It's All About Söll
Short version:
I went on my firstest ever package holiday, a ski trip to Austria. I don't really know anyone who skis but suggested it to a few people, but those all fell through as such things do. It'd snowed in the area for three days around Christmas but then had a day of rain, so the snow was mostly artificial, and icy once the grooming had been scraped off by traffic. I didn't bring my computer, my phone stayed off until touching down again in Dublin, and most aspects of my life were replaced: I had a set routine, lots of free time, was all by myself, and so on. Typically I'd get up early for breakfast, be on the slopes around 9, ride until about 3 or 4, go home, have a shower, read a bit, go out for dinner, read some more and go to sleep early. I had plenty of fun, but I think in future I would like to have someone of a similar skill level and direction of interest to my own to ride with; it's just more fun that way.
Long version:
Saturday
Manoeuvering my awkwardly-shaped snowboard bag which also contains my clothes and toothpaste and other holiday things to and from the DART and bus, I arrive in plenty of time at the airport in the afternoon. My bag goes in at the oversized luggage area and after a half-hour delay we make for Salzburg. It's after sundown when the plane arrives and as we approach the city something looks odd about it, like it's primarily water but not rippling. Eventually it clicks with me that I'm looking at snow.
Travel company thingie representatives in uniforms are waiting with directions and coaches and in about an hour and three quarters after crossing into Germany and back out again I'm in Söll on the Ski Welt arena. My pension seems fine, although some reviews I read online after booking warn of the domineering landlady. I go straight to bed.
Sunday
Having been instructed to queue at a particular shop to collect lift tickets (and rental gear for those who need that), I turn up after an uninteresting continental breakfast and eventually get my pass. I get on the gondola and thence on another one, up to the top of the mountain by Söll, Hohe Salve. I get my gear in order and figure I'll warm up with some easy blue or red graded runs. Unfortunately I accidentally head off down a black, which is doable but not particularly pretty, given that this is my first time on snow this season.
I spend the morning poking around the Söll area, but there are seven or so villages all interconnected by ski lifts and pistes, so presently I start making my way to Westendorf, where it transpired my parents honeymooned. I leave the slopes there and find a cafè for lunch; pea soup with frankfurter bits in, and a chocolate cake with fruit curd filling. The size of the Ski Welt arena (Austria's largest interconnected ski area, apparently) means that to be a manageable size the map has to be completely crap, marking lifts but not pistes, so I get lost on my way back and fail to make it further than the very furthest village from Söll by the time the lifts close. I get a taxi back for a cool 34 eurobucks and am annoyed.
There's a meeting tonight for people on the same package thing as me, so I find the appropriate pub and have a beer and listen to stuff that doesn't apply to me because I'm not in lessons or potentially getting jaded or wanting to go shopping in Innsbruck or going tobogganing. I ask the representative dude, Lenny, for a restaurant recommendation and he says that pretty much anywhere is good but names one in particular, so I head home for a shower with the intention of going there. While in the shower with my muscles aching from being used in ways they hadn't in nine months, the idea of bed enters my head and I can't shake it. Eventually I relent and just go there.
Monday
I buy some bottled water and Jaffa Cakes in a Spar and head up top for a bit before meeting Lenny who'd offered to show folks around. I turn out to be the only taker though so he wouldn't be going out, but we chat a bit and he gives me some directions. I go to have a look at the areas in the opposite direction from Westendorf. I eat my Jaffa Cakes at a scenic viewpoint (although can't rate them relative to others as they were strongly chilled and my jaw was too cold to eat properly). I'm starting to get my groove back and hit a little bit of off-piste, which is where it's most at for me. Again the poor map gets me lost and when the lifts close I'm stuck in Scheffau, the village next to Söll. I start walking, not something to which snowboard boots particularly lend themselves. After a while a sympathetic guy from Munich who's been hanging out in his parents' chalet for the weekend gives me a lift.
