Another Thing to Cross off my List:

Skiing in the Alps! I have absolutely no idea what else is on this ‘list,’ probably some chores I never did this summer at home and a couple of things I need to buy from Spar. In retrospect, it was probably the wrong list to put ‘ski in the Alps one day’ on and I realize now I need to re-organize my listing habits. I’ll put that on my list.

Back to today, it appears that the third time is a charm, and I finally spent a day on the slopes! Now I must tell you that this has been a big deal for me, deciding how much money and time I want to spend on skiing this semester. Deciding whether it was worth it to buy my own skis, which ski-pass to buy, and worrying whether my gloves matched my hat. In the end, I did buy my own skis, they were really cheap only 60 euro with bindings. Everything else was at least twice as much. They were so cheap because they were a 2004/2005 model and thus are ‘unfashionable.’ I got some ski-boots from the Büro and some ski poles for really cheap at Hofer, an amazing grocery store that can only be described as a Costco but everything is not in bulk and a small random sample of the non-food items, really random sample, as in they’re selling skis and bed sheets between the baking goods and the juice. Once I had my equip., I had to figure which season ticket to buy. I’ll spare you the boredom of my long decision process but it was a relief when I finally figured it out. Once I had everything, who knew that the most difficult thing would be getting out there to ski?

I tried once about a month ago. Aaron and Mariel were going to the glacier about an hour and a half outside of town. There wasn’t much snow in the mountains at the time but since it’s a giant river of ice you can pretty much ski on it in the summer. We had planned on getting up early and catching the early bus out of town. Well what happened was we woke up early, but I had not waken up yet, my evil other personality had waken up in my place. This is actually quite common, Jake usually takes over for the half hour to hour after I wake up or when I haven’t eaten in a while and my blood sugar is low. He’s the one who turns off my alarm or convinces me that I don’t need to go to class because we probably weren’t doing anything important that day. Anyways, Jake told Aaron and Mariel to go without me probably because “I’m really tired” or “I don’t feel well.” Since I wasn’t there, I don’t really know what he said. I woke up a few hours later to realize they had left without me.

The second time was last weekend. It had been snowing in the mountains for about a week and Christian, Aaron, Mariel, and I got really excited about fresh snow. Unfortunately, the glacier was the only place that was open since it is so early in the season. We made another plan to wake up early and take the bus out there. I warned Aaron not to listen to Jake and we got up early and Aaron and I were able to fight Jake back. We hiked across town to the train station and got on the bus to the glacier, finally on our way!. So this time we actually made it to the mountain. The further up the bus climbed and edged around tight corners with breathtaking sights all around, the windier and more blizzardy it got. When we arrived, they said we couldn’t buy our tickets (I was planning on buying my season ticket) until they opened the mountain which would be in about an hour. It was closed due to extreme weather conditions. We waited around for it to open but at the time they said it would they told us it was too dangerous for the gondolas. So we had to take the 2 hr expensive bus ride back to IBK, unsuccessful. Should’ve listened to Jake.

Finally, today on my third try I made it! Since many of the closer, more local, places have opened up, we decided to try one of those. We went to Patscher Kofel, where they had the slalom ski races for the Olympics, near the bobsled track. The entire mountain was not open, there were only two lifts and pretty much only one trail open but it was better than nothing. We decided to go a little later in the morning so we didn’t have to deal with Jake and it got scary for a second because when we arrived they told us that the lift was having issues so we had to wait a half hour for them to fix it. In the meantime we bought our season passes, the Freizeit Ticket, which meant taking a picture which also meant jumping in Aaron’s picture at the last second which also meant him freaking out at me for the next ten minutes how I ruined the picture. I think it definitely improved it, but that’s just me. Finally they opened the mountain and we made our way up with the other cheering Austrians.

