Friday, April 12, 2013

The Last Supper. And then the Last Last Supper...

No matter how much I wished that time would slow down so that I could stay in Salzburg just a little longer, the first week of February arrived, meaning that the time had come to say goodbye to the city of Salzburg, and all of my amazing friends here.

I spent the first part of the week working hard, as per, and the 'Beginning of the End' started on Wednesday. I went for a coffee with another Tim, one of the TAs who had become a really good friend, and the first person I went for a coffee with all the way back in October. We went to a small cafe in the centre, and I enjoyed my last piece of Austrian cake (well, last for now at least!). Afterwards we went to his house, and I finally got the hear his roommate playing his infamous guitar piece. Infamous, as ever since Tim moved in, he has been playing the same part of the same song, every day, day and night, without repent. I just had to laugh as I hadn't been in the house 5 minutes before he started up, although I did feel bad for Tim having to listen to that on repeat continually, especially as he doesn't even play the guitar well! Tim, being half Italian, cooked me some lovely pasta for dinner. Afterwards, we headed to Steinterrasse to have drinks with a few of the other TAs. This added to the feeling of my time going full circle, as our first Wednesday we had gone for drinks here as well. The difference, of course, being that the first time the weather was mild enough to sit outside and enjoy the spectacular view, whereas in the depths of February and Winter, we were relieved to come in out of the cold and de-frost a little inside.

During the afternoon on Thursday, I went for lunch with one the teachers from the evening school I'd been working at, and had met up with quite a few times before, Linda. I was craving a goat's cheese salad, which is turns out is near impossible to find in Salzburg, unless you go to the crazy Buddhist cafe I tried with my parents. We went to Republik (a club by night, but cafe by day) and I had a duck salad instead, with raspberry and chocolate dressing. I was skeptical about this mix, but it was actually really tasty. The one questionable bit was when I managed to get a forkful with just a hazelnut and chocolate dressing, and felt like I was eating a Ferrero Rocher in the middle of my salad! It was the first time we'd been able to meet since before Christmas, so I had the chance to explain my reasons for leaving face to face (the issues had been with my other school, not the evening school). Her reaction surprised me a little, as she was so so positive about it. She said that she thought it was a bold, brave and independent decision, and that she completely thought I'd done the right thing. As usual, we had plenty to talk about, and I relished this as one of my last opportunities to spend the afternoon speaking German.

On Thursday evening we all gathered at Libby and Rachel's house for our official Abschiedsessen. As all of the American and other British assistants are staying the full year, Alice, Cecilia, Rachel and I (the only ones leaving after the first semester to move onto other placements/other languages) were treated to an amazing 3 course meal, courtesy of the other TAs. Tim had taken the lead in organising the meal, so again it had a very Italian theme. We started with anti-pasti, then more delicious pasta, followed by lots of amazing home made cakes and cookies, including Libby's carrot cake (which I admit, I still dream about sometimes...). Once we'd eaten (and drunk) our full, it was time to whip out some of our favourite games, for a last time. This time around the 'Hat' game included lots of entries with references to 'The British girls leaving' etc, and, slowly, the fact we were leaving started to become more real. It was a great night, and really well organised by everyone involved. We then had to say our goodbyes to Libby, as she was flying home the next day for February half-term and made our way home, as some people still had a 6am start the next day for the last day of teaching.


Libby playing the 'After Eight'game

Mmm... cake...
I'm gonna miss these guys!
Although we'd had our 'official' farewell meal, the fact we were leaving still hadn't quite hit home. In order to delay the final goodbyes as long as possible, we arranged to spend the very very last night in the Augustinerbrau (where else?!). We brought our own food, and cards to play Ring of Fire, but as there were so many of us it was quite hard to keep the game going for that long. Nevertheless, it was a great evening, but I must admit that the whole time I was dreading having to say goodbye to everyone at the end of the night. In order to delay the goodbyes just a little longer. We went to another, non-smoking, bar in the centre and stayed there for another 3 hours. At the end, we knew that it was time to say our farewells. Walking out of this bar was when it really hit me. These people that I'd spent the last 5 months of my life with, week in, week out, had truly become people that I would count amongst my best friends. Although I already knew that there would be some I would definitely see again, it was still hard to say goodbye as it was the end of a wonderful chapter that I had shared with them. I struggled to find the words to say goodbye, and instead, the best way to describe what happened is that I essentially ended up howling like some kind of dog/beached whale while I searched for what to say before we parted. This wasn't how I imagined 'saying' goodbye (and also makes me sounds reaally weird...), but I hope they all know how much I appreciate and value their friendship and the memories we've shared since September. 

