Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Austria!

At the begining of April I took a trip to Austria with the danish student Niko who stayed with my family last year.  It turned out to be an incredible trip to say the least.  We started our trip in copenhagen on april first by getting on a german night train in the late afternoon.  We took this train through the night to Frankfurt where we changed to a train that took us just past Salzburg Austria, then a taxi the rest of the way to the ski resort town of Obertauern.  This place was HUGE.  It had seven peaks accessible by chairlifts and probably close to 20 restuarants scattered throughout the mountain, as well as hotels.  We stayed in a wonderful hotel in the valley of the ski resort right in the middle of everything.  Every day we would eat lunch at a different restaurant on the mountain and dinner at different restaurants in the town.  We were extroidinarily lucky with weather too (in my opinion) because the first two days were almost completely clear and very warm, getting to the teens in celcius, so probably close to 50 F.  The third day had a few clouds but fantastic weather still, but the fourth and fifth days were completely overcast and rainy (snow at the very higest points).  These two days were still very warm though, in fact, it didn't even get below freezing at night, so the conditions were very tough to ride in the last two days.  The last two days were also very foggy, the foggiest weather I have ever been in in fact.  We ate lunch at a restaurant that was just about 100ft or so below a lift but when Niko and I got off the lift we couldn't see it and couldn't even make out the shape until we were within about 30 ft of it probably.  When we were taking the lift up, we could only see one or two chairs in front of us, and wen there wasn't a lift tower in sight, it looked the the lift cable was vanishing into the abyss above us, it was very wild!  The first three days were absoutely prime spring conditions and were some of the best days I have had snowboarding!  There was so much terrain too, I was constantly finding new lines and spots of awesome spring corn to do big slashes in.  I could have stayed there for a month and not gotten bored.  It makes me look forward to riding big mountains in college when I get home.  The trip home was uneventful and I made it back to Sweden just in time to start my easter break.

I also just returned from a trip down to southern sweden to visit some exchange students that live there.  I stayed near the university town of Lund which was very nice.  We mostly just hung around Lund but also went to a restaurant on the end of a big pier that goes out into the ocean.  We did a very swedish activity of saunaing and then jumping into the ocean and going back into the sauna.  The water was very cold, similar to lake supirior, but it was a fun experience.  Now I am back in sigtuna and school, which is coming to an end soon!  My last day is June 8 and the graduation parties have already started.

Thats about the latest!  Check out my flickr page for the pictures from Austria!