Monday 15 December 2008

Snowboarding with Urte in Stubaital



My sister, Urte, and I decided to go snowboarding in Austria for my birthday.
So, I flew over to Hamburg on the 5th where, to my surprise, my parents picked me up at the airport. We spent a great evening at my sisters, having a little pre-christmas celebration before Urte and I took off for a long drive to the Austrian Alps.


My sister drove for the first half and I did the last part.
We arrived in [http://www.stubaier-gletscher.com Stubaitahl] around 9-10ish, found ourselves a little apartment in Gasteig and went snowboarding.


We had fantastic weather for the first few days and there were hardly any people on the slopes. Then it started snowing quite a bit and the winds picked up too.


On my birthday it was so windy that they closed the lifts and we decided to go sled riding instead. But only after a wonderful cake breakfast my sister had prepared.


I got a great Japanese Shun vegetable knife, which is made from a very impressive folded steel. My mom made me a beautiful coffee cup which my dad made a sugar holder for, so I can enjoy some Feuerzangenbowle (by myself!). There were yummy sweets, the obligatory boxer shorts and not to forget a Spanish girlfriend! She was quite puzzling and completely head and legless.


So, after the breakfast we drove into the mountains, parked at a tiny little parking spot by the side of the rode and walked up the mountain for about an hour and arrived at a beautiful little hut called Brandstattalm. There we rented a couple sleds and went down an about 4km long ride. It was great fun so we decided we go up again. We stopped for a little picnic and my sister pulled out a couple nifty glasses and some sparkling wine.


Once we got to the Hut we decided to stop for a drink and some Kaiserschmarrn.
It was homemade and delicious. Then we went down again, this time racing each other. Once at the bottom we went up parts of the last bit again a couple times and of course racing each other turned into a little pile up with both of us getting a bit bruised :)


For the rest of our time there it was snowing and snowing and snowing.
We always had fresh soft snow under our boards and even though the visibility was not that great it was a lot of fun.
On the way back to Hamburg, we stopped in Frankfurt to see my good friend Alexandra Winkler. Unfortunately we had way to little time to properly catch up.

Urte and I had to get up quite early on Monday so that I could catch my flight back to London. Ontop of that the BA staff was giving me a very hard time about checking in my snowboard. It ended with me having to put all my clothes that I stuffed into the snowboard bag into a separate box and check it in along with my gear, no extra cost but an extra box to check in ?!?! At first they did not even want to let me check in my board at all. Someone explain that logic!