Skilaufen! (skiiing!!!)

One of the things I heard before I left Europe was that I had to go skiing in the Alps. And I have! It’s so different from skiing in the Utah. Since the Alps were carved from glaciers and not formed from tectonic plates like the Rockies, they’re a lot pointier and sharper and steeper and at times it will just turn into a massive drop-off in front of you. It’s really scary sometimes. There’s not tree cover either which is weird. I love tree skiing and I can’t do that in the Alps cuz there’s not enough snow in the trees. It’s sad. But I like it anyway. It’s a good time. We go with a program called Studenten im Schnee (Translation: Students in Snow) and it’s great. We pay a base fee and get breakfast, bus ride there and back, a lift pass, and a beer afterwards. I love Germany. So far, I’ve been skiing at Hintertuxer, Stubai, Oberwiesenthal, and Zugspitze. My favorite was probably Hintertuxer. Zugspitze is Germany’s highest peak and it’s absolutely stunning but most of it is too steep to ski so the actual ski resort is a little too small for my taste. I can only imagine it in summer though. I’m excited to hike it.

It’s early in the season so the snow hasn’t been fantastic but its snow. Also, they color code the lifts differently. Black = black, red = intermediate, and blue = beginner. I was so confused the first time I saw that. I’m used to it now, but at the time it was a little too much for me to handle.

So, because I’m been lazy and haven’t updated, I have a fun little ski adventure.

Kearnsie, Jana, Jake, Kevin, Justin and I went skiing with Studenten im Schnee to Stubai Gletscher. We go skiing all day; the boys split after lunch and Jana and I stay in the lodge for several hours and make fun of people, take goofy pictures, etc. Anyway, we were supposed to be back at the bus at 4:45. However, several things went wrong. The boys call us and are like, “Can you grab our stuff and meet us down at the bus?” So we grab the bags but not their shoes because they had rented gear and had to return it. So we head down but you have to take trams to get high enough for the good snow and the mosh pit (line is so not an appropriate word for it) for the tram down was RIDICULOUSLY long. Jana and Colleen jump ahead of me and say they’ll hold the bus cuz we were obviously going to miss it. So I get down to the bottom and find out that the boys were below us, where you could also catch a tram down to the bottom and return your rented gear, and had beat us down. It also meant that their shoes were still at the top and it was now 5:30. The bus had waited for us and we finally got all the gear swapped and most everyone, Jake not included, got their shoes back. We finally left at 5:45 and drank beer and schnapps and sang really bad Bavarian songs all the way back to Munich. It was quite the adventure.

Love,

Emily