Skiing

Skiing in Austria, the land of the bratwurst with sauerkraut and the schnitzel.

Six of us Darryl, Pang, Lucy, Angie and ourselves departed London in a haze of fog bound for Munchen. Lots of people got stuck in the thick london fog, but luckily we escaped (well most if us, Angie wasn't so lucky and turned up a couple of days late).

Kitzbuhel, famous for the world cup slalom event down the Hahnenkamm run is a great town, nestled in the valley between various mountains. Gondala goes straight from the edge of town only a couple of minutes walk from our apartment. That gondala takes you up to white stuff which is also linked with other mountains by other huge gondalas. Our ski pass allowed to ski on all of them. Its just fantastic going on these things between two huge mountains without raising a sweat, good old european ingenuity.

Wasn't much snow about, europe is having a not great ski season, but there was enough for us to ski all six days with perfect weather everyday. Sarah and i snowboarded and the others all skied. You really realise as aussies how bad we actually are at this sport when you see the europeans doing it, damn those little children who are twice as good as me.

My favorite part of each day was taking the home trail down the Hahnenkamm run. First day it was a little tough, took a couple stacks, but got much better as the week went on and darryl even made it down the last day without a stack after taking multiple each day. Sarah and Pang didn't work up the courage to come down it, but they met us at the bottom for Apres Ski in a little pub at the bottom of the run.

Apres Ski when there's not much snow makes up a big part of the trip, the little pub we went to was great, played loud 80's music, served beer and had a mechanical mooses head on the wall that sang, what more can you ask for? The hammer game was a highlight, see the picture. Last person to hit it in with the thin end of the hammer has to shout the next round, great stuff.

A major highlight was going to an Austrian sauna, nude men parading around, geez these Europeans love to nude up! Sitting in a sauna nude next to darryl and pang wasn't how i envisaged my christmas holiday. Luckily the girls decided not to come at the last minute, don't think they would have been happy with the talent on show.

Wound up our six days skiing pretty sore and boarded the train to Prague for new years.