The alpine cure part 1
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2008
1
7
12
Trip End
Oct 01, 2008
Where I stayed
Zentrum für Umwelt
Beneditkbeuren, Germany
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
My trip started off in Munich where I spent a few hours wondering around. I returned to visit the city hall with the famous clock. This time since it was not tourist season I was able to get a bit closer to the clock although I was not there at 12 to see the figures come out and dance.
I walked around and stock up on necessities such as toothpaste to avoid expensive Norwegian prices. I even got a 19 Euro haircut, while you can get cheaper hair cuts I was in a rush and went to this salon anyways hoping the extra money would be worth it. It was not in the end I still ended up with a shitty hair cut- I will have to fix it myself now!
In the even I took the train to Benediktbueren where I met my friend from Sweden, Emanuel. We stayed at the beautiful Zentrum für Umwelt which is a very old monastery that now serve as an area for cultural and environmental education and they also have accommodation. The village and monastery are very charming and will win your heart over at first sight. There are traditional Bavarian homes in the village and the landscape is formed by snow capped mountains and moors. This is an area highly worth visiting and Bavarians are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Be sure to learn how to say hello so that you can greet others in the street as you pass them as well. In Bavaria this is normally Grüß Gott (may God greet you, sort of pronounced goose gott), the area is very catholic.
Since there was no snow in Benediktbueren and snow conditions were not so good we took off to Austria too an area near Tirol. Thus my child hood dream of skiing in the Alps came true! We skied up a valley, climbed a steep slope and found ourselves struck by winds blowing at 130 km/h! There was a strong wind storm happening. We were unable to walk along the ridge because of the strong winds and the way we came up didn't look good for skiing down so we huddled up at the top for about an hour hoping the winds would calm down. When no change in the winds came we crawled over to the other side of the ridge to see if we could ski down there. It looked good so we abandoned our old plans and headed down the other side of the mountain. We skied down some decent snow and safely back to our car exiting, from a differently valley. Days later we discovered why we had difficulty coming up the mountain and getting down- we had started up the wrong valley to start with! Fun none the less.
The second day we were in the same area but opted for a longer ski tour but where we would be protected from any strong winds. The skies were clear and the sun was out, by the lunch time I was skiing in a t-shirt and thermals only. We approached an Austrian hut, which is quite big to Canadian standards and is always staffed. There we were greeted by a great big dog and the hut operators and spoke with them shortly. As we were getting ready to take off the husband sat down in the sun with his wife and began to play his accordion! Sun, snow, mountain and live music, I couldn't have wished for more.
We pushed on a finally came to our glacier, turned around a skied back.
On our fourth day of skiing we were again in Austria- but I am at a loss to tell you where we were exactly. This time we were joined by a funky German monk called Robert. Robert sported hot pink ski boots from the 80s- which was great since it was still snowing I knew we would never lose sight of him. We started at a lower elevation that day and the snow conditions were marginal climbing up meaning that Emanuel and I walked up to save our gear while Robert continued to ski up since he had the advantage of old second hand gear that he didn't care about that much. At the top the snow was much better and the ski down was again better than the previous day.
Our fourth day of skiing was the shortest but one of the best since 30-40 cm of fresh snow had just fallen. We had only a few hours to ski so this time we stayed in Germany and stayed close skiing somewhere near Kochel I believe- near the Zugspitzer. We had quickly skied up the fresh snow and encountered lots of people coming down the mountain having already enjoyed the snow. We easily spotted Robert the monk ripping up the snow too as we made our way up. Boots and old style of skiing were not hard to miss. We made it to the top and skied down some great snow- some of the best snow I had skied all year since I had missed the best of the BC pow by leaving BC so early in the ski season.
On the final day we were able to make another quick ski trip in about 4 hours that was right on the border of Austria and Germany before we headed to the other end of Germany for a 7 hour car ride to Hannover.
The great thing about skiing in Alps is how accessible they are and the number of short trips that you can do. Unlike BC you don't need 1-3 days to do a ski trip, a few hours is enough for you to ski up and have a great ski down. Unfortunately, I didn't see much of Hannover since we arrived so late and the next morning we hopped on a train to go to Copenhagen next! This was one of the best trips I have ever done since I had a local tour guide (Emanuel) and got to see and experience so much more of the culture.
