Yo de lay hee hoo!

After our busy, busy, 5 days in Paris, Christine and I hopped on an overnight train to Munich. Paris was a beautiful city to visit with so much to see but I think we were both ready to move on to a place where we could apeak and understand the language ten times better than we could in France. After waiting in a damp and cold train station in Paris for 4 hours we finally boarded our train to Munich and found our 4 person sleeper car that we ended up sharing with a German girl working in Paris and a Japanese fellow. Both were very nice. Sleep was a little hard to come by that night so we were relieved when we finally arrived in Munich after the 11 hour train ride. From there we took a few more trains up to Mayrhofen Austria, a ski resort in the Zillertal Alps. We, however were not quite at our final destination yet. We are staying a smaller village further up the valley called Vorderlanersbach, so we had to take a cab up the winding mountain road to get to our vacation apartment. When we finally arrived we just passed out from exhaustion, it had been a long day! The next day (my b-day) we explored our village a bit as well as some of the other villages further up the valley leading up to the Hintertux Glacier. Lucky for us they have a free sport bus between all the villages and Gondola stations in the area, so we've been making good use of it! The villages here are definately cute and very classically Austrian. All the buildings are in the alpine A-frame style with carved balconies and window shutters with Austrian themes painted on the sides. So pretty to look at! All the apres-ski huts are also pumping German\Austrian Ooom Pah Pah music, some mixed with a disco beat and a few others with yodeling added for good measure! The backdrop to all of this is magnificant! The Ziller Valley Mountains are absolutely beautiful, especially when viewed from up high. The valley ends at the Hintertuxer Glacier which is 3250 m high. Of the three days Christine and I spent skiing this week we went there on our second day. Needless to say we didn't ski\snowboard down from up there, but there were many die-hard Austrians who did! It was very windy and cold at that altitude and we just saw them all dissappear over the piste edge into the clouds as though they just inuitively knew where where to go, who needs trail markers?! We skiied further down the mountain that day, but the wind and warmer temps have made for less desireable ski conditions. The snow has been pretty sticky and in some spots even slushy. We definately caught the back of this years ski season! It's been so warm here this year that you can't even ski down to the villages at all. We have to drag all our gear to the Gondolas and then get set up to ski once we've reached the higher altitudes where the snow is. Let me tell you, at the end of a long ski day it's a huge chore to hike all the way uphill back to our apartment with ski boots on and ski gear on my shoulders! Not the way I had imagined it would be but you do what you gotta do to get to the slopes! If the Austrians had some kind of initiation test though, I think this would definately be it! It has been a good experience, skiing down the side of an Austrian mountain with snow-capped Alps in the distance is a memory I will not soon forget! I think I definately need to try this out back home in Canada next year! Of course in Canada you can't eat wurst and apfelstrudel in an alpine hut at 2600 m, but hey, I think I'll leave that to the Austrians, they're pretty good at it! So I wish you all a sincere Austrian 'Grüß Gott' and hope you are all doing well! If any of you are interested, feel free to check out my sister Christine's blog as well. www.christineadventure2007.blogspot.com She's got more pics and details there as well! Next stop: Bolzano, Italy!