Skiing in the Alps: Take 2

Hello everyone! I’m going to be honest with you all, I’m exhausted, but here we go!

On the weekend of March 1-3, I traveled down to Munich to go on another skiing trip in Austria. Another moment of honesty: we were incredibly lucky! The weather was perfect for skiing (and taking awesome pictures of course)! It was about 3°C (37°F) at the warmest part of the day, so the snow was still good, but it was not freezing. I was actually skiing in a long sleeve t-shirt and a coat because it was so warm. It was awesome!

 

The sun was shining and we could see forever. Seeing all of the mountains off in the distance was one of the most beautiful, breathtaking things I have ever seen in my entire life. It was also nice to not be freezing while we were skiing, making the whole trip a wonderful experience. Luckily, this time around, Anton and I did not almost meet our doom. Haha!

This ski resort, Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis, is gigantic! There were so many different ski paths and places to go. Unfortunately, that meant we spent a significant amount of time on the ski lifts after the long 3 hour bus ride to the mountain. Luckily, in the grand scheme of things 4 hours is not a big deal, and we eventually got to enjoy ourselves skiing. Some of the runs were incredibly steep and a little too intimidating for Anton and I, but the others tried their luck. At one point, we ran into Kyle attempting to put his skis back in (it brought back funny memories).

Overall, the day of skiing was a great success and a lot of fun. We got to eat lunch outside near the top of the mountain, which was quite awesome! We had fun skiing in relatively warm weather, and everything else went swimmingly.

There was also a "Fun Park" with jumps and a giant ramp into a giant air bubble! I didn't really care to go off, so I sat and took pictures of Justin and Kyle while they jumped off the ramp! It was a lot of fun and a great view of Justin flapping his arms when he went off the ramp.

Our return trip on the bus was a little bit wilder than the last time. Last time, people drank and sang for about 30 minutes to an hour and then fell asleep. This time, they played loud music, danced, sang, and partied the entire way (this bus ride was even longer than the one two weeks ago). I don’t know how they had the energy to keep going like that, but it made for a very fun atmosphere, and since I can’t really sleep on the bus, it was something for me to be entertained by.

I also met my new fried Julia (pronounced: “you-lee-a”, which I think sounds much cooler than the American pronunciation, probably because it’s different), and she and I talked for part of the ride back. She doesn’t like to speak English, and it was very loud, so communication was a little bit difficult, but we made it work! Now, she and I chat on Facebook, which provides me a good opportunity to practice my German and make a new friend! J

On Sunday, Kyle and I went to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, which is a massive 6-floor museum with pretty much everything you can imagine. There was no way we could have seen everything, so we hit the big things, namely the boat/ship section, aircraft, spacecraft, technology, astrology, and sundials. Now I know what you are thinking: “Sundials! Really?”, but that was my favorite part. On the 5^th floor, you could go outside on the roof, and they had sundials from several different historical periods and all over the world. Uniquely, a couple of them were from the late 1900s. I didn’t realize people were still researching and developing sundials, but they are. It reminded me of one of my favorite (also most underappreciated and nerdy) aspects of UC’s campus, the Analemma Sundial.

The Deutsches Museum has so many exhibits and a lot of really cool information, but we were only able to make it to a few of the exhibits, and we didn’t really get the opportunity to stand around and really appreciate some of the history in there. Looks like I’ll be making another trip to Munich!