After a shower and change of clothing I go to Lenny's recommended restaurant, the Dorfstub'n. I have a beer, cream of garlic soup, a venison and mushroom dish which is similar to steak & kidney pie with a side of unidentifiable squidgy things, the wrong wine (ooops, Pinot Grigiot is white) and pancakes stuffed with ice cream and with chocolate sauce and nuts on. I consider the concept of après ski and decide not to bother. The recent movie The Guardian, with Kevin Costner, is about the training camp for U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers, and a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer I worked with said that it wasn't a bad depiction of the training, but that if you'd gone out drinking and having romantic sub-plots in the evening you'd fail, because you wouldn't have enough energy for the training. Seems to me that people who can dance haven't been skiing hard enough. I wonder about exactly what I should be doing, since I don't really have a goal like "improve tree riding" or "hit every piste", and decide that getting some video footage will provide some focus.
Tuesday
I stop in the Spar to buy some rather spiffy plasters, deciding that now is not the time to stop throwing good money after bad and a raw spot on my shin will only curtail my enjoyment. Determined not to get stuck in the wrong village tonight I stick around the Söll mountains, including tracking down the last peak in the arena I had yet to visit. I'm well warmed-up and back on form by now and am seeking the most interesting off-piste I can find. I follow the top gondola down the steepest section, dotted with trees and avalanche fences. Lunch is the remainder of the Jaffa Cakes, now squished together from being fallen upon. Later into the day the physical and mental effort of riding the rough has tired me a bit so I stick to easier stuff like black pistes and off the reds.
I successfully finish the day in Söll, have a shower and a short wander turns up another decent-looking restaurant, the Feldwebel. I have a beer, big burger-sized patties of deep-fried camembert on toast, a beer, pork liver slices in gravy with fried potatoes and a sweet sultana omelette with cold stewed plum goo. I'm noticing that a simple restaurant meal is making me all stuffed lately, I can't eat like I'm used to and wonder if that's age catching up with me or something to do with lifestyle.
Wednesday
The map lists a few circuits to try, the first one being based around Söll, so I decide to give that a go and see if I can fit in one or two of the others in the afternoon. Naturally the terrible map and difficult-to-follow piste marking makes this take much longer than it should as I repeatedly arrive at the wrong lift, so trying to find my way around is a bit frustrating. I do find some fun off-piste on my way around, and note that the smallest, least-populated lifts seem to have the best un-groomed slopes. By the time I'm back to the start it's too late to risk a shot at a different circuit. I dine on cereal bars on the lifts and wander about looking for stuff that looks like fun. I find my way into an area covered by tiny stream ditches which makes for a lot of falling, though I do manage to jump one and keep going without nose-diving into soft snow.
As the day goes on though I find myself getting tired, taking falls where I shouldn't really be, my turns onto my heel-side are becoming sloppy, the map is crap, the pistes are icy, off-piste is getting crusty (hey, aren't we all?) and I'm getting pissed off. The last straw comes as I find myself starting down the wrong side of Hohe Salve, decide to traverse off-piste around to the correct side on the assumption that it'd only be about 40 metres or so and find myself traversing very steep unfriendly terrain with stream valleys and spurs, snow that I wouldn't be surprised to find avalanching and a long way down to nowhere - I doubt I'd be found until the spring thaw. When your brain starts making decisions that put you in that kind of situation, if you're smart you'll recognise that it's time to call it quits. I pack it in a bit early and wander around Söll a bit after a shower. Later on I go to a hotel restaurant I found on that wander, the Postwirt, for gluhwein, beef broth with cooked cheese medallions in it, beer, traditional Tyrolian pasta baked with cheese (so mac & cheese then) with sauerkraut and chocolate cake with a curd filling again. I negotiate the entire transaction in German and feel clever.
Thursday
I have a cold, probably why I was crap yesterday. I do the Westendorf circuit with that my only agenda for the day, so when I get lost there's no stress. I take my time and when I'm following the circuit, when I see something interesting from the lift, I hit it, and ride the lift again to continue along the circuit. In the afternoon it's getting icy, and I'm not on top form but don't really mind because I'm relaxing a bit, and I quit early not because I can't continue but because I'm on holiday.
I read an article in a ski magazine once contrasting American and European ski holidays. Americans, it said, get up at the crack of dawn, catch the first chair, go hard all day, eat on the slopes, get kicked off the mountain by ski patrol's closing sweeps and go to bed so they can do the same tomorrow, because they have like 10 days' holiday in the year. Europeans, with forty-something, it said, tend to be more of the persuasion of lie-in, leisurely breakfast, make a few turns before a long lunch, take some afternoon runs and then get off the slopes early to primp up for some après ski. I've always been very much in the American camp, but with no real goals I'm shooting for here, I realised that it wouldn't hurt to relax a bit.