A selection of 'last photos' :

'The British are leaving, the British are leaving'



Sad to say goodbye, but love Cecilia photobombing this!

I will admit to getting a little upset once I was home, but I suppose that is just a testimony to how much fun we've all had together. I was by no means ready to leave Salzburg, but as the saying (or song) goes, 'All good things come to an end', and this was certainly a great thing.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

It's the Final Countdown (almost)!

Into the last week of January, and time was going much faster than I wanted it to. With only two weeks left in Salzburg, and one week of skiing after that, I began to wish that time would slow down and I could stay in this magical city, with all of these wonderful people, just a little longer.

The first part of the week seemed to fly by again, working hard at the language school, and keeping up with the other language groups and university lectures I was going to. Before I knew it, it was Thursday and time for a dinner with the other TAs for our 'Last Schnitzel'. Wie traurig :( We went to the Alte Fuchs, one of the only completely non-smoking restaurants in Salzburg, and where I took my family for Liam's birthday. I had a huuuuge portion of schnitzel, along with my favourite Austrian beer, the Himbeerradler (what else?!). Afterwards, we went to pick up some drinks and went to Erika's house. Once Cecilia has managed to opened her bottle of wine about 20 minutes later we continued to education the Americans in the way of English 'Ring of Fire', or as they call it 'King's Cup' rules. Once everyone had has sufficient quantities of wine, we headed out to take Salzburg's Karaoke scene by storm once more. It was another really funny night, although there was a distinct lack of Robbie Williams avaliable to sing, meaning that 'Angels' was sung more in one night than it ever probably should be...

The task of opening the wine...




On Friday I stayed in with the family for a Chinese takeaway and tele night. The Chinese food was considerably better than when we tried the takeaway before at Emily's house, but still left a fair amount to be desired. Nonetheless, it was nice to have a quiet evening in with the 'fam', as it were.

On Saturday, a group of us met in the morning and headed to Berchtesgaden, Germany, which is only about an hours bus ride away, to visit the salt mines. It was something we'd been meaning to do for ages, and I was so glad we finally made it. Plus, it was another thing to tick off the 'Bucket List'! Once we arrived, we were given tickets with an entrance time on, and so had just under half an hour beforehand to look around the gift shop, which had salt avaliable in every possible flavour (tomato and basil flavoured salt, anyone?). When it was our slot, we had to put all of our bags into lockers, and put some sexy mining suits on over our clothes. We got on a small train, kind of like the miniature steam trains you can ride on, and headed into the mines! Our guide had the typical Bavarian accent, so we had to listen hard to catch what he was saying. The tour included two slides to get further down into the mines, which was absolutely hilarious, and a boat ride from one part of the mine to the other. The boat ride was, in a word, magical. The ceiling of the mine was really low, and the water so still that when we were waiting for the boat, we didn't actually realise that there was water there. The ride itself was really quick, less than 5 minutes, but they projected neon lights onto the walls of the mine, which looked amazing in the darkness. At the very end of the tour, Alice and I liked the walls, (the guide did recommend we do this, in our defence!), and I can confirm that the walls of a salt mine do in fact taste extremely salty. We also got to taste some of the water from the salt mine, was has a really high percentage of salt (I want to say 80-90% but I can't remember exactly), and left you needing a drink after just a drop. We got on the mini train back our of the salt mines, and were each given a tiny container of salt as a memory of the trip. It was completely different to our normal 'Kaffee and Kuchen' routine, and I thoroughly enjoyed the day out.




Once back in Salzburg, we all headed to our favourite Mexican restaurant, Lemonchilli, for a late lunch. The nachos, as usual, did not disappoint! I went home for a couple of hours, before coming back into town and heading to Cecilia's house, for the BNO.