I was nervous at first and seriously doubted whether this investment into skiing this year was a good decision. This was mostly because the last time I seriously skied was about four years ago, not counting the time I went with the Cattern family and we were forced to sustain ourselves for half the day on a small piece of lemon bread. Also, there were seriously 5 year old kids wizzing by me. It was insane! Like I’m pretty sure it’s a bigger deal when an Austrian child is able to sustain himself on skis by itself than when it can stand on its own. Not to mention the fact that Austrians ski way different in general than they do in America. Americans spend a lot of time turning and making pretty s-shapes with their tracks but it seems that the Austrians just point their skis downhill and don’t stop until they hit the bottom, or it seems unless someone else has fallen. One time I stopped to adjust my goggles, lost my balance and fell over and within 4 seconds, 4 Austrians all came in out of nowhere asking if I needed help. After my first run though, I got the hang of it and it became really fun, but I was defiantly shown up by everyone on the mountain over the age of 6 today. It also seemed like it was the ‘teach your child to ski’ day. Parents had their Austrian children all dressed up in 15 layers of clothing so they could barely move their limbs, a massive helmet, a pair of goggles that is twice the size of their face to match, and tiny 1 foot long skis. The would essentially go to a relatively mild slope, stand the kid up, and gave him little nudge, he would go about ten feet, then kind of lazily succumb to gravity and flop over. Then you had the 6-7 year old girls you had to watch for two reasons, if you looked directly at their matching pink sparkly snow suit you would go blind and they were doing the 2 mph ski-plows down the entire mountain in the middle of the trail.

In the end, we skied for about 3-4 hours and I was really enjoying it by the end and I look forward to doing it many more times in the future.

Austrian Oktober

Okay so I really should be writing a Theo paper right now about one of the most mind-numbing 20 pages of reading in the world but I’m afraid I have much more important things to do.

I apologize for the lack of recent posts. There’s no good excuse but it’s a mixture of the horrible internet hookup, class work, and settling in. I guess I just keep waiting to get into the swing of things and develop a daily routine but it seems like I always have a paper to write or food to shop for and cook or a nonexistent trip to Italy to plan for. Life in IBK has been nonstop. In fact, the couple days we’ve had off to do whatever we want I’ve spent like a log sleeping in our dorm. Just last Sunday I found myself waking up at 2 pm.

I know I promised the tale of our eastern Europe encounters soon, it’s a masterpiece in the works, I didn’t want to get behind. I know you are all on the edge of your seats… Actually, I’m not too sure if anyone but my mom still reads this

So a lot has happened since my last post. One weekend, about 3 weeks ago, Mariel, Lizzy, and I went to Kirchberg to check out the Sporthotel that would be hosting our Christmas trip this year. It is the responsibility of the Innsbruck students to plan an unofficial trip to the same hotel (every year) in the middle of a small Alpine, Tyrolean village. We host the trip for any ND or SMC students abroad for Christmas so that we could all be with at least our Notre Dame family for the holiday (I know its mega-cheezy but we’re allowed because it’s Christmas). The three of us are planning it and the owners of the hotel invited us to visit them for the day to check out the hotel and talk logistics. I just want to say beforehand that our invitation came to us by a call at 6 am on my cell where a very old but excited woman’s voice asked us to come visit that weekend. In my half-asleep brain, at first I had absolutely no I idea who this sketchy granny-creepster was and where she wanted me to meet her, got kind of paranoid, and stepped away from the window but I finally figured it out. The hotel was very quaint, on the side of a mountain and it got me really excited for the holiday. The owners of the hotel include sisters Elizabeth and Mary and Bernd who we assumed was somehow related to them. The sisters were about half my height and were that indistinguishable age between 80 and 150 years old but they were very lively and excitable. Bernd is about the only man who has been able to pull off a handlebar moustache for the last 100 years. He was nice but a little intimidating with his very Austrian frankness. During our 6 hour visit, we must have eaten enough food to feed a small nation. From the moment we arrived to the moment we left, there was a huge plate of food in front of us. They even sent us home with an entire homemade cake! When you weren’t hungry anymore, the sisters would insist that you eat another schnitzel or more wurst and when you refused they would get this hurt, offended look on their faces (totally unwarranted since the food was amazing). Then in the tough decision between making two old women cry and getting a little acid reflux, you choose the latter and force down another piece of schnitzel. They would still insist you eat more, and at this point you would absolutely refuse, not falling for their deceiving watering eyes again. When they realized you weren’t falling for it a second time, they would give up and put more food on your plate for you. It seemed as if they were fattening me up to be next week’s schnitzel. Aside from the painfully bloating stomach for the next week, the trip was fun and we’re looking forward to our trip as we frantically try to get everything organized.

