The Building of a Bench using Old Skis

I'll put some words to this later, but right now I just want to get the pictures posted!

Drive Thru Italy - Pictures from our 10 Day Journey

I love Italy. The country has so many different experiences to offer and so many different faces it can show its guests. In Italy’s Südtirol, you’re as likely to hear German spoken as you are Italian. Likewise, you’re just as apt to find a plate of spaghetti bolognese as you are a plate containing jägerschnitzel and frites. That’s the Italian Alps for you. A mix of cultures and people that hold steadfast to their roots and traditions, even if it is seemingly a mixture from different countries. The state boundaries in the Alps have changed frequently throughout history, but the people living in the Alps didn’t necessarily change with them.

As you move down Italy’s Autostrada 22 and further south, things definitely do become more distinctly Italian. Stop in a few towns along the way, however, and you’ll notice some differences between the people. Verona, although a good-sized city, has a small town feel where the people are friendly and seem more laid back. In contrast, Florence has a much more cosmopolitan feel, where fashion, no matter how God-awful it looks, is worn with gusto and conversations between friends sound like two enemies ready to go to blows. I think a simpler way to put this is that the young people of Florence are just really, really in to themselves – and it’s damn entertaining to watch!

Since I’m running short on time, I’ll just get straight to the pictures.  Click on the underlined portion to go directly to the Flickr gallery for the pictures.

Rosskopf, Italy - an afternoon of skiing.  This is right over the Austro/Italian border.  Dawn, Jef, and I hiked this area last summer also.

               

Kronplatz, Italy - skiing with the ski club in the Italian Alps
 

       

Alta Badia / Sella Ronda, Italy - The Italian Dolomites.  This area was amazingly gorgeous!

     

Verona, Italy - We only spent one night here.  I wish we could have stayed one day longer.  A great city.

     

Florence, Italy - Dawn, Osu, and I feel that Florence is a bit overrated.  It definitely is more of a museum city rather than a walking around city.  Scooters, cars, trucks, bikes - you name it - they are everywhere!  Traffic 'laws' seem only to be suggested instead of hard and fast rules.  Still, a beautiful city!  We planned on spending four nights here, but cut our stay short two nights so we could spend more time in Siena.  That was a good choice on our part!

      

Pisa, Italy - Yep, had to go see the Leaning Tower.....and, it was better than expected!

      

Siena, Italy - I'm glad we made the choice to spend more time here.  The city is nice, but you can see it all in one day.  What is special about the place is the surrounding hill towns only an hour or so away.

      

Towns Surrounding Siena

       

Now, it's time to start working on the high-quality photos and posters from this trip.  I have a lot of material to go through, but am really looking forward to it!  Until then!

Skiing at Ochsenkopf

A new video I put together after spending a day at one of the local ski hills with some friends last Sunday.  I was using a new camera this day and didn't quite get all of the settings dialed in properly  I apologize in advance if watching this makes anyone nauseous!



Link to Larger Video

Having a wee bit of fun the day after Christmas

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas!  Dawn, Osu, and I had a great time in Dresden.  We now have a new favorite Christmas Market!  The Dresden markets were even better than we had heard and we really enjoyed exploring the different ones around the city.  We were a little surprised when we arrived in Dresden on the 23rd that there wasn't more snow in the city.  What little snow there was was dirty and rotten and not too appealing.  However, on Christmas Eve night, a new storm rolled in, ensuring that we would wake up Christmas morning to a new blanket of white.  We had a great walk around the old part of the city on Christmas morning, but didn't stick around for too long.  I knew that the drive home was going to take longer than usual due to the still falling snow.  My fears were realized when the drive that would usually take only 2.5 hours turned in to a 5+ hour ordeal.  It really wasn't too bad, just slow due to the condition of the Autobahn. 
Pictures from Dresden

On the 26th, we all decided to go have a little fun in the snow.  Here is a short video showing what we did.  (the video might take a bit of time to load - be patient!)



