Quick Week

Sunday morning I woke up before my alarm at around 6:15 in the morning. I checked out of the Wombat hostel, went over to the main train station, and rode up to the Munich airport. I found the arrival gate, and waited for about an hour until my parents and Tim walked through. They looked fairly well for having been on an airplane for hours, which was explained by my parents when they praised Lufthansa for handing out free booze. Good strategy: get people to sleep.

Tim and I talked for awhile while our parents tried to get a bigger car than the “minivan” we were given, because we had five bags or so that didn’t seem to fit. Well, no dice, so we took a little while to shove all of our bags in. I had no space to move side-to-side in the backseat; I was a little sardine in a can of a car. The drive was fairly painless, though. We pulled into Kirchberg in less than two hours, and we did not pass through any customs or anything. From there, we checked into the Sporthotel, which is this cute little 3 story building on the side of the mountain. It’s very reasonably priced, and they provide two meals a day. After getting our ski equipment, it was back for a nap, before our first Sporthotel dinner. That night the ND people who were already here got in from a daytrip to Salzburg, and everyone pretty much crashed after a late dinner.

Monday was a great day of skiing. It is fairly warm for skiing in January, and the sun was out softening up the snow a bit. There hasn’t been any new snow here for a week, but all things considered it isn’t too icy. The mountain has plenty of slopes that work well for me, because they are wide open and steep, meaning I get to go fastly, and fastly is how I like to go. We got in yesterday, and I napped before a big Christmas Eve feast. After that, everyone here went to Midnight Mass in the town church. It was in German, so we experienced a minor Christmas miracle when the priest did not say a homily. There probably would have been sleepers in the group, myself perhaps included.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a pleasant surprise of a Christmas brunch (we slept in… bedtime was 2 AM) that we expected to start at noon (it was supposed to end at noon. Key distinction there). From there we hit the slopes, but the skiing wasn’t quite as nice. No sun made a big difference. We did get in some pretty good runs, though, and had a lovely lunch on the mountain. Austrian skiing is less ski-intensive, more chill-intensive. I like it. Everyone is drinking beer on the mountain, and there are way more places to chill out and eat. Very relaxed makes for serious fun.

Christmas evening was unmemorable. As of Thursday evening, I could not remember off the top of my head what we did. My brother reminded me that we spent the night watching the first three episodes of The Office from this season before we passed out.

The next morning most ND kids left, except for this ND kid. We skied on a different mountain that was on our ski pass, and it was good. We left early and picked up my mom at the lodge. After that, we dropped off our rental equipment and we headed over to Kitzbuhel, the more-famous area near Kirchberg. Not much to see, so we decided to go explore Kirchberg. Not much to see there either. Dinner + more The Office = time for bed.

Thursday morning we got up, ate, and drove out to Salzburg, home of Mozart and the cold. We walked around (a good bit), saw the sights (kind of), and got cold (very). We had a delicious lunch at a little place Rick Steeves (Notre Dame parent!) recommends. My mom had some especially delicious goulash, and the Vienna sausages we ate were better than Koegels. Seriously. Also, we went to the Augustiner beer house, where Tim outdrank me. We took a circuitous route home, because we trusted the GPS map, but it was plugged in wrong. We were yelling at the map and each other. It was like the scene in The Office when Michael uses the GPS to drive into a lake. A scene I just watched two days before.

Friday morning we woke up, had breakfast, finished our packing, and said our goodbyes to the fine folks at the Sporthotel who had treated us so well. It took us a while to get going, with packing all our bags in the car, and then my dad temporarily losing his passport. But get going we got, so by 12:30 we were into our hotel rooms in this swanky airport hotel in Munich. Very swanky, but crappy wireless. That’s no good: even the hostels I’ve been to have solid wireless.

We bought our tickets on the S-Bahn (after a bit of struggling with the machines) and headed into town. The first thing we did was get into the main train station and I struggled with train machines again to buy my ticket to Zurich for tomorrow (Saturday). Eventually I figured it out and bought the cheapest ticket, with 4 changes, for 55 euro. Next up was a walk through Karlsplatz and Marienplatz to the restaurant where Max and I got delicious food last Friday night (wow, that was a quick week). We got too much food and now I am stuffed. Most delicious was pork knuckle. Who would have guessed? We then strolled up to the Haufbrauhos, and then we walked around the main area before jumping back on the S-bahn back out to the airport. And now I’m back with mediocre wireless. I hope this post works.