Ski Trip in Austria! Best Week of Exchange!

Saturday morning I was happy to wake up at 8 to go for bread because I could barely sleep anyways with all of the excitement about going to Austria. When I got back home from the store we had breakfast and made snacks for the car ride. Then we all worked on gathering our things and finding a way to fit it all in the car and the box on top. Then we only drove for around four hours to out hotel in Austria!!

The hotel that we would be staying at was right on the mountain, and it came with a beautiful view. We arrived in the afternoon, so there was still good light to see everything. When we first arrived we all went inside and checked in, which included with a toast with champagne or orange juice. Then we went to the car and got all of our things and took them to our room to get settled. We were staying on the top floor of the hotel with an amazing view of the mountains across the valley.

Once our things were in our room, we went downstairs for the afternoon snack that was being served. It was fresh apple strudel with a warm vanilla cream sauce over it. I knew from that point, that this was going to be an amazing week with lots of good food. When we were done with our snack we grabbed our jackets and went on a little walk to explore the area and eventually go to the rental shop to get my snowboard. On our walk back from getting the snowboard we got to see the sunset. It was absolutely amazing, and I think my most said phrase the whole walk was “I’m so happy I can’t even explain it”. As we walked back to the hotel we all took turns carrying my snowboard, and at the very end Ruda tried to ride it like a sled back to the hotel.

When we got back, we took off our jackets and we headed down for dinner. It was a buffet style dinner, but there were enough options to have a full seven course meal. I was absolutely in awe, and everything looked good, so I went all out. First I had a little bit of lamb, roast beef, chicken, and some salads. Then I went back and got a few shrimp and some potatoes. Then we had some salads and grapes before moving on to dessert. There were so many options and I wanted to try them all, but I was already almost out of room in my stomach. So we got one of each of the mousses and we all tried all of them and then Robert and I both got some tiramisu. There was also a self serve ice cream station where you could put toppings, but I was too full to do it so I just hoped that it would be there the next day.

After dinner we headed back up to our room and hung out for an hour while we recovered from dinner. After we were starting to feel a little better, and less full, we put on our swim suits and matching hotel robes and walked down to the spa area.

First we went into the pool which was heated and was half indoors and half outdoors. There was a little whirl pool, a fountain and jets along one of the walls. After swimming around for a bit, we decided to move to the sauna. We sat in the sauna for about 15 minutes before getting our things and showering off and returning to our room.

When we got back to our room I took a shower and changed into some pajamas before going to bed to make sure I was rested and ready to live my dream of snowboarding in Austria the next day.

Sunday we woke up at 8 and slowly started to move to get dressed for breakfast. When I woke up, I rolled over in bed to look out the window at the mountains across the way. Just when I didn’t think that the view could get any better, I realized that there were hotter balloons all across the sky. We stopped getting ready and took pictures for a little bit before going down to breakfast.

For breakfast it was another buffet style meal with way too many choices. I had mini waffles, fruit, yogurt, bacon, and some fresh squeezed juices. They even had a big juicer that you could use yourself to juice beets, apples, carrots, and ginger.

After breakfast we went back to our room to relax and slowly get dressed to go skiing. Robert had gotten our ski passes which were good for all of the lifts on the four peaks that were connected. Once we were finally all dressed and ready to go, we walked down to our ski locker in the hotel and got out our boots and the rest of our gear. Once we had everything we left our slippers in the locker and walked out onto the slope.

We only had to walk a few meters to where we could start our way down the slope to one of the lifts. The whole day we skied around pretty much non-stop. Robert was ski touring the whole day while Ruda, Zora and I were going all over trying to make as many runs as possible. We managed to cover a good bit of two of the four mountains that were part of the resort in our first day which I thought was pretty cool. At the end of the day we went to the pub at the top of the mountain that we were staying on to meet Robert. He had hiked straight up the whole mountain the whole day and then we all got to eat and warm up together before making one last run all the way to the hotel all together.

Being a snowboarder sometimes it’s a bit more difficult for me to get around the mountain on the flat parts. So by the end of the day on our way back to the hotel Robert had to give me a couple of pulls to keep me going. By the time we arrived back at the hotel my legs were completely dead and I could barely bend over to take my boots off.

Once all of our stuff was back in the locker we rushed to our room to take off a couple of layers before running back downstairs to catch the very end of afternoon snack. It was another type of strudel with the warm vanilla cream sauce on top. After coffee and strudel we went back to our room to take a nap and rest before dinner.

For dinner we had another amazing meal, but this time it wasn’t a buffet style meal. We had a small roast beef starter and then we all got different entrées. Once we were finally done with out dinner we moved onto the dessert menu. I of course couldn’t make a decision, so we decided that Robert and Zora would get one dessert and Ruda and I would get the other. I ended up getting a banana and kiwi sorbet with all sorts of fruit to top it off, and Robert and Zora both got mini chocolate cakes. I was sad to discover that the ice cream station from the night before was something that they only had on Saturday nights with the buffet dinner.

