What an insane two weeks it has been – February has truly been non-stop. After coming back from Jordan, I went on a work team offsite skiing and sledding on the Austrian alps. It had been snowing for two weeks nonstop, so the snow was incredible!First time sledding: Don’t go without goggles, gloves, snow shoes, basically the full gear as you basically eat snow going down - a ton of fun when there is a chairlift that takes you up – steer by digging your heel into the snow with the leg in the direction you want to turn.
Skiing in the Austrian Alps near Ehrwald, Austria: A
mazing views; great long runs that weren’t too steep. Know “alles good” if you’re going to tumble down the mountain and worry non-English speaking strangers as many times as I did – in all fairness, the snow was fairly thick and uneven, so it was SUPER difficult to ski without the wider skis meant for the fresher, unmanicured snow. Luckily, I escaped without my team seeing any of my falls!
Woods walking-tour: BE ON TIME in Austria; we were roughly 3 mins late (which we warned them that would be the case) and they went ahead and started the tour without us…luckily we still made it to the end where there was hot wine (a Bavarian specialty called gluewine) waiting for us.
Driving on the highway: You don’t see the speedometer reading b/c we were going over 200km/hr (roughly 115mph) on the highway – amazing non-existent speed limits on many Germany highways! It’s only great when the cars on the road are all BMWs/Mercedes/Audis (ubiquitous in Germany) and can actually all travel at that same speed so there’s no traffic – it turned a regularly 2 hr drive to 1.5 hrs including 5pm traffic. INSANE!
Aside from the ski trip, there was Fasching aka Fat Tuesday in Munich – a public half-day holiday that I definitely celebrated (me with modern art). Strangely enough, it’s like Halloween here in basically all the cities in Europe – people dress up in costumes and party it up; full on drinking and debauchery in the streets!
Finally, last weekend, I had quite a few visitors to host in Munich. Brenna, a college friend’s sister, came to visit along with two friends and Dan Davis. The weekend started out phenomenally with probably the nicest day I’ve had thus far in Munich – we walked through the English Gardens (a giant central park in the middle of Munich), and went through the Olympic Park (where Munich hosted the Olympics about 30 years ago) and the BMW Museum.
We rounded out the day by participating in the annual tradition of Stark
bierziet (“Strong Beer Season”). Long ago, one could not eat during Lent and as a result, the Monks created a strong beer (some with the content equaling 16 loaves of bread) that has about 9% alcohol compared to the normal 5% alcohol. The strong beer is only brewed during this season (4 weeks of the year) and is similar to a mini-more-local Octoberfest. Men and women walk around in traditional lederhosen and dirndls and you are expected to drink half-liters of strong-beer at these events – due to the strong beer, the beerhalls close at Midnight during this season.
Would love to tell you that was the end of my night, but we actually went out to a Munich club, Pascha…here’s a picture of the table we got front and center of the DJ Eric Prydz
Apparently, you can be a disaster even after graduating college…I woke up feeling horrendous from Friday, and had to let Brenna and friends go tour a Munich brewery by themselves. I did pull myself together and went with them to Dachau – the only concentration camp to have been operating throughout the 12 years during WWII / Nazi reign in Germany. The concentration camp was massive and recounts of the stories and suffering were horrific – it’s incredulous to think this happened only half an hour away from Munich 70 years ago and to know that similar mass genocide still exists today.
We searched for happier tourist options for the rest of our trip – I tried to recreate my Jordanian experience by taking everyone to a Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner. Dan and I agreed the food really just didn’t come close to the food experiences we had in Jordan – but I think our expectations are a little high. The night ended in partying at Neu Raum -- a giant club with at least five dance floors – I learned from Friday night though.
Unfortunately, we didn’t end the party soon enough as we still didn’t get home until 4am with alarms going off around 6:30-7am to go to Neuschwanstein Castle (King Ludwig II’s castle that the Disney Castle is modeled off), two hours southwest of Munich next to the German/Austrian alps. I had no clue it was so close to the Alps, and even though I was told it was snowing, I didn’t realize there would be snow/ice on the ground…yeah, I didn’t quite wear the right shoes for walking up and down hills in snow and ice. Needless to say, I was a bit grump-grump all day Sunday – I definitely slipped and fell towards the end of our hilly climb to the Castle.
Finally, the weekend came to an end – loved having visitors and have so many great not appropriate for public blogging stories to share.
