A Day of Skiing in Semmering

Semmering. It's where all of the Viennese go if they want a skiing day trip. It's about an hour's drive from Vienna, likewise by train. I've been itching to ski again since our trip to Salzburg, so I rounded up Will and Mel, the couple that invited me to their Thanksgiving dinner, for a Sunday of skiing.

Now, there's not much to the town of Semmering, so before I even realized we were really in the town I saw the ski slope. We drove right up to the base and found a great parking spot. Skis rented. Lift passes purchased. Check and check. We were ready to hit the slopes.

Well, sort of. It must have been mentioned in passing before, but I didn't really realize that Mel wasn't much of a skier. In fact, she wasn't a skier at all. She had never tried it before. Will's a snowboarder, so he wasn't exactly helpful on that front, either. But, hey, it's not like I was missing out on any fantastically thrilling runs by sticking on the beginner slopes, so I spent the morning teaching her how to ski. I've sort of helped out with giving pointers and whatnot, but I've never actively taught someone to ski before, so that was new and kind of exciting. I took her poles and perfected my backwards skiing technique, trying to get her to imitate the angles I was making with my skis (aka "pizza" and "french fries") and following my path when I turned. I was actually amazed at how quickly she picked it up! Not that I have much of a basis for comparison, but I thought she did really well.

There was one main lift to the peak from the base with beginner runs branching off one way and the intermediate runs (and one advanced, which was closed because most of the snow was melted), going down the other 2/3 of the mountain. We made quite a few laps of that before stopping for lunch at a warming house at the top of the lift.

You can't see them in the above picture, but to the right of this warming house there were a lot of sun bathers...

We had a really good, filling meal with a great view of the valley and distant peaks. Mel also tried a specialty her students had told her about: a giant dough ball filled with apricot marmalade (have I mentioned how much Austrians love their apricot?), soaking in a kiddie pool of butter, and dumped on with about two inches of poppyseed powder. For as odd of a combination as that sounds, it wasn't too bad. Not exactly something I would find satisfying, but I was happy to try a bite of it since she got one.

After lunch we made another run down, then asked about the sled (or 'sledge', as the British apparently say which the Austrians have adopted) option we had read about. We had noticed a lot of people going up the lift with sleds and saw the track curved around from the top to the bottom. Apparently it was also lit up at night. We paid 6€ to rent a sled, Mel and I dropped our skis while Will made another run, and we were off.

Now, I full admit that I am not much of a sledder, so I decided to let Mel take the, uh, reins on this one. These things really should come with instruction manuals. Perhaps because we were still in our ski boots, Mel was reluctant to use them as our brakes and I wasn't any more knowledgable about the best way to steer, so we ended up creating a sort of leaning method which would start to make us move one way or another on the track until we came upon hairpin turns and would go careening into the snow drifts on the sides and topple off. Well, we can't say we didn't try, and the themes along the way were interesting (and I imagine had the potential to be quite psychedelic, perhaps even horrifying, at night if you had had a few drinks). We were slightly more successful when we switched drivers halfway down and I attempted using my feet to steer, but we were still a little battered and pretty exhausted by the time we got down.

Will and Mel then made a run (apparently much more successfully, which Will thinks may have been influenced by a more significant weight difference between them, too) while I spent the final hour or so skiing the intermediate slopes. Nothing to write home about, but they were almost completely empty so I could really cruise.

Afterwards we weren't really hungry and the après ski scene wasn't really happening, so we decided to try and find a café in Semmering. We'd heard it's supposedly a really scenic little town with a lot of history, and we had seen a glimpse of at least one interesting thing from the slopes - a neat house on the side of a mountain.

We weren't successful in the slightest in finding a café, but there were definitely some other interesting finds, such as the old Südbahn Hotel. Mel was explaining how, much like the Vanderbilts in the US, there was a man who really fathered the rail system through Austria, but eventually it was taken over by the government. I read up on this more when I got back. Apparently Johann of Austria (1782 - 1859), member of the House of Habsburgs, was impressed by the steam engines he saw in his 1815 travel through England and made a huge push for the expansion of the rail lines throughout the Habsburg's empire. Of course, when they fell, the government took over and this Southern Railway is now operated by the ÖBB, Austria's Federal railway operator. Anyway, Johann of Austria built this hotel along the Southern Railway; I bet it would have been quite something to stay there!

There were also charming wooden houses with lots of detailed painting.

