gmunden am traunsee

I first saw the Traunsee through the windows of a train when I went to visit Suz in Bad Ischl in May 2009, but I didn't know the name of the lake at the time. Dang, is it ever pretty. We were there for parts of four days, and two of them were sunny and hot -- we went for a walk around the lake the first day and I went swimming (just a little chilly), and on the second day we rented kayaks and paddled down to Hois'n Wirt for lunch, with a short dip at a deserted strip of pebbley beach in between. The weather wasn't in our favor the entire time (we spent our last day in Austria over in Bad Ischl at a thermal bath to beat the rain) but we did pretty all right for ourselves in general.

mayrhofen V: après-ski

  

The fact that I didn't go skiing didn't remotely mean that I was going to skip out on the grand tradition of après-ski. We spent parts of a couple different evenings at the Ice Bar, with its dancing polar bears whose masks looked decidedly more like white rats. (And I enjoyed the Ice Bar/Eisbär [polar bear] pun.) As Megan said after we left, "I could very much get into the idea of a yearly non-skiing ski vacation." Agreed! As long as it doesn't get in the way of my tropical/beach vacations, that is.

Eight days till the China/Malaysia adventure!

mayrhofen IV: schneeschuhwandern

It turns out that snowshoeing near Tux, Austria is less like a pleasant stroll through the snowy hills and more like clawing your way up the side of the mountain. When you reach the top, you shiver on the porch of someone's cabin (your Austrian guide, who spent the morning snowshoeing in pants that unzipped to show his thighs and his tiny army green boxer-briefs, assures you that even though he doesn't know whose cabin this is, it's all good). You put on all the extra clothes you've got and chow down on the most delicious belegtes Brötchen of your life, plus tea, cookies, and Schnapps that tastes the way pine trees smell. You look at the mountains, which even in the fog are gorgeous, unreal, and you think about the village your guide told you about earlier, as you were passing a tiny chapel in the snow: a village big enough to have its own movie theater, entirely buried in an avalanche in the '70s. Twenty-odd people died; the chapel is in their honor. And you'll think how crazy it is that a whole village can disappear in an instant, like something out of a myth, like Atlantis, the lost city under the sea. There's very little danger of avalanches at the moment, your guide assures you. There's not enough snow on the mountains right now.

The way down from the cabin is more like what you were expecting out of this experience: for the majority of the return trip, you'll follow the road that winds gently back into the valley, cutting into the woods only once the snow cover gives way to icy slick. By the time you're back at the van, in spite of how you're sweaty and tired and a little bit freezing, longing for a change of clothes and a shower, you'll be thinking about how you understand it better now, the appeal of the mountains in winter, thinking maybe you'd love to do this again.

mayrhofen III: the most wonderful blues

Even if you aren't skiing, you can walk to the end of the main street in Mayrhofen and ride the lift up to the top of Ahorn mountain and spend an afternoon people-watching, drinking Glühwein spiked with a copious amount of rum, and gaping at the towns in the Zillertal below. Highly recommended.

mayrhofen II: new year's horse race

On New Year's Day we shuffled down the street from our hotel to check out the yearly horse races in the snow. The three actual races involved normal-sized horses pulling jockeys on sleds, but in between some of the actual races there were some local ski club members being pulled around the track. And the miniature ponies jockeyed by children were a slow-moving highlight.

mayrhofen I: welcome to winter

  
[full set here]
About a hot minute after getting back from spending Christmas in Virginia, I hopped in the car and drove south to spend New Year's in Mayrhofen, Austria with four of my best friends. I have basically no grounds for complaining in my life. Where did you spend New Year's, Kelly? Oh, you know. Tirol.

Mayrhofen was really lovely, and I say that as a non-skier (I've given skiing and snowboarding a couple of halfhearted tries in the past and am not terribly committed to trying again). We watched plenty of movies and TV (<3 you, Alias), acquired and shot off fireworks (okay, Felix shot them off; the rest of us watched from a safe distance), went to an Erlebnisbad, watched a New Year's Day horse race in the snow, went snowshoeing, and ate all the Käsespätzle, Schnitzel, and fondue we could handle. Tip: go to Wirtshaus zum Griena. It's down a narrow street that is probably perfectly innocuous-looking in daylight and was fairly creepy at night, but inside it's rustic and wonderful. The Schnitzel was great, the spinach ravioli with Alpine cheese was marvelous, and the cheesy-potato-bacon masterpiece I ordered was a heart attack in a skillet, and so worth it. Be sure to reserve in advance! They nearly didn't have a table for us, and that would have been a sadness. I mean, to the extent that being forced to eat something else delicious at one of the other lovely establishments in Mayrhofen really counts as sad.