Market and our trip to Iowa.

Happy New Year!

January Snow

After spending the past few weeks back home explaining how our area of Germany does not seem to get an appreciable amount of snow, we stand corrected. This is the most snow we've seen in three years here, although there still only appears to be a few inches of accumulation. Nonetheless, here are some photos from our schnee covered village...

It's beautiful, but hopefully it stops soon so that the roads are ok tomorrow!