Another exciting event that happened was that it snowed here for about a week. Not just in the mountains, actually in the city as well. It was really fun while it lasted, the big Charlie Brown kind of snowflakes that just kind of lazily smack into you. It didn’t stick in the city but after the clouds left the views of the surrounding mountains were pretty awesome. Our German class has a wonderful view of the Inn valley and its very hard to concentrate during class. Now the weather is back up and sunny at a nice 10°C. On the first night it was snowing, I dragged everyone outside to take some first snow pictures and it turned into a dangerous game of “catch snowflakes in your mouth but try not to get run over by the speeding Austrians when you wander into the street to try to get the extra fluffy looking snowflake.” We made it back safe.

Last weekend we had a 3 day weekend, thanks to Neutrality Day, Austria’s Independence day. The day when the American, Russian, French, and British troops left Austria so it could become a neutral state over 50 years ago. We celebrated by having a Halloween party that night. The Austrians don’t really celebrate Halloween to the extent that we do, apparently it was gaining in popularity but 10 years ago it kind of declined so now it’s more of a storefront window kind of holiday. Some students went searching for pumpkins to carve and after several attempts they finally found the right kind at a supermarket entitled “amerikanische Kürbis” or American Pumpkins. There are many pumpkins around but they are more squash-like, very fleshy and hard to carve since people here, go figure, eat them. The party was held here in Rössl in one of the kitchens which meant that the random Germans/Austrians/Swedes in the dorm would wander in to witness what the heck was going on. We invited them to join us but they kind of just sat on the outskirts and stared at us like they were at a zoo. Everybody dressed up in a costume and it was fun seeing people improvise from what they had. I realized about 4 minutes before the party began that I needed a costume so I just looked at the flannel shirt and jeans I was wearing and fortified it by tucking in my shirt, rolling up the pants, donning a cap, and writing “Brawny” on a toilet-paper roll I grabbed from our bathroom as I left and went as the Brawny paper towel man. My toilet paper roll actually became quite handy in the end to clean up various spills and messes made throughout the evening.

The following is a list of what everyone else wore and my impressions:
Kevin wearing a kimono: Some could argue that he dressed up as himself right before or after sleeping since, as the few who have witnessed it will tell you, is what he wears but I think the goal was to be a Japanese man. Although, halfway through the evening, I grabbed a marker and drew a dirty moustache on him and he became a porn star
Katie wearing Kevin’s clothes: She went as Kevin
Lizzy wearing PJ’s: I think the aim was field mouse but by the time I arrived, the whiskers had worn off and like Kevin just looked like she was ready for bed
Al wearing black and a witch’s hat: Al likes to scare small children in her spare time
Mad wearing, um, normal clothes: I guess the consensus was that she was a rainbow since she had microscopic colorful stripes on her shirt? Oh and she was wearing rainbow sandals. I said she went as LAME.
Betsy in green with dead leaves draped over her: Mother Nature or a compost heap. I prefer the latter.
Monica in all black: A ninja, while a good choice (most popular costume from my childhood) she didn’t quite have to moves down and the only thing I saw her dominate that evening was a candy apple
Anthony in a suit and a red cross on his arm: I think he was a red-cross Swiss inspector or something? Not quite sure but he kept posing the same awkward ways in all the photos of him that evening
Christian in pulled high pants and glasses: “Christian, are you a nerd?” “Yes, well he’s also dressed like one” okay so we found that a lot funnier last weekend.
Mary in ‘the Shirt’ and other ND clothing with bruises and cuts: The ND football season, especially fitting after this weekend’s game
Mariel in normal clothes: She claims she was a tourist, but I think we all are for a good part of this year so she may as well had been “someone too tired from skiing to put on anything different”
Hayley in a black unitard?: I don’t know where she got it but she said she was a shadow, very creative. Nobody got my SNL allusions when I kept calling her an invisible pedestrian
Aaron: He showed up in normal clothes then disappeared after an hour then came back. Turns out he was meeting Gürtler to borrow his shirt. Aaron came in with this best impression and everyone started laughing hysterically and he had a fresh 50 euro note in his hand. We all assumed it was a prop since that’s pretty much all the big G ever does to us, give money. The man actually gave Aaron 50 euro for our party fund!

The rest of the evening was fun as we taught some of the Swedes how to play Kings and other American games and we were also teaching some of the other international students on our floor the proper methods of pumpkin carving. We also managed to scrounge up some Sturm (wine that tastes like lemonade, only available in the month of September) for the party which everyone was happy about.

So that’s all I got for now, hopefully I’ll get down to writing about our adventures in Nürnberg and Rothenberg ob der Tauber soon and post pictures.