ich mag die Blumen und Rollen blank im Schnee.

Samstag, Januar 13, 2007

Halloooo!!  Back from a 10 day trip to Austria.  Still waking up in the wee hours of the morning, looking out my apt. window expecting to see the Alps and wanting to go skiing.  To my disappointment, I only see honking cabs and sometimes public urination.  Oh well.  So the trip was mostly awesome.  Tikva and I stayed with Stefan who is originally from Austria.  He was the best host ever. I can’t recap everything but I’ll give you a couple highlights.  Lets start with New Years.

New Years eve Tikva and I arrived in Munich and then Stefan picked us up and took us to his hometown, Imst.  That night we headed out to Innsbrook and took a gondola to the top of a mountain for a New Years eve party.  You know those little houses that receive the gondola when you get to the top of a mountain?  That’s where the party was… so rad.

See!  Party tables all set up by the ski map. Sweet.

Okay, so basically you get to the top of the mountain and have this killer view of the city below.

And these awesome fire pits to keep you warm.

Oh and an outdoor bar fully stocked with all sorts of Austrian beer.

If you know me, you know I hate beer.  So, I was really happy they had this delicious drink called gluehwein.  It’s basically hot red wine with all sorts of spices in it.  Delicious.

We hung out at the top of the mountain with our new Austrian friends.  That’s Mo to the left, Martin, me and Tikva.

At midnight they had this crazy fireworks show.  I took a video for you.  The part I couldn’t catch was the hundreds of mini-fireworks shows in the town below, which was maybe the coolest part.  It was unlike anything I had ever seen.  Sie Österreicher sind mit Ihren Raketen verrückt.

After the fireworks we went inside to dance.  I decorated Stefan so he would look more festive.

He loved it. And then there was Tikva who I warned 6,000 times “don’t wear a strapless dress, we’re in the snow.”

Sighhhh.

More pics from outside:  Stefan and his Austrian-lady fan club.

Sparklers in the snow.

We slept over at Stefan’s friends house in Innsbrook.  On New Years day all of Austria watches this classical music concert that is broadcast live from Vienna.  We blasted it on TV, then had some breakfast.

Here’s the view outside the kitchen.

After breakfast we spent the rest of the day walking around Innsbrook.  We came across this light thing that reminded me of a giant version of Andy Maskin’s ”Massive Multiplayer Persistent Connect Four“ Hey Andy- maybe try making the title of that game a little longer- ya know add the word “interactive” or “ubiquitous” to it.

Anyway, turns out it’s not a giant Austrian version of Andy’s project, but instead it tells you what percentage of the day/night is left.  Get it?  35% Tag (day!) and 65% Nacht (night!).

Here’s a shot of Innsbrook at night. Okay, moving on, let’s talk about skiing!

There are about 9 trillion ski resorts in Austria.  The first one we started off at was “The Glacier.”

A little bit flatter terrain but overall some good runs.

The next day the heavens opened up and dumped down buckets of snow.  This is the “before” pic from Stefan’s place in Imst.

And the after shot.  Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Excited like little kids at Christmas, Tikva and I ran upstairs to make sure Stefan knew the good news.

He threw us in the car and we headed out to the next Ski resort, Imst.

Check this out.  Austria, I love you.

Here’s another shot from later in the day.  Now, I’m not sure if I mentioned this yet, but before coming to Austria, Tikva had never skied before.  She e-mailed me before we left and asked if I would teach her.  I replied “no, take a lesson.” Stefan was much, much nicer and gave her some tips the first day.  But still, by the second day she wasn’t quite ready for the double-black diamond.

Being the good friend that I am, I left her at the kinder club.

And headed up the mountain.

On the way up the lift I kept seeing this metal track.

I couldn’t figure out what it was.  All I knew was the sooner I got on it, the better.

At the top of the lift I saw this glorious sign.  I’m not sure what “Die längste Alpenachterbahn der Welt!” translates to, but I’m pretty sure it’s something like “this thing is really, really fun.”

So here’s how it works, you get in one of these little carts, and go screaming down the track.  At full speed it still takes almost 10 minutes to get down.  So fun.

I decided this fantasticness must be documented.  So, just for you, I turned my goggles around backwards and used the strap to attach my digicam to my head.  Enjoy.

After a full day of skiing we headed home for some dinner, and then back out to the mountain at night.  Stefan does this thing with his friends were they hike for 2 hours to a pub that sits way back in the middle of the mountain.  You can’t get to it by car-- you have to walk/ski.  Not up for a two-hour walk (uggs = bad hiking boots) Tikva and I took the ski lift up and opted for a 1/2 hour walk.  It was a pretty surreal experience to be nestled way back there in the mountain.

