A very early start to the day for a change! I had to be out the door at 6:00 am to catch a ski coach from Munich to the ski-slopes in Austria -a 1.5 hour journey. The coach was packed - mostly with Germans. We were given coffee and brezels for breakfast. We arrived at Hochzillertal around 9 am. Hochzillertal and Hochfugen are two separate ski-fields that are located side by side in the Austrian alps. The ski-pass allowed access to both and using a series of different lifts and doing different runs you could ski between them. This meant there was over 165 km of pistes available. I rented some ski-gear from a shop at the base and then hit the slopes. This was my first time skiing in 10 years but I had no trouble getting back into it. The slopes were beautiful - nothing but snow-capped mountains stretching to the horizon. There were trees dotted around the slopes which is something you don't see in NZ. The snow was pretty good although icy in places. Hochzillertal was groomed better and I don't think I fell once. Hochfugen was more interesting to ski on with very long runs but the slopes were a bit more dicey and I had a couple of falls one of which I wrenched my shoulder which is pretty sore still. For lunch I had a piece of Apfelstrudel and Heisse Shockolade and continued to ski for the afternoon.
At the end of the day there were two options to get down off the mountain - the chair lift or a black ski run (difficult) that turned into a red (moderate difficulty) ski-run half way down. I thought why not and took the ski run. The black ski run was great and I was feeling very pleased with myself and slightly cocky. I had visions of gracefully skiing off the slopes and into the carpark like you see in the movies. Unfortunately the red part of the run was awful. It was narrow, icy and full of mounds and I soon found myself not-so-gracefully sliding down on my bottom. Since the Austrians and Germans seem to be such good skiers this was a little bit embarassing.
When I finally made it down (which seemed an eternity) he coach was waiting and we packed in for the return journey to Munich. Tired and sore I was home by 7 pm.
Mark had had a relaxing day in Munich, he had another look around town and some of the churches. Everything was very shut, there was not one Boxing Day sale to be seen. (I did get to lunch at what seemed a very authentic place and had Schweinshaxe, which is German lamb shanks but from a pig. How they do thay I'm not sure, but it must involve genetic engineering. It was very tasty. I look forward to doing it at home, though I dont know where I will find a sheep with pigs knuckles.)
Damian ate the last of the Christmas lasagne for dinner - tommmorow we're going to do some real Christmas shopping.
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