However, since we never really did find a café, we hit the road back to Vienna, stopping off at a gas station with a Landzeit 'Autobahn Restaurant'. Will informed us that these are essentially the Cracker Barrels of Austria (complete with gift stores). We ate some quick waffles with chocolate sauce, then continued on our way, making it back to Vienna by about 6:30. Not a bad day at all, if I do say.

I think I'd really like to go back out to Semmering in the spring sometime and wander around the town and see if I can discover some more of the Südbahn Hotel's history. Steffi, my cellist friend, played a concert out there last summer and had highly recommended it, and if I recall correctly even said that you could still go in the hotel. I'll need to look into this for sure.

Bis bald!

Driving Smart

The car that I normally drive was in the shop for a few days. In its place I was given a Smart car. I could park anywhere with it. The mpg (kilometerage?) was fantastic. I still sat surprisingly high off the road. I hated it. The car was wholly minimalistic. It didn't even show you how many kilometers you had travelled unless the car was off. The car didn't start if it was locked. You couldn't unlock the car from the inside - you had to actually open the door. You couldn't see exactly how much gas you had because there were five little bubbles indicating gas level that were either black (full) or clear (empty), so there was no hand indicating exactly how empty you were. The car was neither automatic nor manual, but a strange mix. You could switch into 'manual' if you wanted, but there was no clutch. However, if you drove in automatic then every time you accelerated enough for the engine to need to move into the next gear, it did so with a hideous lurch that felt as though you were driving manual and it was your second day learning how to change gears. It was susceptible to the slightest breeze on the highway. You had to rotate the volume dial nearly half way around to hear a perceptible difference in the radio, but if the news came on then the radio automatically increased threefold in volume. There was no window defroster. The windshield wipers only had one speed.

I think it's safe to say that I will never own a Smart.

Skiing Großarl

(This is Day III of our weekend ski adventure. Go to my German page to read about Day II skiing in Jenner-Königssee.)

Sunday, 26th February, 2012 - We had packed the night before, so we woke up at 7:00 to make the most of the day. We had talked a lot about it the night before, and as much as we had enjoyed skiing Jenner-Königssee, we decided it would be worth it to drive to one of the other mountains nearby that didn't have free rooms. After all, we had a car, so there was no real reason not to go. After fairly extensive research, we had settled on Großarl, Austria. Added bonus that they were expecting 7cm of snow overnight. We trooped down to an even better breakfast than the Saturday's because we were each given a piece of cake along with the usual spread "because it was Sunday" (likely because it was a Lent Sunday). We then loaded up and headed out for the hour long drive to Großarl, which included a mountain pass that was more than a little questionable. But we made it, no problem, and were soon being directed into a parking spot by a little old man with a fluffy snow cap. Not only was the parking conveniently at the base of everything, it was also conveniently free. We wandered mildly aimlessly until we saw a potential rental store and got geared up for the day. Both days rentals were 26€, though the lift pass here was 40€ compared to the 20€ at Jenner (though with the extra bit off). Still, not nearly as expensive as I had expected. We dropped our superfluous stuff back in the car and in no time at all were in another pod up the mountain - this time a six man outfit.

Again, pretty dang good view. They had an interesting sort of midway station where you could get off if you wanted, though the pods continued to move, although more slowly. I suppose similar to any other lift with a mid-station to get off at if you want, but since I've never been in pods before, I found it interesting.

For the most part, I liked the pods - they protected you from the elements, they were warmer, it was easier to talk, and for those that don't feel secure on ski lifts, these ought to make you feel a little safer. However, the big (and rather irksome in my humble opinion) drawback was that you had to take your skis off every time.

Unfortunately when we hit the top, (well, the 3/4 mark, but the top of this particular lift), Erica realized that her boots were too big, so she had to take the lift back down to the bottom to get another pair. Abby and I took the opportunity to find the one advanced run this side of the mountain and just did that over and over. The snow on that run was better, though we went off to the side of the run and skied through the powder the whole time, so that was pretty perfect. Oh, and as predicted, Großarl did get their 7cm of snow the night before. There was even still a little bit of snow drifting down.

