Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Shredding up the slopes- "I may look out of control, but I'm really not!!"


After such a wonderful time in Munich, we weren’t sure how Garmisch would compare. After about 30 minutes on the train ride, Germany turned into a Winter Wonderland. I can’t even explain how amazing it looked; it was beautiful. Once our train arrived to the Garmisch hbf, we realized that it wasn’t as small of a town as we thought. After a short 5 minute walk to our hostel (which had more of a homey B&B feel), we checked in at about 10 am.

We were hungry and needed to rent some ski equipment, so we wandered around the town to only realize that everything was closed because it was Easter Sunday. We did, however, find a Subway that was open so we didn’t have to go to the dreaded McDonald’s. Finally, we made our way to the slopes to go skiing. The Alps were amazing! Minus the fact that you couldn’t see where you were going because it was not only snowing, but it was also foggy (I’m guessing from the clouds because we were skiing in the freaking Alps)! We tried to eat at a steakhouse for dinner that had a Texas flag, yes a Texas flag, hanging in the front, but apparently it was reservation only… I’m guessing because only a select few restaurants were open for Easter Sunday. So we ended up at another American chain restaurant, Pizza Hut. We decided to make it an early night. We got a whole 9 hours of sleep that night, which was one of the best decisions of the trip since we’d only been getting like 5 each night.

Monday was dedicated to skiing, which had it’s pros and cons. Pro: it wasn’t snowing anymore and it was sunny. Con: since the weather was so nice, it was more crowded… but it was still less crowded than any of the places I’ve gone skiing. Kristen (who hadn’t skied prior to the trip) had skied the previous day with us, so she got the hang of it pretty well. However, Robert and Allison did not ski with us the first day. Robert had a “fun” time learning how to ski for the day. Let me add that we took him on some seriously steep hills for his first day. He was a good sport, and some of the group went back to the easier (easy for Germany is not comparable to the easy trails at home; I’d say their easy trail is comparable to a blue back in the states) hills for the second half of the day. On the very last run of the day, Paige and I had a mishap. We collided. Paige ran straight into me, and her snowboard went over my skis ans somehow we were tangled together, and there was no going back. She was sliding on her butt, and I was still standing sliding sideways down the steep mountain on my skis. Somehow she ended up with my ski pole, and we couldn’t stop. After about 20 feet of sliding, my knee and ankle started to get twisted, and I had no choice but to fall down because it was unbearable. After laying there for a while, Paige, Griff, and I finally headed back down the mountain to meet the others. My knee still hurts, but it was worth it.

Garmisch went beyond it’s expectations, and hopefully I can go back one day! 

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