I find a restaurant called the Söllerstuben where I consume gluhwein, beef broth with a big dumpling containing smoky bacon in it, fried potatoes with assorted meat bits with a fried egg atop served in a pan and accompanied by poxy mixed canned salads, beer, and warm chocolate pudding with chocolate sauce and ice cream. The waitress compliments me on my German.
Friday
Lenny has offered to show folks around again now that many will be out of ski school, so I take a run or two before meeting him. At last we set out with two guys called Paddy and two others who vanish off to make phone calls shortly after we get started. It's slow-moving, as tends to happen when skiing in a group, but Lenny knows some handy ways of getting from A to B like along paths through the trees and such. It's a sunny day and the snow's a bit softer than it has been. We stop for a drink and I have a hot chocolate with rum, which sounds like a fantastic idea to me but tastes like burning plastic. Lenny gives the Paddies some ski instruction and when he departs we split up and I take my last few runs of the season alone. I'm getting a little of my mojo back and am not disappointed with myself when I'm finished.
The suggestion of meeting the Paddies somewhere had been made but I'm too tired for that, with my cold progressing, so I go to the restaurant of the Gasthof Christophus for gluhwein, CHEESE & RASHERS SOUP (this is just such an amazingly elegant application of the basic laws of food physics), Wienerschnitzel because I feel I must try it but it turns out to be fish & chips except the fish is pork and I'm afraid Austrians don't do fish & chips as good as we do, beer, apfelstrudel which is like a less goopy apple crumble without the crumble, and beer.
Saturday
I am successfully breakfasted and packed and purtied up and checked out just in time. I wander the village a bit while waiting for the coach and have a hot chocolate and raspberry cream cake in a cafè. I forget to put my penknife snowboard repair tool in my checked luggage and have to hand it over to a security dude, never to be seen again.
I went on my firstest ever package holiday, a ski trip to Austria. I don't really know anyone who skis but suggested it to a few people, but those all fell through as such things do. It'd snowed in the area for three days around Christmas but then had a day of rain, so the snow was mostly artificial, and icy once the grooming had been scraped off by traffic. I didn't bring my computer, my phone stayed off until touching down again in Dublin, and most aspects of my life were replaced: I had a set routine, lots of free time, was all by myself, and so on. Typically I'd get up early for breakfast, be on the slopes around 9, ride until about 3 or 4, go home, have a shower, read a bit, go out for dinner, read some more and go to sleep early. I had plenty of fun, but I think in future I would like to have someone of a similar skill level and direction of interest to my own to ride with; it's just more fun that way.
Long version:
Saturday
Manoeuvering my awkwardly-shaped snowboard bag which also contains my clothes and toothpaste and other holiday things to and from the DART and bus, I arrive in plenty of time at the airport in the afternoon. My bag goes in at the oversized luggage area and after a half-hour delay we make for Salzburg. It's after sundown when the plane arrives and as we approach the city something looks odd about it, like it's primarily water but not rippling. Eventually it clicks with me that I'm looking at snow.
Travel company thingie representatives in uniforms are waiting with directions and coaches and in about an hour and three quarters after crossing into Germany and back out again I'm in Söll on the Ski Welt arena. My pension seems fine, although some reviews I read online after booking warn of the domineering landlady. I go straight to bed.
Sunday
Having been instructed to queue at a particular shop to collect lift tickets (and rental gear for those who need that), I turn up after an uninteresting continental breakfast and eventually get my pass. I get on the gondola and thence on another one, up to the top of the mountain by Söll, Hohe Salve. I get my gear in order and figure I'll warm up with some easy blue or red graded runs. Unfortunately I accidentally head off down a black, which is doable but not particularly pretty, given that this is my first time on snow this season.