NACHOS!
The BNO (Big Night Out) almost deserves it's own blog post. We had literally had this scheduled for a month, maybe more, and we were ready to paint the town red! As we'd all been coming and going at different weekends, and our schedules didn't match up in the week with other people's 6am starts on other people's days off, we had scheduled in the 2nd February as the official night of the BNO. We got through plenty of wine and Jagermeister shots (as well as drinking these with the cap on our nose as you're supposedly supposed to...) and were well into the swing of things when Erika, unfortunately, fell victim to the BNO. We gave her lots of water, which she insisted was poisoned, and then went home, where she proceeded to attempt to boil celery... In hindsight, I think it's best for everyone involved that she wasn't let lose on Salzburg that evening! We headed out to an Irish bar, where Cecilia bumped into one of her students, and we joined them for a few drinks. It was a really international group of people, so we were switching from German, to French, to English every few minutes. One of their friends, from Ireland, had had a little too much to drink, and, already shirtless, decided to get up on a bar stool and take off the rest of his clothes and, well, I'm sure you can imagine the rest... We made a swift getaway with some of the group and went to Republik, a club in Salzburg. After a bit of dancing, we went to another Irish bar. However, they were playing heavy metal music, which we were not expecting, having spent most of our time in there on Thursday evenings singing our hearts out, and so we decided to call it a night. I feel like we did the BNO justice, and even ended it with a takeaway, just as one should. Back at Cecilia's house, and we squeezed 3 in a bed before going to sleep. I will admit that I didn't have the greatest sleep in Cecilia's room (or Africa, as it's fondly referred to, due to how HOT it is in there ALL the time!!!), and woke up a lot sweatier than when I'd gone to sleep!! We had a full English breakfast the next morning to round off the BNO, and I can't wait for BNO round 2 when they come to visit in Barcelona!



Spillage is lickage?

The Offender.


English Breakfast!
I had a lazy Sunday evening and tried not to think about the fact that tomorrow would be the start of my last week in the city of Salzburg.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The 'Bucket List', a Birthday, and a Ball (but not just any Ball!)

I will start this post with a quick side note. I know that I'm pretty behind in my posts at the moment (yes yes yes, but at least I'm trying!), so just to give you a reference for the time frame I'm talking about, this post is about the 3rd week of January, so the 21st - 27th January 2013. Warning : it was a busy week, so this is a fairly long post.

After another full-on weekend of skiing, I woke up on Monday equally as achy as the week before, and much too achy considering I'm only 20! I suppose I am English though, and the Austrians are much more used to bouncing back after an intensive skiing weekend. The first part of the week was spent working hard at the language school, and on my daily 2 hours of homework, and watching lots of Austria's Next Top Model (I got really into it!)

On Tuesday I had gone to Alice, one of the other TA's house, before the Language Exchange group, and we had put together a 'Bucket List' of things to do before we left Salzburg. Putting it all on paper made just how little time we had left seem very real all of a sudden, and I already knew how much I was going to miss this place once I'd left.

We kicked off the 'Bucket List' the next day when Alice and Cecilia came round to my house, to meet the family I was staying with, and most important, Ronja, the dog. They came over in the afternoon and we took Ronja out for a walk by the Leopoldskroner Weiher (the one I've mentioned a lot - absolutely beautiful, with the white house from The Sound of Music!), and then through a forest and back home. Back home we had tea and cake (how very British), and then they made their way home. It was a small thing to tick off the list, but as I was living further out of the centre than them it was actually the first time they had been to my house, and as all 3 of us are big dog lovers taking Ronja out was a must.


Fresh bird prints in the snow

Me with Ronja
The next day, Thursday, was Jody's Birthday. We went round to her house for some pre-drinks, cracked open the Tequila, and hilarity ensued from there. We played some drinking games in her flat, then went to the bar downstairs (that her landlord, a prince from Denmark, owns. Long story...) for some free champagne, and then on to the one and only O'Malleys Irish Bar for some Thursday night Karaoke. With such classics as Robbie Williams 'Angels', and 'Come on Eileen', I think it's fair to say that we had a great night.


Birthday girl cutting the lemon for the Tequila!

Singing our hearts out, how embarrassing...

I woke up on Friday feeling a little worse for wear, but laughing to myself at the memories from the night before. Luckily I had fully recovered by the evening, and it's a good thing too as I would potentially say that this evening was the highlight of my time in Austria so far. Every year the Alpine Mountain Club (or Edelweiss Club) of Salzburg holds a ball, the Edelweiss Kraenzchen. This is one of the most prestigious events of the year, and you have to know someone in the club to get tickets, rather than being able to buy them normally. The difference between this Ball, and any other traditional Austrian ball, is that everyone comes wearing Trachten (traditional dress). The parents in my host family had managed to score a ticket for me and 3 friends, and so Alice, Cecilia, Tim and I met outside the Kongresshall, Salzburg, at 7:30pm, fully clad in our dirndls and traditional jackets, but in all honesty, not really knowing what to expect.