The original video can be found HERE

Interlaken / Jungfrau, Switzerland

'm putting this post up a bit late for a couple of reasons. Reason number 1 being that both Dawn and I have been sick for the past few days which leads in to reason 2 - a delay in going through our pictures because we've been sick. Actually, Dawn was sick on the trip to Interlaken and then proceeded in getting me sick which made for a fun week at work. While Dawn battled with a stuffy head and plugged-up ears on the trip, I whined and cried about my back and some minor to middling gout attacks that decided to pop up and say hello in a few joints over the weekend. Still, even with these setbacks, the trip was great. Neither of us skied, but we got out and about and saw a lot while in Switzerland. The weather, once we got out of the fog-magnet that is Interlaken, was spectacular.

The entire area as a ski region is an interesting one. Although Interlaken is the biggest town in the area, it isn't really considered a ski town. It is more of a summer retreat for the rich and famous and people with way too much money in their wallets. Although the locals were down-to-Earth and very nice and helpful, many of the tourists were of the highfalutin variety, noses in the air and ten thousand dollar furs wrapped around their surgically-tightened necks. Basically, the pompous assholes that I generally can't stand (maybe I'm just jealous). The ski slopes themselves sat high above Interlaken, spread out below the prominent peaks such as the Wetterhorn, the Jungfrau and the Eiger (yes, that Eiger for you Clint Eastwood fans). To reach the main slopes, one could drive to either Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen, each town sitting on opposite sides of the Lauterhorn, where a train would then be boarded to take skiers to the small town of Kleine Scheidegg which sits right at the base of the Eiger and the Jungfrau. Or, if one was so inclined, trains could be taken all the way from Interlaken to Kleine Scheidegg. One interesting thing to note - the ski passes for the area covered both the ski lifts and the trains, something that was entirely new to us. The trains pulled an extra open-air car exclusively for carrying ski and snowboard gear up to the slopes while the people rode in comfortable and warm enclosed cars. Not a bad way to travel from slope to slope!

On our first day, Dawn and I took the train to Kleine Scheidegg and with a ticket we had purchased in Interlaken, boarded the train for the Jungfraujoch, elevation 11,333 feet. Although this is more of a summer trip for tourists to take, we're happy we made it. The views from the top were outstanding. Many of the areas that are open in the summer were closed in the winter for safety reasons, but we still did manage to get out on the snow and ice to snap some pictures. The sun was shining brightly, almost too brightly, but it was cold and windy - oh, and did I mention cold?

On day two, we left our hotel early and boarded one of the first trains up to Kleine Scheidegg, We were very unimpressed with the breakfast at our hotel and were on a mission to find something a bit more substantial and satisfying. We hit pay dirt at a restaurant right off of the tracks in Kleine Scheidegg, gorging ourselves on fried eggs, cheese, a croissant complimented by a huge spoonful of strawberry jam and three thick slabs of country bacon (I cheated - my first meat in a month). We also received bowls, not cups, of coffee for me and tea for Dawn. It was the best breakfast we've had on the road......ever! Dawn has pictures I can post later. I'm drooling right now thinking about it. After breakfast, I set the tripod up to take some pictures while Dawn climbed a very large hill of snow next to us, proceeding to do some yodeling from its peak and then butt-sledding down in the soft snow. We had a lot of fun that morning!

Day three found us staying in Interlaken, walking around town with other ski club members, checking out the sites and touristy junk shops. We were also on the prowl for a good fondue restaurant, as the reviews received from others about their fondue experiences the night before weren't too promising. After asking a local on the streets, we eventually ended up in a fairly non-descript restaurant across from the Interlaken-West train/bus depot and enjoyed a fantastic last feast in Switzerland.

Overall, this was a great trip and I'm glad we made it.  The bus trip was long, we both weren't feeling well, but it was great to get out of sleepy 'ol Parsberg and finally get back to the mountains during the winter.  I don't think we'd ever go back to ski this area as it looked pretty boring to me, but during the Summer?   Heck yeah. 

