Skiing in Austria

This past weekend we spent 3 days skiing at Brandnertal, which is in western Austria. We were hoping to find some sunshine because Germany had started to be way too depressing. Here's what our drive through Germany to get to Austria looked like:



We ended up randomly finding a really nice hotel (Hotel Walliserhof, we highly recommend it)! We got a deal that included 3 nights in a spacious hotel room, a 6-course dinner every night, breakfast, lunch, an afternoon snack, a half-hour massage, and 2 days of lift tickets each. Here's a shot of my main course the first night, some white fish on top of some friend gnocchi. Yum.



Here I am taking a little break on the slopes:



Here's a helicopter airlifting somebody to a hospital. I think this is just how the ski patrol worked here - if you got too injured to make it down the slopes on your own the helicopter would come land right next to you and take you to the hospital! We saw it happen several times. I think health insurance here might cover this sort of thing. Kind of crazy.



These crystals formed in the bottom of our prosecco glasses one night! We asked our waiter about them and he was like, oh yeah, those are called wine stones. I guess they happen fairly regularly around here, I think in sparkling wine. They're potassium tartrate. I don't really know much else about them but they formed very quickly - we just looked at our glasses and there they were when they hadn't been there a few minutes before!



Here are some nice scenic pictures taken from various areas of the Brandnertal ski area:









Martin enjoying the view:



Stopping for lunch in the sunshine. Another couple from Bad Dürkheim came with us for the weekend so they took this picture for us. They are also from America and the husband also works for BASF and they are around our age so we became fast friends.



Another break, this time in the shade waiting for our sweat to dry. It was really warm!



Enjoying the sunshine:







More chairs, these are at a restaurant. I sat in these for a little while too.

Fastnacht

Fastnacht is what the Germans call Fat Tuesday (which Americans also call Mardi Gras). And, it's kind of a big deal here. There are celebrations and parades and people buy costumes and get dressed up for up to a week before the actual Fastnacht. I think this makes up for their lack of Halloween - the kids all get dressed up for Fastnacht too and they gather up candy that gets thrown to them from the parade.

I went to the Fastnacht parade in Bad Dürkheim today. There were booths set up in the downtown area selling the usual - sausages, wine, Glühwein in half-liter glasses ... lots of jolly people around that booth! And a Berliner booth so you could stuff your face with donuts today because after today they won't be back again until next year. :(

These were my favorite costumes. They were nice and bright and colorful and these people were dancing to the music too but I didn't film them as I didn't want to be rude.

And some cows:

And some smurfs.

There were a lot of fun costumes, all worn by adults, but I didn't want to go up to people and take their pictures randomly so you'll just have to believe me.

Here are some pictures from the parade. Lots of tractors pulling wagons filled with people (some children, some adults) handing out candy and other assorted goodies. I would like to note that none of the candy was chocolate and in most cases what was being handed out were actually small bags of popcorn and, in a few cases, bananas, onions, or chestnuts. There were small toys given out as well and my favorite person was the guy who was walking alongside the Kaiserslautern Football Club float with an open bottle of wine and a handful of paper cups. He just walked up to people, filled up a cup and offered it to them! I asked him to marry me but he said no. :( Here he is surprising this woman with a cup of wine:

There was also a Christmas wagon that went by where they were handing out small cups of Glühwein. But the picture I took of that one didn't come out so you'll have to come visit and see it for yourself.

I don't understand a lot of the costumes, what all these gold people or the flower people signify, if anything. I just took pictures to show you all how fun this parade was. Also what you can't hear here was a) all the music coming out of each of the wagons and b) all the people constantly shouting Hellooooooo at everybody. It was really funny.

The Kaiserslautern Football Club bus/wagon/float/whatever. I was hoping to get a T-shirt or scarf out of this group but they were handing out what looked like the season's schedule! And paper plates with "FCK" on them (which to be honest I find hilarious, why they couldn't find a way to make their name not look like a swear word I have no idea). Boooooooorrrrrrrrriiiiiiinnngg. Except for the guy pouring wine from this float, he was awesome.

And of course it's not a parade without a marching band or two!

All the extra Berliners at the bakery at the grocery store this morning. Impressive!

Happiness Is ...

A trip to Zürich!

Eating Pretzel King sandwiches in a little snow squall ... (he really is happy here, just not sure why I have to take his picture while he's chewing)

Roasted chestnuts!