As soon as we walked in, however, I knew this evening was going to be special. There were dirndls of every colour under the sun, a full brass band set up and ready to play, and, of course, plenty of beer and Wurstl avaliable from various stands around the building. We made our way to our table (the parents had scored us some seats at a table as well - nice), and sat down ready for the opening dance. The members of the Edelweiss club and their partners came in their pairs, until the whole dance floor was filled with people. As soon as the band started playing, the couples were waltzing (I think it was waltzing, but don't quote me on this...) around the dance floor, non-members of the club quickly got up to join in, and within the first 10 minutes the yodelling has already begun!. At every hour, on the hour, they would teach 3 or 4 traditional mountain dances to everyone on the dance floor. As we were 3 girls and 1 boy, Alice and Tim partnered up, and Cecilia and I danced together. Learning the dances was more fun than I can possibly explain here. We were there every hour on the hour, ready and raring to go! As soon as the taught dances were over, however, we made a sharp move for it, as apart from Tim none of us knew how to 'freestyle', as it were, on the dance floor, without stepping on anyone and everyones toes and generally making fools of ourselves. Between dances we went back up to our table, and had some great laughs while enjoying several 'Weissbiers'. About half way through the evening, Cecilia and I headed to one of the sausage stands for an energy boost, as the dancing was surprisingly energetic, and involved lots of stamping and clapping. We only saw the parents once in the evening, and as soon as they found out that Cecilia and I were dancing together, they were quick to say that two girls dancing together wouldn't last long at this ball. As it turned out, they were extremely right...!

We headed down to the dance floor for the 4th or 5th time. The dances had been getting increasingly harder and more complicated throughout the evening, and as soon as this dance was announced, quite a lot of couples who had been waiting on the dance floor made to leave. Cecilia and I didn't realise this, and at the same time two Austrian guys were making a bee-line for us, and had asked us to dance. As it was obvious that we didn't have any other partners, and we'd been too slow to remove ourselves from the dance floor, the only thing we could do was accept. We were soon whisked away into a blur of twirling, whirling, clapping, slapping, stomping, pausing only to look at each other, only to see the other looked just as helpless as we were feeling! It soon became clear that the boys had no idea what they were on about as well, and so we tried our best to improvise and copy other couples around us, but it was basically a hysterical car crash of a dance. Luckily, the next few taught dances were a lot easier by comparison, so Tim and Alice joined back in with us. One particular highlight of this session of dancing has to be when you were told to grab your partners left knee, lift in up, and then hop around in a circle. Not only did this make me very glad that I had gone with a long dirndl in the end, but the sight of Alice and Tim hopping around one-legged next to me is an image that I will treasure for a long long time! We tried out the disco in another room as well, but without much success, and so came back for the last taught dances, and eventually called it a night around 2am. It truly was an amazing night, and more so as we had gone with little to no expectations. Everything was such a great surprise, and if you ever EVER get a chance to go to something similar, I would fully recommend you grab the chance with both hands.

The club members entering


The dance floor fills



No clue what I'm doing...

On Saturday evening, we had a get together of all of the Salzburg TA's, rather than just the English ones. It was nice to meet some of the Italians, Spanish and French girls that had been living here as well. We had a buffet style dinner, with various chips and dips etc to start, pizza, and then some nice cakes to finish, both home-made and shop bought. It was a pleasant evening, and nice to catch up with everyone as I'd been away skiing for the last 2 weekends in a row. After the dinner, we headed into Salzburg to try and spend the evening at our favourite beer hall, Augustinerbrau, but unfortuantely it was shutting earlier than we thought. Instead, we went to one of our trusty Irish bars instead, where we spent a fun evening swapping family and childhood stories.

On Sunday we decided to tick a few more things off of our 'Bucket List', and so the same gang as Friday night, Tim, Cecilia, Alice and I, went for a nice Sunday afternoon hike up the Kapuzinerberg. It's a mountain I hadn't been up previously, and on a completely different side of the city, so it was great to experience a completely different view. On the way back down, the steps were very slippery and so Alice took a tumble, but seemed alright in the end. We went to our respective houses for dinner, and then Alice and I came back into the centre to take advantage of 'Mozartwoche', and visit Mozarts Geburtshaus (birth house), which had free entry in the evening as part of the week. Having lived in Salzburg for the best part of 4 months now, it seems a small miracle that I had avoided any Mozart-related activity, but now was the time for that to end. We arrived just in time for a tour, although admittedly that didn't last too long, as there were only 4 things to see. Noteworthy is his kitchen, his first violin, and a piece of his hair. Although I'm glad I can say that I did do something Mozarty in the end, I will also say that I'm glad I didn't pay the €13 or so they usually charge for entry. We were in and out in about 45 minutes, and it definitely wouldn't be worth the money. However, we did get to tick it off the list, and then head to the Augustinerbrau for a second attempt that evening.




