The Austrian Alps

Hejj!

I recently got back from a week in the Austrian Alps, one of the best weeks of my life. I hope I will never forget it. 

I was with my host family and around 25 or 26 others, in such a cute little ski town called St. Anton, downhill skiing all week long. It was the most amazing experience I think I've ever had, I have honestly never seen or experienced anything quite like the Alps.

We got there Friday evening after a full almost 9 hours of driving. I made it through one full playlist, a couple extra songs, and two and a half movies (Tammy is such a weird movie...) and finally pulled into Austria around 6 in the evening. 

We drove through Germany, and let me just say, it is so cool when you drive across the German -Austrian border, because you go from small hills, to the Alps surrounding you on either side with snow covered trees as well. 

I was introduced to a drink known as a radler at dinner, which is a mix of beer and sprite. It's really tasty. At the risk of bending the law *a liiiitle smidgen* when I get back, I'd love to introduce ya'll folk to that ;-) 

When the other exchange student Claire and I finally got back to our room after dinner, we were ready to wind down and get ready for the next day full of skiing. So we turned on the TV and realized first of all, everything is dubbed in German. We don't understand German. And shortly after that what should have been a normal procedure took a turn for the more interesting as well. I suppose that if we can't get our entertainment from the TV, we might actually find it in simply trying to work the shower? It made for a very *extra emphasis* interesting experience. Turns out turning on the shower from the outside is a bad idea, especially when you can't decipher the difference between your boiling hot and ice cold water, with jets shooting directly out of it. I wonder how long the floor took to dry...

The next day my host dad spent half of our day trying to teach me how to downhill ski, since I've never downhill skied before, and after lunch he went up to the *real* mountain and I stayed down and practiced some more. 

I went to ski school for the next four days which was not particularly what I was expecting it to be, though actually everything I was expecting it to be. Let me paint the picture: 

1. I'm only five feet and seventeen years old, I'm pretty short. This week however, I was the tallest one there for once in my life, because the ski school kids I was with were no older than 8 years old (possibly younger). 
2. Not only are these kids much younger than I am, they are much more European than I am. Which means they came from mostly German Switzerland, Austria, or Germany. Which thus entails they are not old enough to know English, and speak only German. 

So here I am, five feet and yet still tall, 17 years old, and speaking only Danish and English, avec un peu de Français (with a little bit of French). It was quite the four days I had there. 

My first day I had to jump off the ski lift, because I got off too late, and then had to climb under the bar as well because my pole got stuck without enough time before we had to get off. I wiped out the next three days my fair amount of times, although you can't really call falling in fresh powdered snow very painful, and more times than not me falling resulted in my losing a ski (or both) as well. 

I met a man who really enjoys skiing in the Seattle area on my third day, and he really went for it and impressed me when I found out he even knew what Crystal Mountain, Snoqualmie pass, and Stevens pass are. Kudos to you and your geography skills, foreign man. 

After four days of ski school I finally joined the group of the 26 some others, which started after being so nicely picked up by my host dad after ski school with one last run down the mountain, and over to St. Christoffer where the whole group held an "after ski." Sweet, sweet graduation.

My second day (or first full day) skiing with the whole group was super fun, and I ordered a burger and fries for lunch just to make up for four straight days of kids menu spaghetti. I was pretty sure I was done with the kids menu when I was 10. I suppose not. That afternoon was gong great, I was skiing pretty well if I do say so myself, when I totally and completely bit it going down a pretty steep hill with its fair amount of jumps. I'm not sure how, I believe I just started picking up speed and had no idea what to do with it. So naturally I fall, and the next thing I know I go from sliding on my side to sliding over a jump, flying through the air a little bit, and landing on my back, only to slide a little more. I wish I had it on video. 

And thus began our last day skiing, Friday. It started out great, we took a couple lifts and skied our way over to the other side of the mountain, took a gondola up to the peak, and stopped for a small break. While the adults were still enjoying their break, Claire, me, and two other girls on the trip with us decided to go to the fun park. We took a small detour after we saw there were many people there already, and ended up skiing down the wrong hill. We saw the only lift going back up was not the one we wanted to take, seeing as how it took us farther up the mountain. So we decided to find our own trail going to our designated chair lift. Turns out the trail we took going down was really an off pist area (off trail), which then lead to a story that really, is just a little crazy. 

I decided that I didn't want to ski down an off pist, I'd probably not make it out of the Alps if I did that. So I took off my skis with the intention of sliding down on my butt. I had my poles in one hand, and skis in the other. I start sliding, though after only a couple feet I was gaining way too much speed, with really no where to put it. So I put one foot out to try to stop myself. Wrong idea, I gained more speed. All of sudden both polls are out of my hands, one ski is sliding down the mountain, the other left behind me. I hit a jump again, flying over to my stomach, sliding down the mountain with uncontrollable speed, snow in places where there really shouldn't be snow, and I finally slow down next to my missing ski, after screaming to myself a couple times "you will survive this Grace," with a couple extra profanities slipped in there as well. 

By the time we made it to the chair left we originally intended to take, I had successfully (and a little unconventionally) off pisted (I suppose that depends on your definition of successfully), and we then broke for lunch. 

The last three hours of the day went by way too fast, and the next thing I know we're all breaking before we ski down the mountain for some hot cocoa. I also tried an Austrian food that I cannot spell nor pronounce (that seems to be the norm this year...) anyway, it tasted not quite like what it looked like.... I thought it would taste more like chocolate.

And then our slightly more kid friendly rendition of Wednesday nights after ski ended. I put my headphones in, blasted my music, and have not ever skied faster than I did my last round down the mountain. Of course my version of bombing down the hill is a little bit different from the others seeing as how they all had to pause for me to catch up every now and then (and I may have fallen once as well). When I got back down, I had to go back up once more before the lifts closed. The sun was close to setting, we were the only ones left on the mountain, and it was still warm out from the day while the snow was still cold... it was fantastic.

I really hope that this week was not my last time skiing, because it is so, so fun. Saturday afternoon we drove back, and stopped in Hamburg, Germany for two hours before we had to pick up my host mom who had been in India for two weeks. And then, we returned home.

In about a month I will be going to Istanbul, Turkey for a week with my class for our class trip, so I'm super excited about that, and will definitely have a blog when I return. 

I will definitely be returning to the Alps in the near future, they are just absolutely stunning. For now though, that wraps up my most wonderful ski week in Austria. 

Vi ses! :-)