Hey everyone!
Two weekends ago I went skiing in the Austrian Alps, and it was probably one of the prettiest places I had ever seen. We spent the weekend in a town called Kaprun, which is about an hour and a half south of Salzburg. We skied at a place called Kitzsteinhorn, which is one of the highest (if not the highest) point in the state of Salzburg. The ski area is on a glacier – my program has to reserve rooms and tickets here since it’s pretty early in the season and they’re never sure if there will be enough snow at the lower ski areas. Luckily, there was plenty of fresh snow and overall it wasn’t too icy.
Eddye at Kitzsteinhorn!
Selfies at Kitzsteinhorn!
To get to the ski area we had to take not one but two gondolas up to the main lodge – it was amazing how steep this mountain was. We were literally being lifted up like a 2,000 foot cliff before the first area where you can get out at the base of the glacier. Because I was in the Alps, I obviously had to ski (they did offer snowboard rentals, but I would rather say I skied in the Alps because I think it sounds cooler). It had been about three years since I last skied, but I didn’t fall once! I felt pretty accomplished. On the first day the weather was pretty good up until around 12:30 when the clouds rolled in and we literally couldn’t see anything (as in more than 15 feet in front of us). It was pretty busy since it was the opening weekend, and with the clouds it made a lot of us really nervous to keep going so almost everyone stopped around 2pm.
The second day was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was a clear day all day long, and the first thing we did was take the third gondola up to the very top of the mountain (about 9,500) where they have a smaller lodge with a lookout point. I spent the rest of the day with a group of four of my friends skiing the area with longer runs and fewer people. We left around 4pm and made it back to Vienna around 9pm.
The Alps from the top of Kitzsteinhorn
Then last weekend my German professor invited us all to her house in Baden, about 45 minutes from Vienna, for a party! We got to take the “Lokalbahn nach Baden,” a local train that we’ve wanted to take all semester since it’s always announced as a connection at our U-Bahn stop. She made us punsch (mulled wine/juice/deliciousness) and had a lot of cheese and meat and bread for us! It was really fun, and we tried to speak in German some of the time but we all sufficiently embarrassed ourselves.
Baden!
The lit-up plague column in Baden
Serena with her bowl of peanuts, since she couldn’t eat anything else…
I’ve been chugging through the work that I have – I wrote one of my papers already, so I still have two to go but one of them isn’t really a research paper and I’ve already done about half of it. Next week is my last week working in the school, and I have my finals and then I’m home in 9 days!
Bis bald!
Grant in Österreich 