Slippery steps!


Mozart's kitchen

Mozart's first violin.
We met Tim and Cecilia again, and had a really relaxed evening teaching each other different card games, and I enjoyed a huge Kasekrainer (cheesy sausage mmmm) as well. Another full week, and the time is really flying by now!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Sprachschule und Schifoan.

I woke up on Monday morning, still incredibly achy from the weekend's skiing activities, and got ready for my first day at the language school. My classes didn't start until 11am each day, so I had a nice relaxed morning, and really enjoyed the change from the 6am wake-up calls before Christmas! The language school is right in the centre of Salzburg, and so the 15 minute bus-ride there was again a welcome change from the 3 hour round trip to the school I was teaching at. The class was with an Italian woman, who had moved to Salzburg as her husband is German. In keeping with the Italian stereotype she was extremely talkative, but as there were only two of us in the class, it worked well that we were both forthcoming with speaking and participating, as otherwise the lessons could have been pretty dry and awkward.

The lessons usually followed a similar format. The teacher would ask us questions, that we would have to answer using a specific grammatical structure. The questions were all about the same topic, but focusing on the grammar. Once we'd got the grammar, we moved onto the topic and went over lots and lots of vocab and sometimes did a reading comprehension as well. There was lots of speaking, and the teacher was very quick to pick you up on ANYTHING you said wrong, so I knew my grammar would be a lot tighter by the end of the month! Once the teacher had left, we usually stayed to do a couple of listening exercises and then went home. It was a much better timetable than teaching, as it meant that I was always home in time for lunch as well, and then had the afternoon free to continue going to the university lectures, conversation classes, and do the 2 hours of homework that we were set every day for the next morning!

No longer having the stress of 'is my German improving' actually made a real difference to my everyday life. I could relax a lot more, and for example enjoy Kaffee and Kuchen with friends, without feeling guilty in the back of my mind if I was spending an hour speaking English rather than German. To break up the middle of the week I ventured with the other TAs out of our comfort zone of either traditional Austrian restaurants, or our favourite Mexican Lemonchilli, and we went to the creatively named Taj Mahal, Indian restaurant. Despite ordering far too much naan bread after a little confusion, we all enjoyed having some flavour in our food (for once), and it was nice to eat somewhere new as well. Afterwards a couple of us went to Erika's house for drinks, where we taught the American's the English rules for Ring of Fire. Needless to say, hilarity ensued and a favourite memory of the evening is Erika picking 'kitchen utensils' for her category card, despite her genuinely having limitless other options!

The next weekend I went skiing again with the family.We followed pretty much the same routine as the previous weekend, including taking our own lunches with us and eating them in the 'Chill House'. The place is hard to describe, as it's really unique, but I'll give it a go! It's a really modern building at the end of the main skiing slopes with all the tricks and jumps in Wagrain. As you go in, there's rock climbing and a skateboarding area, as well as some tables and chairs for eating your own lunches. Upstairs there's more seating which looks over all of the rock climbing area, and a tap with boiling hot water so that you can warm up with a cup of Fruchte Tee when you come out of the -20 on the slopes.

Lunch at the 'Chill House'


This time around we'd sussed out the ski-pass situation, and I managed to get away with a half-price ticket for 15 year olds (and under!). I've always known that I look younger than I am, but passing for 15 or under the year I turn 21 is quite something... Also, as both parents in my host family used to be ski instructers, I got some free lessons from them throughout the days. We did a lot of practice of going over the 'off-piste bumps' or 'Buckels' (at this point I probably know more skiing vocab in German than I do in English!), although I was still nowhere near as speedy as them going over all the quick turns.



Me doing a 'half-pipe' very slowly!
After the first week of my new schedule, I was more than sure that I'd make the right decision, and fully motivated to make the most of my last few weeks in Austria.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Wechsel and The Flying Mozart

I had mixed feelings flying back to Austria. I was sad knowing that this would be my last time flying back to Salzburg, and knew that the last month and a half would go far too quickly, but at the same time I was excited to see all my friends and my host family again, and really looking forward to making more amazing memories over the rest of our time together.

