Another week has flown by! It was jump-started by Brooklyn having her second sleepover of the weekend with some more friends for her birthday.
Monday, there was no school for a teacher work day. I’m skeptical though and believe this could have had something to do with the Super Bowl being the night before and not ending until 5am. I still had to work but the kids and Matt spent the much needed day off catching up on school work and putting the house back together after two sleepovers that weekend.
Besides that, it was such a quiet week. We did learn a new, ridiculous, German word though. The German language seriously only has like 50 words that they reorganize to express different meanings. This one: ‘Tassenuntersetzen.’ It directly translates to “sitting under the cups” but what it means is COASTER; like a cup coaster. German is so wild! Seriously, if you don’t know the word for something, just make it up with other words, you will probably be right. I wish the grammar was so easy.
Friday, we packed the car, dropped the dogs at the kennel, picked up the kids early from school, and headed down to Garmisch, in the German Alps.
Most of our friends got a later start than us so we stopped for a break and some snacks in Füssen, a cute town in the Allgäu region on the way to the resort.
It has been unseasonably warm and that day got up to 55 degrees. It was almost like summer with the whole town out and about, having drinks in the street, and hanging in the marktplatzes. I found it perfect for an Aperol Spritz.
After our break, we kept going towards our final destination, Edelweiss Lodge, the US government R&R retreat in Europe.
We got settled in, met some friends for dinner and drinks, and then hit the hot tub and pool.
Saturday morning, we were up by 6, hit the breakfast buffet and headed over to Garmisch Classic, where we were skiing for the weekend. It’s been pretty warm lately so there was no snow on the ground. I was wondering where we were going to be able to ski. We rode a gondola almost 2000 feet up the mountain, which is already higher than some of the mountains we have skied on. This is where the base camp was and we found plenty of snow up that high.
We did a couple of runs to see if we still knew how to ski after almost a year. Luckily, we still knew what we were doing and Matt took us down progressively harder and harder runs.
Before we knew it, we were sailing down a black course with no way out. The courses are already much harder than their counterparts on the East Coast, but one thing that definitely sets them apart is how long they are. If you get on a difficult black course back home, you are still done in five minutes. Here, the runs are miles long and if you are having a hard time, you probably still have about 20 minutes ahead of you. Many times, I stopped and looked down, hoping to see the bottom, but only saw the valley still miles and miles below us. FINALLY, we reached the base of the mountain. No falls, except for Ryan crashing off the slope into the parking lot at the end; just very sore calves and thighs. Three of four of us were crying that we had made it; Matt was apologizing.
We had to take a breather and re-group. We realized we were on the opposite side of the mountain, with its own gondola and mountain entrance. This side of the mountain didn’t have a base camp and we had skied all the way down to the valley floor, almost 3000 ft! The signs told us we were at the Kandahar Slope.
We looked up the course on Zugspitze’s website and read “…the Kandahar is one of the most challenging downhill runs in the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, which comes to Garmisch-Partenkirchen every year. With two options and a total drop of 1,800 metres in altitude along its length of 7 km…” and that certain parts had a gradient of 92%!!! What the heck, Matt?! The kids and I were fairly traumatized at that point and decided blue slopes only for the rest of the day.
We took the gondola back up and skied over to the other side of the mountain and met some friends for lunch in one of the alpine huts.
After lunch, the kids wanted to hang out with their friends in the obstacle course area. Some of the adults wanted to get in a few more runs, so we headed back up. With the mountain being so tall, there were plenty of alpine huts and biergartens on the way back down to stop and enjoy the view and a bier.
We finished off the day back at Edelweiss with a group dinner and more hot tub and pool time.
Sunday, we slept in a little later and headed back to Garmisch Classic. We quickly figured out this was a bad idea as there was absolutely no parking. But we had found that other gondola on the other side of the mountain the day before, right? So, we drove over there and were up the mountain in no time.
The weather was absolutely beautiful with super blue skies and we had a blast doing some of the easier runs on the mountain. We had lunch at the same hut and sent the kids back out to play with their friends.
Matt and I did a few more runs, then met some friends for a last bier on the mountain.
As we were having our bier, we realized it was getting close to 3:30. With the mountain closing at 4:15, we realized we had to race to get back to where we parked. We took the ski lift back up and started to ski back down the other side. Ryan had a wipe out and lost both skis and had a hard time getting clipped back in. By the time we were going again, we were the only ones left on the mountain- so eery and to be honest, scary. We had to take another lift up to get us back up to the point we could ride the gondola down but when we got off, the operator shut down the chairlift told us everything was now closed. At this point, it was looking like our only option was to take our chances on the Kandahar Slope again. Both kids were no crying from being scared, and I was about to start, so we made a split second decision to ski back over to the front side of the mountain, and make our way down that way. We made it in time for the last gondola down on the front, and a friend came and picked us up.
I’m not sure which ordeal was scarier, or had us panicked more: going down the Kandahar, or getting stranded on the mountain. But now that it’s over, I can’t stop laughing at how we found ourselves in either situation.
We finished up Sunday with dinner back at the hotel and then trivia night. We came in third place and we won a new puzzle and free drink coupons! I spent them all at the hot tub afterwards.
Sunday morning, we packed up and headed home. It had snowed in the morning so we drove past Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein castles to get some pics of them in the snow. We even ran into some of our friends at the castle.
On the way home, we ran into some other friends at McDonald’s, and some others on the autobahn. Germany is starting to feel like a very small county!
Gilcrests Abroad 