A typical ski day for a Münchner starts with a painfully early wake up. Well before dawn, you toss on your ski clothes and haul your gear to the ski bus, or if you’re lucky, the car. Grab some coffee and a pretzel from your nearest bakery (the only thing open at this predawn hour) and hit the road. » Read the full post
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Last week we headed to Innsbruck to attend a travel blogging conference. This little city nestled in the mountains absolutely oozes Austrian charm, so it was nice to have an excuse to go back. The old city center is full of pedestrian streets lined with shops and cafes, perfect for wandering around aimlessly. » Read the full post
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Making the most out of our recent snow, yesterday some friends and I headed up the Wallbergbahn for some extreme sledding. The run takes about 30 minutes and affords amazing views of the Tegernsee and surroundings, although sometimes it’s a little too scary to admire the view when you’re barreling down a narrow path next to a steep cliff on a barely-steerable wooden contraption.
Last winter I made a post about sledding in this same location using quite similar photos. Now that we’ve lived in Munich for almost two years, I suppose I’m bound to start repeating myself. Get used to it.
Munich has been awfully rainy this week. What to do? Grab some friends and hop on a train somewhere, of course. Bad Tölz is an adorable little town about an hour from Munich. Despite the rain we had a lovely day. We…
…wandered the streets and imagined how cute they would be if the sun were out.
…went shopping for hats (among other things).
…found the world’s sexiest potholder.
…consumed Kaffee und Kuchen, little old lady style.
…saw the cutest train station in the world.
…and ran off to join the “Wu Wutang Clean”. I hope there’s no scrubbing involved in the initiation ceremony.
Oh yeah, and some of us even appeared on Bavarian television. Quite the exciting day.
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This weekend we hopped on a train up to Regensburg to party with the Regensbloggers. Their housewarming party conveniently coincided with the Regensburger Dult, an adorable little city fair complete with beer tents, disturbing rides, carnies, and strange shopping opportunities. I was surprised to see that it was bigger than the Auer Dult, and almost as big as Munich’s Frühlingsfest. The youth of Regensburg were out en masse, many of them wearing the most colorful tract I’ve ever seen.
A highlight of the weekend was finally getting to meet That Queer Expatriate live and in person. We had a fabulous time chasing a belederhosened emo boy around the dult together (see his blog for pics) and shopping for gingerbread hearts.
Naturally we were overcome with a feeling of deep patriotism upon seeing this ride:
Back at the party, we learned how to make awesome capa capra copu caipirinhas while marveling over the fact that in Germany, bags of ice come with instructions.
While Germany was busy swooning over our new president, we were out enjoying Germany.
We squeezed in one last sledding trip with the Rendenii (which is where we spotted this guy);
rang in the beginning of asparagus season in a beer garden on the lake;
and then got the balcony garden started.
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I’d almost forgotten how much fun sledding is. I’m happy to report that the Bavarian version is almost as good as the Swiss.
Wallberg is on the Tegernsee, about an hour’s drive outside of Munich. A quick 5-10 minute ride up on the gondola is followed by at about a half hour of flying downhill on a tiny wooden sled with absolutely no steering or braking capacity. And oh, the views.
The trail gets a little mogully towards the end of the day, leading to more shouts of “ow” in between giggles and squeals of delight. If you’re lucky, your bum is numb from the cold so you don’t feel the impact as much (well, until the next day).
This past weekend we bummed a ride with the Munich International Ski Club for a day of skiing at Sheffau, Austria. Sheffau is just one of many entry points into the irrsinnig gross* ski area which includes 91 lifts and almost 300 km of slopes. There was lots of fresh snow, and a little too much sunshine. Very good conditions.
Sheffau isn’t quite as friendly for beginner skiers as Kitzbühel was, since there are areas where one has to ski red slopes to access other parts of the resort. Long red (middle) slopes are plentiful, and it would be easy to ski all day and never see the same slope twice. Lift lines were mixed, but we probably never waited more than 5 minutes to get on a lift.
One thing I disliked about Sheffau was the poorly-designed labeling system and map they had going on. Instead of numbering the trails, like most resorts do, the Sheffau folks decided to number the lifts. Horrible idea, given that trails don’t neatly correspond to lifts. We spent much too much time puzzling over maps. But otherwise it was a lovely day of skiing.
* ludicrously large
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Thinking back on last ski season, we’re having a hard time remembering all the places we skied and which ones we liked the best. So this year I’m going to try blogging a little review of each place.
First up is Kitzbühel, Austria, where we recently spent a day. It’s about an hour and a half drive from Munich. It was a great place to spend the first ski day of the season, since there were tons of blue (easy) slopes. We skied the whole day and only repeated the same runs a couple times; on the other hand, neither of us found any runs we really loved. Things were icy in spots, since there hadn’t been any new snow for several days; the skies were clear and blue, and it was quite warm in the sun. We had lunch at the Pengelstein hut, which offered a pretty good variety of food (I had spinach strudel with Gorgonzola sauce).
After a day on the slopes, we headed into the town of Kitzbühel to find some food and drinks. The town itself was quite cute, and offered a variety of cafes and restaurants (mostly Italian).
We wandered into the tourist office and asked for a restaurant recommendation. They suggested Huberbräustüberl, a cozy little brewery restaurant serving typical Austrian/German food. The beer was good and the food adequate. The wait staff was friendly and seemed to have fun speaking English to the tourists around us (we spoke to them in German). Both of us filled up on dinner, so we had to miss out on the black guy in a shirt. Schade.
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My computer situation is still… not good, but hopefully that won’t last too much longer. I have plenty more blog posts that are just aching to come out…
And now for something completely different…
Yesterday some friends and I took a Bayern Ticket up to Regensburg to hang out with Sarah, Christina, Tammy, and An and force them to show us around their Christmas markets. It worked.
The offerings at the Regensburg Christmas markets were, shockingly, pretty similar to what you find at Munich’s Christmas markets, with a couple of exceptions. For example, there was an insanely fast merry-go-round. And Santa foosball. And dates in bacon coats. I’m betting these are popular Christmas presents for men – what guy wouldn’t be thrilled to have his date dressed in nothing but a coat made out of bacon? Well, not a vegetarian guy. Or a kosher guy… damn, so much for my brilliant universal Christmas gift idea. I don’t think the coats came in adult sizes, anyway (see Em’s blog for a photo of the elusive bacon coats).
Despite the dreary weather (which later turned into delightful snow), Regensburg managed to look cute in its Christmassy decorations, although the town seems to suffer from the same multiple-Santa-Claus problem that Japan has (see the Santas climbing the building in the photo above). The hot, alcoholic beverages hit the spot (although sadly no one was in the mood to try the one called heisse Liebe).
OK, enough of these distractions. Back to my Munich Christmas market crusade!
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