Here’s a pic of all of us inside.  After several beers (ps- I found an Austrian beer I like called “Radler” which is mixed with sprite. Ja! Ja!) Our next question to Stefan was “How will we get down?” Tikva and I didn’t rent skiis overnight, and the lifts were closed.  Stefan and his friends had brought their skiis up and were skiing down.  Hmmmm......what to do....

Jump on this chariot of course, and slide down in the dark.

hahahahahah.  See that light mounted on Tikva’s head?  That’s so we don’t ram into any polar bears or deer on our way down.  Oh man that was so fun.  Okay, moving on.

So, the rest of the time we mostly skied St. Anton.  To be honest, it’s the best skiing I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been to some pretty nice resorts.  But this beat out both Banff and Whistler.

See?  I look pretty happy.

For me, the highlight of the trip was staying at this freaking amazing mountain “hut.” Well, they call it a hut, I’d call it a palace.  This place was incredible.  It’s one of two huts on the entire mountain.  See that green thing on the right between the flag pole and the tree-- that’s a jacuzzi.  Sitting in it, feels like you’re hanging off the edge of a cliff in a nice warm bath.  Totally unreal.

Can’t complain about the view from inside either.

Another window.

And another.

For real, even the dog was impressed by the view.

Oh mountain hut, I miss you!

Here’s a pic of the spa (covered) from inside the hut.

To the left of the hut, this is the view of St. Anton, the town below. Okay, enough about the hut, I’m getting depressed that I’m not there.  Let’s talk about skis.

So, I own skis, but they are Rossignols from the early 90’s and I didn’t feel like schelping them from Cali to Europe, so I decided to rent the new, improved parabolic skis.  They are pretty sweet.  First couple days I went with the all-terrain atomics.

After that, these Solomon freestyle skis with the little doggie on them.  WOOF!  I usually snowboard, but I’m a much better skier, and since I would be skiing mainly with two Austrian Ski instructors (Martin and Stefan both!) I opted for the skis, so they wouldn’t be waiting for me.  Turns out, they still had to wait for me (not too long, eh?!) Honestly Martin and Stefan and the best people I’ve ever skied with.  Stefan looks like one of those guys on the ski videos jumping off crazy cliffs and ledges.  It seems in Austria, as soon as you can walk (or maybe before?) they strap skis on your feet and shove you down a mountain.

See?  Here’s Stefan’s little brother Peer, who can already do the double-black diamond runs.  Nothing scares this little guy.

Back in Imst, I tried to scare him with this mask...

...but he just held up this sign which I think translates to… “you don’t scare me” or something.

Back at St. Anton, we took a gondola to the top of the mountain to check out this amazing view.

Pretty much 360 degrees of Alps.  One of these pics looks out to Vienna I think, but I can’t remember which one.

Here’s a video.

Here’s Martin, me, Stefan and Doris at the top. (Tikva was in Skischule!!)

During the day we stopped at this little town in the middle of the resort to have this delicious dessert. It’s warm, sugary bread with plum sauce and whip cream.  So good.

At night we hit up “The Funky Chicken.”

Part way through the trip fellow ITP’er Michael DelGaudio showed up with his fiance Tricia.  DelGaudio is a crazy-good boarder.  Supposedly he had one of the first Burton boards ever when he was five or something.

So, the last day we hit up this little ski resort across from St. Anton. Martin got me this awesome “Tirol” cap that matched his so we did a photo shoot on the gondola on the way up.

This is Tikva showing off her bruises to the rental guys-- “can you give me some soft boots?”

I decided to rent snowblades that day.  Stefan was jealous, so he dropped his pro skis and got some snowblades too.  Snowblades also called “big feet” are little baby skis, they are so much fun.  You can ski backwards, do spins, jumps, I love them.

Here’s the view from the top of this resort.  That’s Stefan to the right on his snowblades.

The big excitement that day was that Tikva fell down and hurt her leg. Sniffle, sniffle.  I took a video of the moments that followed.  I like to call this film… “Skiing, Tikva-stlye.” KISSES Tik-tock!!

Well, that’s about all the blog I can do.  Here’s a sunset from St. Anton.

And the view from my goggles.  100 million thanks to Stefan and his family, who were absolutely amazing hosts.  Danke, danke, danke. Wann kann ich zurückkommen?

Love, Thank you for creating a story of the trip and for encouraging obsessive camera clicking. It makes a big difference to have all the shots to look back at. I still can’t believe how lucky we were!

Thank you also for the dreadfully embarassing video of my invalid self

Really, we couldn’t have asked for a better trip.

xoxo tiktok

By Tikva on Sun, January 14 - 3:03:pm

Summer - you lucky girl!  What a wonderful trip and wonderful friends.  You can visit Jenny in Orange and it will be as much fun but not the scenery!!

Nancy

By Nancy Whitmore on Mon, January 15 - 12:04:am