All pictures from the trip can be found HERE

July skiing and camping in Zillertal, Austria

One of the big things we realized after this trip was that being a weekend warrior in Europe, well, kinda sucks. We've found that a general rule of thumb when planning our trips is to add an extra hour of time for every 100 kilometers we are going. It doesn't matter which way we head from our little town, the rule applies no matter if we're heading to Holland or Dresden or Austria. Google maps says it's 3 hours to get to our destination in Austria which is 200 kilometers away? Simple - it will take us 5 hours at the very least. Yes, Germany does have the autobahn, a free-wheeling fast-paced strip of pavement where a seemingly disproportianate collection of asshole drivers congregate. Yes, there is no speed limit in places, but this doesn't help much when there is construction every 10 kilometers, the Dutch ground-force hauling their ubiquitous camping trailers clog every uphill section in existence and traffic jams stretching as far as one can see crop up seemingly anywhere and for no reason. Still, we put ourselves through this every couple of weeks and have really started to wonder, is it worth it?


In most cases it is, but do too many of these weekend trips back to back and you will eventually burn out. A typical summer trip is as follows; Pack Thursday night, rush home from work Friday and hit the road. Arrive at destination at 9 or 10 PM, set up camp/check in to hotel, find something to eat, get to bed late. Do whatever on Saturday, fighting the crowds along the way. Sleep after a long day of doing whatever we were doing. Wake up Sunday and decide whether or not we feel like getting home late that night or not, do whatever, make the long drive back home, unpack, sleep. Monday, go to work early, get home, clean up the rest of the mess from the weekend, do laundry and then start to plan the next trip. It's really not all that relaxing.

This latest trip pretty much followed the recipe above, but we did have a good time. We arrived at our unbelievably overcrowded campsite near Mayrhofen on Friday night just in time to pitch our tent and get everything in it before being hit with some truly crazy thunderstorms. After getting the tent up, we pretty much spent the next 4 hours stuck in it because of the weather. It was some of the strongest rain I have seen in years and the thunder and lightning was impressive as well. Osu did not enjoy it, but he behaved pretty well for being imprissioned in the tent with us. Our friends who were supposed to camp with us this night ended up not being able to find us for a couple of reasons. One, the weather was so bad on their drive down (we missed this) that they arrived hours later than expected and it was dark by the time they found the campground. Two, when they got to the campground, there was no way to find us amongst the hundreds of other tents pitched in the 'tent-only' area which was simply a grassy field next to a road tucked in with all of the camp trailers.

The next morning we awoke to some much nicer weather and headed up to Hintertux for some snow skiing. I love going to this place in the summer. The crowds are thin, the snow isn't all that bad and the views from up there are amazing. We did end up meeting with our friends at Hintertux - us after having slept in a soggy tent and them after a night in a beautiful 4-star hotel. After skiing, we headed back to the campground and had a nice relaxing evening together, caught up after not seeing each other in a while, cooked a good dinner and then proceeded to bed. Surprisingly, we all managed to get a good nights sleep and woke up fairly early on Sunday, cooked a good breakfast and then packed the camp up and left.

The weather was gorgeous on Sunday, so instead of heading back home via the autobahn, we drove some backroads up to Achensee on the border of Austria and Germany. This seemed like a great plan not only to us, but to half of Europe as well. The place was absolutely packed and we didn't end up sticking around for long. Our next stop was the Aying brewery east of Munich where we stopped for one of the most meat-laden lunches I have ever had. It was good, but damn! I felt like Fred Flinstone when I picked up the plate of ribs and the chicken I ordered. No human should be allowed so much meat at one time!

We eventually got home around 6 PM that evening, not rested, not relaxed and tired as hell. Even a full-nights sleep didn't prepare us for work the next day and it was rough for both of us. But, that's how it goes out here and I guess we've learned to live with it. It is frusturating, though, knowing what's out there but how hard it is to actually enjoy. Too many people, too many cars, too expensive, too many people and not enough time. The camping in no way is anything like what camping in the US is like. I now know why the Euros buy tents that look like small apartment buildings for camping - if you don't, someone will inevitably pitch their tent two feet from yours. You need a buffer and a 500 square foot tent will provide this I guess.

Anyhow, we'll be off camping again next weekend again but hopefully in a less-crowded area where we are able to enjoy a little more solitude. The place where we are staying labels it as a 'wilderness camping experience', but that remains to be seen. I'll report back on that when we get home, hopefully with a little more energy and thought.

(wow, that was some bad writing. probably the quickest post I've ever put up, though. And I'm tired.)