A quick note on skiing difficulty in Europe: Unlike the four grade system we have in the US of green = easy, blue = medium, black diamonds = advanced, and double black = expert, European slopes use three grades to distinguish difficulty. Unless you're in France, where of course they would do things differently (a mix between the US and European systems). So, you have blue for beginners, red for intermediate, and black for advanced. That's it. And, contrary to popular belief that I've heard quite a few people say, I would argue that European "advanced" is NOT more difficult than our blacks and double blacks in the US. I would assert that European reds and blacks both fall into the US black diamond category, but that double blacks can be way more challenging than European blacks. Maybe not everywhere, I don't know, but in no way did I find the black "challenging", and from the reading I've done it seems that double blacks in the US include runs that would be way steeper than a lot of the runs you'll find in Europe. Looks like I'll have to do some more skiing to find out!

So after skiing over our powder find enough times to make it look like a groomed part of the slope, we went back to one of the restaurants at the top of the main lift we came up. We found a table and met up with Erica, who had managed to get another pair of boots and make one run in the mean time.

The restaurant was a classic! There were pictures and paintings of cows on the walls, the light fixtures were all the giant cow bells used in the German/Austrian festivals where they bring the cows down from the mountains for the winter, and everyone was having a good ol' time. One thing I noticed, since a lot of people walking around had their jackets off, was how many people were wearing back braces. Not only elderly people, either. Some were kids, most were in their middle ages, and a few were old, but I'd guess that 5 - 10% of people had on a back brace, like the kind you see motocross riders wearing. Maybe that's a growing trend in the US, too, I wouldn't know, but it was something I had never seen before.

After lunch we decided to give the other side of the mountain a go, so we skied down to a lift that would take us to the very top. It was snowing a bit heavier by then, and as we got nearer the top (we thought), it actually turned into a complete whiteout.

We got off at the top completely unable to see anything in any direction that we looked, so I did the best I could to navigate us in the direction that I thought the other few black runs were. I literally couldn't see a thing, which was a really odd experience and made me realize how much I rely on my vision when I ski. This was good training in being totally relaxed and letting my legs respond to the slope, I suppose. I stopped every now and then to check that there were two non-white blobs following me, and eventually we got low enough that there was some visibility again. I think the the wind and no tree protection at the top there was just nothing to provide any relief from the onslaught of snow.

We somehow missed the black run we were looking for, so we took another lift back up to try again. We missed it again and this time ended up somewhere else completely, but we figured we needed to get back up to the top of the mountain somehow so we could get back down the side we had come up. Oddly enough, once you hit the top, if you went down one way you were on the Großarl side, but if you went down the other side of the slope you ended up in a completely different resort, Dorfgastein. We realized that the last lift up would be closing soon, so we figured out where we were on a map, figured the best place to get to where we needed to be, and headed out. Unfortunately when we found the lift we needed and got to the top, we didn't see any signs for the run we wanted. To complicate matters we were again on a part of the mountain which was more whiteout than not, but we got directions from some passing skiers and went on our way. Abby and Erica were a little less than thrilled at this point. They were worried we'd be up on the mountain after it got dark and poor Abby was freezing since she was using make shift ski clothing, but I knew where we needed to get to and had a very good idea of how to get there, so I was able to keep us going. Lo and behold, ten minutes later I had us back on one of the runs that would take us to the bottom of Großarl. About fifteen minutes later I had us practically skiing up to the door of our ski rental shop. And they were worried we were going to be stuck on the mountain!

We tried to join the Après Ski scene that was going on in a circular tent with a circular bar in the middle, but we literally could not move, so Abby and Erica took their beers into the hotel restaurant next door and we all ordered a light dinner (and hot chocolate for me, our ever responsible DD) to kill some time. Abby's train didn't leave Salzburg until 9:00 and we didn't want to make her wait there for hours. On the other hand, it was an hour's drive back to Salzburg and then Erica and I had three hours back to Vienna after that. We ended up leaving Großarl around 7:00, and after a quick goodbye at the train station, parted ways.  Luckily we now know that we're both in Europe, and relatively nearby, and will both be here for a while, so we're planning a few excursions this summer.

The drive back to Vienna was relatively uneventful, other than hitting a ten minute patch of pretty heavy snow, but we got back in one piece, I dropped off Erica, drove back to Bisamberg, unpacked a bit, then passed out around 1:00. Long weekend, but so worth it! I can't wait to hit the slopes again and I really really hope to get out at least once more this season.

Stop-off in Salzburg

I am living in Europe. In Austria. Maybe not where skiing originated, but they do claim to be the founders of professional ski instruction. Of you skiers out there, how many of you knew that the way you learned how to ski was developed from the Arlberg Technique, straight out of early 20th century Austria? That's what I thought.

