We got to Austria and it seemed like almost as soon as we crossed into the country there were snowy mountains everywhere. We then went and rented skis and helmets and I signed up for 3 days of Schischule. I started off ski school with a bang by falling on top of who I assumed was one of the instructors while attempting to put on my skis. Fortunately this young lad helped me into my skis and then it was smoother sailing from there. I had assumed he was one of the instructors because he could do everything but it turns out he was actually from russia, pretty much spoke no english or german, and just better than the 4 romanians in my class and me. I was in the English speaking class, but I was the only native English speaker, so basically it more like the non-german speaking class.
The first two days we did basic stuff mostly on the smaller practice hills, and there were many funny moments because my ski instructor, Herbert, was quite the character. The third day, my basic German and advanced English helped me understand that Herbert decided not to teach us "I'm done. I don't teach today" "But Herbeeeerrrrt we like you Herberrrttttt!!!!" (conversation between Herbert and an entertaining Romanian woman) and put the Romanians in a lower class, me in a slightly better one, and the Russian with the higher class that had some other Russians so he could finally comunicate with language instead of us playing charades. Side note: Since I seemed to be the only one who understood that "Ruski" means Russian (note to world, the word "Russian" sounds similar in pretty much every language) and could decipher/communicate with charades, everyone in my initial class thought that I was Russian so were surprised to learn otherwise.
Anyway, I think I improved a lot in those two days, and then the third day of ski school the instructor took us up a very steep red slope (the colors are different) with an unfortunate amount of moguls (little mounds of snow) and told us in his very heavy Austrian accented German (oh yes, I forgot to add that I was placed in a german speaking class for the third day.... "sprechen sie englisch?" "nein" and that was that) that he would not have taken us up there if he didn't know we could do it. He made us do this part of the mountain several times until everyone could manage to get down decently smoothly. After the third day, I went with the Boschs and Abby everywhere and was by far the slowest, but it worked out and by the last day, I was even going down blacks. Maybe not the steepest blacks, but that is an unimportant detail.
The ski day is typically 8-4, so we had nice relaxed afternoons back at the lodge filled with chocolates, games (in particular; banana grams, german trivial pursuit, trouble), sherlock, and more food. One of the days we ended early so Abby and I went to an indoor pool/water park (while Anna studied...I'm glad the US does not have the Abitur). This was pretty fun actually because it was a very high tech pool place with fun areas and two slides. I should also mention something that Abby left out in her most recent blog post. One of the slides used a tube, the other did not. So we are standing in line for the non-tube slide and I go first then am waiting for Abby to come out when who should appear from the slide, not Abby, but an old man. I'm a little confused because the slide didn't look scary or anything so why would she have backed out... The old man looks very confused and concerned and is trying to tell me something, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying... but I did get something like "I think your friend is coming" so I continue waiting while the man continues to stand there concerned when who should come out next but a little boy. At this point I'm slightly concerned because she would have made it down the stairs had she backed out, but who knows. Finally a very slow moving Abby comes out of the slide laughing and somehow she was having difficulty sliding down the slide/got stuck and two people passed her on the slide. Note that the slide doesn't have a huge circumference and is also dark so it's very lucky they didn't run into her. Also note that there is a decently long wait between sliders. So that was pretty funny.
Basically Austria and skiing was really fun and I'm very glad that we got to go! I should also mention that all of the food was fantastic and the views were nice too ;) As Abby put it "I've only ever seen mountains like this on a Toblerone bar." Gotta love her.
And here are a few pictures from the trip:
The females!
The funny Romanian forementioned
Mountains!
Abby and me with the mountains!
A wonderful germknödel
Yes we did ski [and anna snow boarded] through clouds.
Top of the mountains!
A little bit pretty. Just a little.
Outside of the lodge we stayed in.
After getting back from Austria, Anna had to go right back to school, and Abby and I accompanied her for half of the day every day except for Thursday when we took the train to Frankfurt and toured around. That was fun, though quite cold, and we got to see some famous churches, a very very very (can't emphasize enough) odd modern art museum, and more. I think it didn't help that we were pretty much the only people in the museum other than the workers that just stared at us, and construction workers. But we left with kind of a creeped out vibe. Maybe it was the toilets that played creepy music. Maybe it was the exhibit that was a locked room with a wall that had a mans legs sticking out from behind it. Maybe it was the dark room with a slideshow and a tv screen with a guy just watching us and pictures on the walls of creepily face painted people in a sunflower patch. Maybe it was just the general vibe. There was actually a pretty cool "America is terrible" exhibit though. That wasn't the actual title of the exhibit, but it was just a bunch of pictures of decently upsetting things going on in America with descriptions of what was going on. Examples: picture of KKK, picture of mentally retarded cross bread tiger, picture of nuclear bombs in a body of water, picture of a decaying dead person in a forest for a forensic study, etc. Here are some pictures from Frankfurt and some of the other touring we did in Germany:
what?
America is terrible room
The history museum on an island that Herr W always talked about (in my Uni High German 1 class)
This is an exhibit?
I'm pretending to be a mouse in front of the mouse castle. (duh)
The Rhine river! At the Loreley view point.
Frankfurt
A wee bit windy.
To conclude, I must mention the fiasco we experienced at the airport dropping Abby off yesterday. We get there a litte over 2 hours early (as you are supposed to), go to check her in at the kiosk, but the kiosk just wouldn't do it, so then wait in line for after all of the Koreans going home on Korean Airlines (she had a layover in Korea) finally get there and the woman says she can't let her through because she doesn't have a visa or return ticket. So then another person comes over, also says no but he can call the New Zealand airport and ask. He calls, they say no she won't be able to enter the country. So then we go to the last minute ticket booth to see if Abby can buy a ticket to Fiji (what...?) halfway through her stay because somehow that makes things legal and the man apparently pulls a maybe not legal thing and gets her a cancelled ticket or something so it looks like she is going to Fiji but she won't actually go to Fiji and that will somehow make it legal for her to get into New Zealand and then work out getting a visa once she gets there. So this takes quite a bit of time and struggle but eventually she is able to check in and we finally get the group photo that I had been wanting the whole trip (since there wasn't one of just Anna, Abby, and me, and I mean who knows when the 3 of us will be together again? it just had to happen). Then we had an odd parting of ways (odd because knowing you won't see someone for at least 5 months is always odd) and hopefully Abby has now made it safe and sound to NZ.
Look at that beautiful approved ticket!
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