After dinner we were absolutely stuffed again, so we made our way up to our room to rest before going back down to the pool and spa. We laid around our room for about an hour before getting ready to go to the pool. All four of us went down this time, but Ruda immediately ditched us for the massage beds while we went to the hot tub. After about fifteen minutes in the hot tub, Ruda came to join us for awhile before we moved into the sauna. I was overheating quite quickly, so I said goodbye and decided to try out the massage beds too. When I first laid down, it reminded me of what I would guess a water bed would feel like. I had a nice fifteen minute massage, and then I got my things and went upstairs to join my family in our room.

Monday morning we woke up at 8:30 again to slowly get ready, and go to breakfast. For breakfast I was interested to see if it would be the same every day, or if there would be different buffets every morning. When we got downstairs I realized that it was going to be the same day, but there were enough options to make a completely different breakfast every morning anyways.

After breakfast we gathered our things and headed out. Robert would be ski touring again, and Ruda, Zora and I would be trying to ski more of the other peaks. We did a few runs together before I ended up losing track of Ruda and Zora. I found a pub nearby and went in for some wifi and to warm up. I called my mom and she said that they would be there in about ten minutes. So once the they came we made a few more runs together, but I could feel myself getting tired and kind of hungry. I asked to take a break to try to regain my energy. I went to one of the pubs for an hour and had some tea, and stretched my legs before taking a run by myself meet up with my family at the lift. We made a couple of more runs before going to the pub at the top to meet my dad again to warm up before our one run down together.

On our way back to the hotel I got myself turned around a bit, and ended up not getting enough speed in the one place that it was really important. I ended up walking halfway back to the hotel before it was steep enough to at least be able to ride slowly. Since it took me so long to get back to the hotel I had to race to put my stuff away so that we would be able to make it to the dining room before afternoon snack was over. We had apple strudel again like the day that we arrived. It was the perfect way to end another perfect day of skiing.

When we were done with snack we went up to the room to change into more comfortable clothes and rest before going to dinner. I took a shower and worked on writing in my journal about our first couple of days. Then in the evening we got dressed into better clothes, and headed downstairs for our last dinner. That morning when we were pre-ordering our dinner, we had had three choices again, and Robert told me to go all out and get the lamb. I was very happy that I took him up on his suggestion because the lamb with potatoes and cream sauce was fantastic! And to top it all off we had chocolate orange panna cotta with strawberry sorbet on the side. I was in heaven to say the least.

After dinner I couldn’t wait to go to the spa area one last time. I continued to work on my journal for an hour before we went to the spa. We had another nice swim, sauna, and I of course needed another massage after another long day of snowboarding. When we were done, we went back up stairs, and I changed before going downstairs to call a friend for awhile before we went to bed. I was completely exhausted and beyond sore, but I knew that we only had one more day and I needed to make the most of my time, so I went to bed hoping I would be ready to go again for one mored day in the morning.

Tuesday morning was our last morning and I was quite sad to wake up to no view because of all of the fog. Usually when I woke up I would see the mountains and the valley, but this time I just saw white and nothing else. We quickly turned on the tv where they had live cameras of the top of the mountains, and it was absolutely beautiful and sunny, so we started to get dressed, and we went down for our last breakfast.

After breakfast we went back to our room to pack all of our things. Once we were dressed for skiing and had all of our things packed we went down to the car to pack it up. We left a couple of our bags at reception, and then went to have one last day of skiing. For our last day, Robert came and downhill skied the whole day with us. We immediately made our way over to one of the peaks that we hadn’t been on. Once we were out of the fog at the bottom of the mountain, it was absolutely beautiful. You could see the fog like a blanket over the valley, and then it was sunny and beautiful at the top. We of course had to take all sorts of pictures of it, and I made sure to get some pictures with each of them.

The whole day we were all racing down all of the runs we did, making as many runs as possible in our last day. The snow was really nice, and it was super fast and soft. We had bought a timed lift ticket for the last day to make sure that we could get on the road home at a decent hour. In the afternoon when it was getting closer to the time that our ticket would stop working, we decided we wanted to go to the pub at the top of the mountain one last time. Ruda wanted a special snack that he gets every time, and we wanted to have one last run together to the bottom. So we started our way back to that mountain, but we were quickly running out of time. We took one lift up, then we had to get off, cross a slope and get on another lift. So I barely put my second binding on before racing across the slope and tearing off my board to run through the gates to the gondola. We made it! On our ride up the mountain I took a moment to look around and really take it all in one last time before we got to the top where we went to the pub for Ruda’s usual Germknoedel (Austrian sweet steamed dumpling).

On our way back I got stuck because of the flat again, so I ended up walking a fare bit back to the hotel again, but I was used to it. When we arrived at the hotel we packed the rest of our things in the car, and I left my board and boots to be picked up by the rental company. Then we got our last few things from reception before checking out and getting in the car home. I slept most of the drive home until we stopped for a snack and bathroom break. We finally arrived home around 8:30 in the evening, and I was completely exhausted. I was in bed by 9 that night and I fell asleep almost immediately.

It was easily my favorite trip of my exchange so far. I was in awe the whole time and I couldn’t believe that I was really living my dream of skiing in Austria.