Thus, it just seemed like a  waste to not even go skiing, and I mean real downhill skiing - Alpine Skiing, as the locals call it - while living right at the edge of the Austrian Alps. Although I do enjoy my solo travels, I figured this would be a fun trip to make with at least one other friend. Minor caveat, however: I wanted them to already be at least intermediate skiers, if not advanced. I certainly wouldn't mind teaching people, but this was the Alps, and my first time out; I wanted to ski something distinctly European, not toy around on the bunny slopes. I prodded around a bit and found two worthy candidates - a classmate here in Vienna, Erica, and a friend from high school, Abby. The latter I hadn't seen in years, but I had happened to catch wind of the fact that she is living in Berlin, and for some reason remembered her as being a skier, even though we had never gone.

So, long story short, I did some research, did some booking, coordinated some schedules, and we were off. We decided that Salzburg would be a good spot to rendezvous and that I might as well drive as it's only three hours from Vienna and it would open up our schedule and travel potential a lot to be on our own schedule and take whatever roads called to us.

Friday, 24th February, 2012 - After a quick spot of work in the morning, I picked up Erica at about 8:30 and we were on our way. Relatively uneventful, relatively snow-free drive until we hit the mountains outside of Salzburg. We got there around noon, then it took me a second to orient myself from where we entered the suburbs of Salzburg to determine what direction the 'old city' was. Seeing as Abby had never been to Salzburg before and I had only been for a few days the summer before, I decided in front of the Salzburg Cathedral would be about as central and easy to find place as we could get. However, parking was a minor problem. The signs weren't really as clear as they are in Vienna, so I drove around for a bit before a friendly man pulled up beside me and pointed me to a parking area. I think he knew I was lost because I had a Vienna license plate. I've come to find that Austrians are very observant of what region you come from.

We met up with Abby without a hitch and decided that the first thing to do was get lunch. Of course, I insisted that we couldn't be in Salzburg without trying Salzburger Nockerl at some point, and when we passed a restaurant on Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse called S'Nockerl we figured it was a sign. A hugely touristy sign, but hey, we were tourists, right? The restaurant was down in a cellar but painted a surprising light blue and decorated with birds and angel wings that made you think of a lovely spring day. The cuisine was "Salzburg and Mediterranean Specialties" (whatever that means), but it was really good, if a little pricy. I had a zucchini soup followed by some really tasty ravioli, then the three of us split The Dessert.

I had never seen one with raspberry sauce rather than vanilla sauce, but that variation was surprisingly good. We also found out a few interesting tidbits from the waitress, such as that there's an unending debate among the Salzburgers about which mountains this dessert is actually supposed to represent since there are four prominent mountains around the city, not three. Also, during the 'high season', they serve one hundred and sixty of these desserts a day! One hundred and sixty! Wow.

Afterwards I figured I would go ahead and get us checked in to our hotel and let Abby and Erica explore Salzburg since they had never been there before. We were only staying half an hour away so I didn't mind at all. I left them to do more touristy things while I drove to Berchtesgaden, Germany.

Now you may be wondering: why Germany? Every school in Austria gets a week off for skiing (this is not the same as their Spring Break), with the weeks staggered more or less by region so that not every family in Austria is trying to get out on the slopes during one week. This means that rooms are invariably difficult to find throughout the entire month of February, though, because about 70% of all families ski. (It used to be that 100% of the population of Austria knew how to ski about twenty years ago, but recently there have been parents that don't take their kids or send them on school trips because it's too expensive. Shame.) Getting back to how that relates to us: everything near 'good' skiing that wasn't in western Austria was booked solid. So we ended up just fifteen minutes over the boarder in Germany.

This is what I missed out on while I was gone:

Actually Abby took this one before Erica and I got to Salzburg

We stopped briefly in my favorite cemetery, St. Peter's, on the way up to Salzburg Castle to try and catch the sun setting over the mountains. Although we had to hop a fence to the courtyard of a closed cafe to get the best view, I would say we were successful (in our defense we weren't the only ones doing it).

