Innsbruck for the winter

A short train ride we were back in Innsbruck and it was finally snowing!!! The room we were going to rent for the winter would not be available for a week, but we were lucky enough to stay at our friends Anna-lena and Vreni's apartment as they were both away for christmas holidays. Anna-Lena and her boyfriend Andy were heading to Serfaus (Anna-lena's home town) for a couple of days and we were invited to tag along!

The drive from Innsbruck only took about 1.5hrs and it was snowing the whole way. We arrived in Serfaus a beautiful mountain village mid afternoon, we were really lucky to be able to stay in Anna-lena's child hood home with her dad and his girlfriend. It was crazy to stay in someones house at a snow resort as we have never known anyone with this kind of luxury!

We had an awesome couple of days in Serfaus. The snow was deep, fresh and we were really lucky with the weather; snow at night then sunshine through the day. The Alps were amazing too, the mountains went on as far as the eye could see and it was actually some of the deepest powder we had ever ridden; when the legs got a bit tired there were a lot of falls in the pow and I really struggled to get back up! Towards the end of the first day I went down in some deep snow and it took about 6 attempts to get back up... the others tried not too laugh but it must have been hilarious as each time I'd nearly make it up I would fall again.

Some other differences to Australian and North American resorts were the automated lift tickets, lifts with heated seats, lift covers to protect you from the wind and the 'Dorfbahn' an unusual underground air cushion transit system used to get you from one end of town to the other which was pretty cool.

After our last day of ridding we also got to go 'Rodeling', basically like tobogganing but on wooden sleds.  We all had so much fun hooning down the rodel track. Super fun when you do it in pairs as well, it took Marc and I a little bit to get used to steering and crashed a couple of times but it all added to the fun. Also got to experience some amazing food, our first taste of fondue, Semmelknoedel and Germknödel nom nom nom.


Back in Innsbruck we had a lovely last week of 2011. The snow just kept falling which was more then we could have wished for. We needed to organise lift passes for the season as cheaply as possible so thanks to some people who will remain nameless (Marc) and my computer we had become students studying sports management at Innsbruck university. I was way too scared to use the student ID so waited back while Marc used his skills to pass as a grey headed student. Fifteen minutes later he returned with a 300 euro ski pass for the Innsbruck area! After some deep breaths I then headed in to get the same pass (very shaky and nervous) I managed to get a ski pass as well but not as cheaply as the lady who helped me checked my birth date and as I was older then 25 could not get the student discount (which I did not really care about as you needed to either work or study in Innsbruck to get the pass in the first place, and I did neither). I returned to Marc stoked to get a pass for 380 euro but still a little shattered that the 31 year old managed to get the student rate and I didn't.

Now we had passes and there was more then enough snow we made our way to check out the different mountains. There were free ski buses in Innsbruck we could catch to all the different mountains, our first morning looking for the bus we meet up with another aussie who was going for a shred for the day, James was really nice and we ended up ridding with him for the few days he was in town.

We now had snow passes and a place to live for the winter, had a look at the finances and decided to stop looking for work and just enjoy the next three months in Europe, snowboarding and planning our  trip around Europe after winter had passed.

Christmas was quiet; snowboarded Christmas eve and day which was amazing fun as the snow was so good! Christmas eve we attempted to find somewhere open to have a couple of drinks but only found a very small place which was about to close so had one beer then headed home for dinner. In Austria everyone goes to church on Christmas eve and afterwards they have christmas dinner, so we also had christmas dinner on christmas eve which was really nice. Marc made us a delicious traditional meal of Semmelknoedel.











New Years was just as quiet as Christmas as we did not want to spend much money. A couple of days before New Years we had moved into our own place, it was amazing to have a draw and be able to unpack our back packs for the first time in 6 months! We had been told that New Years day we should head to St Anton's as a meter of snow had been predicted and it was meant to be amazing. So we decided to have a quiet New Years get up early and ride St Anton's. New Years we had some fondue, wine, played cards and watched all the fireworks going off outside our window (In austria fireworks are only legal on New Years so everyone was letting fireworks off it was insane!). After so much snowboarding we were both pretty tired and did not even manage to stay up past 10:30 (first time ever in our adult life!). However at midnight I was awakened by the ringing bells and crazy fireworks so got up, watched the main fireworks from our window (while Marc slept) and hoped 2012 was just as amazing as 2011.

New Years Day up early to catch the train to St Anton, unfortunately it had warmed up over night and all the snow that fell was being washed away by rain in the morning, we were hoping that it was not the same in St Anton. The walk to the train station was really funny, we felt great but everyone else we passed were super hungover and tired. The train station was worse people scattered everywhere rolled up into little balls trying not to let the daylight in while they waited for their trains home... never felt so healthy in all our lives! The train ride was really fast, however we did by the wrong ticket for the super fast train but luckily cause it was new years day the ticket collector let us go.

Much to our disappointment it was just as warm at St Anton as it was in Innsbruck and had been raining all morning, but as the village was lower then the mountains we still got tickets and hoped for the best. At the top of the gondola we could see a lot of fresh snow but it was still very warm so the snow would be super heavy. Even with the heavy snow we still had an amazing morning, lots of fresh runs in the deep heavy snow... again I fell at the worst points in the run (ridding powder is a lot harder then I ever imagined!), Marc said after the second fall I had a whole routine to get my self up out of the powder and I looked like a little squirrel moving the snow from around my board to under my bum so I could get up and away. We had a great day at St Anton's another beautiful resort but by mid afternoon the crowds were out in force ad the runs were insane with crazy heavy snow and people to work your way around.

The train back to Innsbruck was nowhere near as fast. We had to take the slow train back (that our tickets covered), 3 hours later we finally arrived home.