Sunshine! And roasted chestnuts! Martin is just soaking up the sunshine here while hugging his chestnuts.

Zürich on a sunny day:

Trier

After spending the night in Traben-Trarbach we drove an hour over to Trier. Not only is Trier the oldest city in Germany, it also has the most well-preserved Roman ruins north of the Alps. It was on our list of places to get to while we were in Germany so we couldn't resist spending a few hours there.

This is the Porta Nigra (black gate, in Italian). It dates back to 180 AD and has blackened over the years, hence the name "Nigra".

We went inside it and wandered up to the top of it and took lots of pictures. You could look down at the main pedestrian street and the big church over on the left.

The hallways in the Porta Nigra had carvings on the walls.

Some fun buildings on the main pedestrian street:

Next we headed over to the Roman baths, which were built in the 4th century. It used to be a big building with a courtyard in front of it but now of course it's just ruins. The back of the building is still somewhat intact:

A closer look:

An even closer look:

There were lots of dark and spooky underground tunnels to explore as well.

There were also lots of churches in Trier. We went into three ... Constantine's basilica, the Liebfrauenkirche, and the Cathedral of Saint Peter which is the big main church in Trier. Constantine's basilica was originally just a big throne room for Emperor Constantine but it eventually got converted into a church. It's just one enormous room, no pillars or stained glass or anything fancy. It's pretty neat. The Liebfrauenkirche had a lot of nice stained glass ... mostly modern in design but very colorful and I could sit and look at it all for hours. The main church had all clear glass in its windows and it was very bare compared to most other churches. Here's a pic of the outside of Constantine's Basilica ... this entire building is just one big room on the inside:

There was something wrong with our big camera that made it take fuzzy pictures but the only pictures of Saint Peter's that we got were with the big camera so here's a fuzzy picture of the outside of it. Actually, Saint Peter's is on the left and the Liebfrauenkirche is the slightly darker and shorter part of the building toward the right:

Saint Peter's is the oldest church in Germany and it houses the Holy Robe, which Jesus supposedly wore when he died so it's worth seeing the picture of it even if it is fuzzy (it's also worth a visit!). And here is a slightly fuzzy picture of part of the main pedestrian square:

And that rounded out our 3 hours in Trier. We could have visited many museums there as well but we weren't in the mood to do all that reading in German. There were also a few more churches, more roman ruins, and Karl Marx's house, to name a few things. Plus shopping and tons of weinguts (where you can taste wines from the region). We should go wine tasting in this area sometime because the grapes are all grown on really steep hills there and we want to know how/if that changes the flavors of the wines.

Traben-Trarbach

This weekend we finally got around to using the gift certificate to the Bellevue hotel in Traben-Trarbach, which is almost two hours northwest of Bad Dürkheim. The gift certificate covered a night at the hotel and a 5-course dinner for two (and breakfast the next day, but that's included in the overnight charge). We had to pay for our wine and water we had with dinner but that was it! Oh and the massages we treated ourselves to. :)

Traben-Trarbach straddles the Mosel river, with Traben on one side and Trarbach on the other. When we were there the Mosel was in some sort of flood stage so it was pretty impressive. This is a view taken from the bridge between the two towns, looking toward Trarbach:

And looking toward Traben. Our hotel is the taller white building (with the turret! Our room was at the top of the turret) right on the river in the middle of the picture:

And this is one of the coal barges that travels on the river. The Mosel is pretty windy so it's impressive that something so long can be maneuvered along it:

We found a little Weinstube for lunch and Martin had some käsespätzle. YUM.

And here is our awesome hotel room. It was very large with a nice sitting area overlooking the river but the green shag carpet has got to go:

Aside from the shag carpeting, the hotel was pretty spectacular. Welcome drinks, spa, sauna, candles lit every time you sat at a table for anything, the food for our 5-course dinner was delicious, and there were free newspapers and champagne for breakfast! And here's the size of the wine list we had to navigate for dinner:

It was the size of my master's thesis. We ended up just ordering the recommended wine for the evening!

The roofs of Traben, taken from our hotel room:

Trarbach, also taken from our hotel room. I like the white church that's a little up the hill from the town. It's like wherever you are, the church is looking down at you. We didn't walk over to it (it was cold, windy, and rainy so we made it down the main street in Trarbach then hurried back to the hotel).

In conclusion, this is a great little town to visit for a few days of wine tasting and stay at the Bellevue and get a nice massage while you're there.