I spend the morning poking around the Söll area, but there are seven or so villages all interconnected by ski lifts and pistes, so presently I start making my way to Westendorf, where it transpired my parents honeymooned. I leave the slopes there and find a cafè for lunch; pea soup with frankfurter bits in, and a chocolate cake with fruit curd filling. The size of the Ski Welt arena (Austria's largest interconnected ski area, apparently) means that to be a manageable size the map has to be completely crap, marking lifts but not pistes, so I get lost on my way back and fail to make it further than the very furthest village from Söll by the time the lifts close. I get a taxi back for a cool 34 eurobucks and am annoyed.
There's a meeting tonight for people on the same package thing as me, so I find the appropriate pub and have a beer and listen to stuff that doesn't apply to me because I'm not in lessons or potentially getting jaded or wanting to go shopping in Innsbruck or going tobogganing. I ask the representative dude, Lenny, for a restaurant recommendation and he says that pretty much anywhere is good but names one in particular, so I head home for a shower with the intention of going there. While in the shower with my muscles aching from being used in ways they hadn't in nine months, the idea of bed enters my head and I can't shake it. Eventually I relent and just go there.
Monday
I buy some bottled water and Jaffa Cakes in a Spar and head up top for a bit before meeting Lenny who'd offered to show folks around. I turn out to be the only taker though so he wouldn't be going out, but we chat a bit and he gives me some directions. I go to have a look at the areas in the opposite direction from Westendorf. I eat my Jaffa Cakes at a scenic viewpoint (although can't rate them relative to others as they were strongly chilled and my jaw was too cold to eat properly). I'm starting to get my groove back and hit a little bit of off-piste, which is where it's most at for me. Again the poor map gets me lost and when the lifts close I'm stuck in Scheffau, the village next to Söll. I start walking, not something to which snowboard boots particularly lend themselves. After a while a sympathetic guy from Munich who's been hanging out in his parents' chalet for the weekend gives me a lift.
After a shower and change of clothing I go to Lenny's recommended restaurant, the Dorfstub'n. I have a beer, cream of garlic soup, a venison and mushroom dish which is similar to steak & kidney pie with a side of unidentifiable squidgy things, the wrong wine (ooops, Pinot Grigiot is white) and pancakes stuffed with ice cream and with chocolate sauce and nuts on. I consider the concept of après ski and decide not to bother. The recent movie The Guardian, with Kevin Costner, is about the training camp for U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers, and a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer I worked with said that it wasn't a bad depiction of the training, but that if you'd gone out drinking and having romantic sub-plots in the evening you'd fail, because you wouldn't have enough energy for the training. Seems to me that people who can dance haven't been skiing hard enough. I wonder about exactly what I should be doing, since I don't really have a goal like "improve tree riding" or "hit every piste", and decide that getting some video footage will provide some focus.
Tuesday
I stop in the Spar to buy some rather spiffy plasters, deciding that now is not the time to stop throwing good money after bad and a raw spot on my shin will only curtail my enjoyment. Determined not to get stuck in the wrong village tonight I stick around the Söll mountains, including tracking down the last peak in the arena I had yet to visit. I'm well warmed-up and back on form by now and am seeking the most interesting off-piste I can find. I follow the top gondola down the steepest section, dotted with trees and avalanche fences. Lunch is the remainder of the Jaffa Cakes, now squished together from being fallen upon. Later into the day the physical and mental effort of riding the rough has tired me a bit so I stick to easier stuff like black pistes and off the reds.
I successfully finish the day in Söll, have a shower and a short wander turns up another decent-looking restaurant, the Feldwebel. I have a beer, big burger-sized patties of deep-fried camembert on toast, a beer, pork liver slices in gravy with fried potatoes and a sweet sultana omelette with cold stewed plum goo. I'm noticing that a simple restaurant meal is making me all stuffed lately, I can't eat like I'm used to and wonder if that's age catching up with me or something to do with lifestyle.
Wednesday
The map lists a few circuits to try, the first one being based around Söll, so I decide to give that a go and see if I can fit in one or two of the others in the afternoon. Naturally the terrible map and difficult-to-follow piste marking makes this take much longer than it should as I repeatedly arrive at the wrong lift, so trying to find my way around is a bit frustrating. I do find some fun off-piste on my way around, and note that the smallest, least-populated lifts seem to have the best un-groomed slopes. By the time I'm back to the start it's too late to risk a shot at a different circuit. I dine on cereal bars on the lifts and wander about looking for stuff that looks like fun. I find my way into an area covered by tiny stream ditches which makes for a lot of falling, though I do manage to jump one and keep going without nose-diving into soft snow.