Over Christmas I'd had a lot of time to think, and over the break decided to leave the British Council Language Assistants programme. This was something I'd been thinking about doing from October, and the reasons are two-fold. Firstly, I'd had several, quite serious, issues with my main school. I haven't mentioned these on the blog, as I think it would be unprofessional to do so, and so I will not be going into them now. I will, however, elaborate on the second reason, which was the improvement of my German. My three months in Paris had set the bar high for language improvement, as I was spending all day every day working in a French speaking environment, my colleagues were very sociable and so we would often go out for drinks after work during the week, and even when going out at the weekend with English friends, more often than not we would end up meeting other French people and thus spend the evening/night talking French. The change from that amount of exposure to a language, to teaching in English for my job and talking in English at home (although the children answered in German, and my conversations with the parents were always in German) meant that I was really quite stressed about my rate of improvement. I really did explore several other avenues, including signing up for lectures at the university, joining a German Conversation Course at the library, a Language Exchange Group of Couchsurfers, and finding several tandem partners, but as I am admittedly quite hard on myself, I still was not happy with my progress, and so decided to take more drastic action. I explained what had been going on with the school to the British Council, and they were very understanding, and wished me all the best. I then found a language school in Salzburg, and signed up for an intensive course with just 1 other person for the month. I instantly knew that this was the right thing to do, and I haven't looked back since.

The day before flying back I'd caught a really bad cold from my Dad, and so my first week back in Salzburg was quite an anti-climax. Apart from going to the language school on the Monday to do a test so that they could place me at the right level, I spent most of the week wallowing in my illness, and watching a lot of Scrubs (in German) and Austria's Next Top Model. Luckily the language school was still on Christmas holidays until the next week so I didn't miss a week of class. I finally made it out of my cave on Thursday evening, as it was the first dinner with all the TA's (since leaving the teaching programme I was technically a fraud, but no-one seemed to mind too much!). It was nice to all get together and hear how everyone's Christmas was. Rachel had had a particular exciting Christmas, and came back with a ring on her finger so congratulations again to her and Ian!

On Friday I had just about managed to shake the cold, and it was in perfect time as I was headed to the mountains with my host family for my first weekend of Schifoan (skiing) in Austria!! We drove about an hour outside of Salzburg to the family's house in the small alpine village of Wagrain. It has its own skiing slopes, but is also within a half hours drive of about 15 other resorts, so a really great location! We had a late dinner and an early night ready to hit the slopes the next morning. On Saturday morning, they got out the box of Christmas crackers that I'd bought them as a Christmas present, but they hadn't opened as they weren't sure how to use them. I explained how you cross your arms, take a cracker in each hand, and if you pull the bigger half then you win the toy inside. They seemed to like them, although I must say they weren't too convinced about wearing the paper hats afterwards. They have a few crackers left, so maybe next time they'll be more won over.We were up and out by 11am, and the nearest lift is less than a 5 minute walk from their front door, so we were on the slopes by 11:10am. I must admit that I nearly died with laughter when I saw the name of the cable car we would be taking. 'The Flying Mozart'. Well, what else could it be I suppose! The parents had tickets to the theatre on Saturday evening, so I was left alone with the 2 children and their 2 friends to make pizzas and watch a film. The pizza making left a lot to be desired, ranging from very soggy to very overcooked, but in the end everyone was fed and watered so we can count that as a success! We then watched a film about extreme skiing/snowboarding which was really cool, although I couldn't do what they were doing in a million years!







On Sunday just before our last run, we went into one of the many mountain Huttes to have Krapfen. The best way of explaining this is that it's similar to a doughnut, but can be sweet or savoury. Some people prefer them with Sauerkraut and bacon for example, others with chocolate sauce and ice cream. One of the most popular ways of having them is just with jam. I had a sweet tooth that afternoon, so went for a chocolatey one, and although it was amazing, it was so so filling that I only got about half way through before having to hand it over to someone else to finish!



We had 2 great days of skiing and it was so much fun to be on the slopes again after about 4 years. Of course, Austrians are born with skiis on their feet, and they take day trips in nursery to go skiing, rather than Bocket's Farm. Needless to say, the children and parents were running circles around me, both in terms of speed and technique. I was able to keep up with them if I stayed on piste, and they went off piste, and we just kind of met at the end. The mum's knees had been hurting her a bit so she joined me in staying on piste and we worked out a pretty good system by the end of weekend, where no-one was slowing anyone down and we got to enjoy the slopes together.



We got back to Salzburg late on Sunday night. I felt incredibly old as the last time I went skiing was for a whole week and I can't remember feeling a thing, yet when we got back I was aching all over and so hobbled up the stairs to bed and fell straight asleep, as I was absolutely kaputt!