We were still more on the side of 'Full' after our late and large lunch, so we decided to get some coffee since everything in Salzburg was closed by this point (I'm not even sure it was 6:00 yet). We saw a Manner café across the courtyard from the cathedral, so we popped in there. Now, mind you, Manner is a very Viennese brand of those little chocolate filled wafers your probably used to eat at your Grandmother's, so not only finding a Manner store in Salzburg, but an actual café, which they do not have in Vienna, made us decide it was something worth checking out. I caught them up on what I had learned at the hotel ('very large bed and breakfast' might be more fitting) and we looked over some maps and wrote a few postcards and enjoyed some very delicious drinks. I will strongly argue that my hot chocolate was the hands down winner.

Eventually we headed out, deciding to have dinner at the Augustiner Bräu, locally known as Mülln. To be fair, this place is not so well known for its food as it is for its beer. And it's not just 'any old place'. This is actually a brewery founded by Augustinian monks in 1621. It has at least four giant dining halls where you share tables and make friends and you get your food and beer from little stalls along a hallway connecting all of the dining halls. We made friends with a group of three Germans and chatted with them for a few hours over some simple but delicious food and a few beers which they were kind enough to supply us with (although I was not partaking since someone had to drive). We mostly (attempted to) speak in German, though Abby and I caught them making fun of our accents at one point, but it was all in good fun.

The quotation painted on the wall translates to: A good drink makes the old young.

Eventually we headed out to try and get a good night's sleep before our full day of skiing the next day as Erica and I were pretty exhausted from the early start that morning and Abby had had to take an overnight train. We made it back to Berchtesgaden without a hitch and got settled into our cozy room and crashed... well, maybe not immediately, but there was crashing eventually.

P.S. For day II of the trip, go to my German page.

Wien Updates of Late

For most of February I was either in class, studying, organizing, or trip planning during the week because my weekends have been a bit packed. That doesn't make for an exciting read, I know, but I at least have a few things worth mention to show for the time.

For one, Anna, David, and I went to Schönbrunner Stöckl for lunch one afternoon. It was a mix of Viennese and Czech Republic fare and despite not being able to pronounce most of the words off the menu (I'm fine with the German part, not so much the Czech) it looked like it was hard to go wrong with any of the items off the menu. There are definitely some things I'd like to go back and try from the Bohemian Classics section. It was all reasonably priced, too, especially considering it's attached to Schönbrunn. It's on the far east side (the side opposite the zoo), right on the corner. It's also hard to beat the atmosphere when there are little marionettes dangling from the ceiling.

In other culinary notes, Anna and I went to SKY Bar for brunch last week. I had been there once before at night, but we had heard good things about its food, so we decided to embark on a daytime adventure. It's on the top floor of Steffl on Kärtnerstraße, and since buildings in the first district aren't allowed to be above a certain height, we had a great view of Stephansdom from just two blocks away.

(It still being winter, the balcony wasn't adorned quite so nicely. Or at all. Picture from SKY Bar | Café | Restaurant)

The food was light and geschmacklich (tasty, from geschmect which literally translates to "taste". Waiters often ask, "Was there taste?" when they take your plate; my theory is that it derives from times when food was pretty bland, so it was a complement if the food had much flavor). There weren't too many patrons there, but the ones that were were without a doubt locals. The waiters were friendly and helpful, and they made a mean Bloody Mary. We'll definitely be going back here.

I was also witness to the Vienna Opera Ball in mid February. Maybe not the inside, not this time at least, but I got a glimpse of the glamour. I had occasion to be there because I played chauffeur for the evening. They had closed off an entire section of the Ring before and after the Staatsoper so I dropped my employee off a few blocks away, but decided to park and walk over to see what all the fuss was about. It was definitely a red carpet event with many people arriving by horse and fiaker ('carriage', but hey, I'm in Vienna). There was a large crowd gathered in the sub-zero temperatures to watch the spectacle... from across five-lanes. The area was completely fenced off and the closest you could get was the other side of the Ring. One day...

I also got to go to the premiere of Viktoria und ihr Husar at the Baden Theater (with 6th row tickets to boot). I took David along for the performance, too. It's a relatively popular operetta in these parts and was written relatively recently; it premiered in Budapest in 1930 and was written by Paul Abraham with a libretto by Alfred Grünwald and Fritz Löhner-Beda. I thought it was very entertaining and really enjoyed the evening. Darius Merstein-MacLeod as John Cunlight and Stefan Bleiberschnig supporting as John's brother were the best of the evening in my humble opinion. Although infrequent, I always enjoy my Baden Theater experiences. Looking forward to the next one, whenever that will be.

Bis bald!