As the day goes on though I find myself getting tired, taking falls where I shouldn't really be, my turns onto my heel-side are becoming sloppy, the map is crap, the pistes are icy, off-piste is getting crusty (hey, aren't we all?) and I'm getting pissed off. The last straw comes as I find myself starting down the wrong side of Hohe Salve, decide to traverse off-piste around to the correct side on the assumption that it'd only be about 40 metres or so and find myself traversing very steep unfriendly terrain with stream valleys and spurs, snow that I wouldn't be surprised to find avalanching and a long way down to nowhere - I doubt I'd be found until the spring thaw. When your brain starts making decisions that put you in that kind of situation, if you're smart you'll recognise that it's time to call it quits. I pack it in a bit early and wander around Söll a bit after a shower. Later on I go to a hotel restaurant I found on that wander, the Postwirt, for gluhwein, beef broth with cooked cheese medallions in it, beer, traditional Tyrolian pasta baked with cheese (so mac & cheese then) with sauerkraut and chocolate cake with a curd filling again. I negotiate the entire transaction in German and feel clever.
Thursday
I have a cold, probably why I was crap yesterday. I do the Westendorf circuit with that my only agenda for the day, so when I get lost there's no stress. I take my time and when I'm following the circuit, when I see something interesting from the lift, I hit it, and ride the lift again to continue along the circuit. In the afternoon it's getting icy, and I'm not on top form but don't really mind because I'm relaxing a bit, and I quit early not because I can't continue but because I'm on holiday.
I read an article in a ski magazine once contrasting American and European ski holidays. Americans, it said, get up at the crack of dawn, catch the first chair, go hard all day, eat on the slopes, get kicked off the mountain by ski patrol's closing sweeps and go to bed so they can do the same tomorrow, because they have like 10 days' holiday in the year. Europeans, with forty-something, it said, tend to be more of the persuasion of lie-in, leisurely breakfast, make a few turns before a long lunch, take some afternoon runs and then get off the slopes early to primp up for some après ski. I've always been very much in the American camp, but with no real goals I'm shooting for here, I realised that it wouldn't hurt to relax a bit.
I find a restaurant called the Söllerstuben where I consume gluhwein, beef broth with a big dumpling containing smoky bacon in it, fried potatoes with assorted meat bits with a fried egg atop served in a pan and accompanied by poxy mixed canned salads, beer, and warm chocolate pudding with chocolate sauce and ice cream. The waitress compliments me on my German.
Friday
Lenny has offered to show folks around again now that many will be out of ski school, so I take a run or two before meeting him. At last we set out with two guys called Paddy and two others who vanish off to make phone calls shortly after we get started. It's slow-moving, as tends to happen when skiing in a group, but Lenny knows some handy ways of getting from A to B like along paths through the trees and such. It's a sunny day and the snow's a bit softer than it has been. We stop for a drink and I have a hot chocolate with rum, which sounds like a fantastic idea to me but tastes like burning plastic. Lenny gives the Paddies some ski instruction and when he departs we split up and I take my last few runs of the season alone. I'm getting a little of my mojo back and am not disappointed with myself when I'm finished.
The suggestion of meeting the Paddies somewhere had been made but I'm too tired for that, with my cold progressing, so I go to the restaurant of the Gasthof Christophus for gluhwein, CHEESE & RASHERS SOUP (this is just such an amazingly elegant application of the basic laws of food physics), Wienerschnitzel because I feel I must try it but it turns out to be fish & chips except the fish is pork and I'm afraid Austrians don't do fish & chips as good as we do, beer, apfelstrudel which is like a less goopy apple crumble without the crumble, and beer.
Saturday
I am successfully breakfasted and packed and purtied up and checked out just in time. I wander the village a bit while waiting for the coach and have a hot chocolate and raspberry cream cake in a cafè. I forget to put my penknife snowboard repair tool in my checked luggage and have to hand it over to a security dude, never to be seen again.