I can’t believe it’s Thanksgiving already; it seems like Halloween just passed! The kids are both at wrestling practice until after 6 pm every night, and Matt has been going to the gym. It feels like I’ve been home alone a lot!
On Monday, a friend and I started the Christmas market season with a trip to our first market in Göppingen, about an hour east of Stuttgart.
The market was cute and had a “Christmas Forest” theme. Lots of giant fir trees were brought to the Marktplatz and decorated with Christmas lights. It was beautiful! We found some langos, a Polish fried cheese bread, for dinner and gluwein in cute Christmas tree-shaped mugs I hadn’t seen before. Even though the market was small, and we saw all of it pretty quickly, it was worth the trip.
On Tuesday, we gave the kids their advent calendars. Yes, it was early, but we would be gone all weekend, and I was just so excited for them to have them. The German advent calendars are really awesome! Ryan got a Lego one this year, and Brooklyn got the L’Oréal one, which was full of makeup.
On Wednesday, as soon as Matt was home from work, we left for our Thanksgiving trip. This year, our destination was Zermatt, Switzerland, for some skiing.
The drive there took us up and through some high mountain passes, then onto a car train that drove us through an 18 km-long tunnel. After six hours, we arrived in Täsch, where we parked the car for the weekend.
Zermatt is entirely car-free, so you have to take a train or taxi into town from Täsch, the next village up in the valley. We were so late that we took the taxi van, which drove us to the edge of Zermatt, where we transferred into one of their little Zermatt taxis. Finally, we arrived and got into our rented apartment around midnight.
We were back up early on Thursday morning as we had hired a ski guide that day. We had such a good experience with a guide last season that we wanted to do it again on our first time out this season. First, we needed breakfast, and our apartment was in an excellent location because it was upstairs of a small shopping mall, which had a grocery store, Coop, just inside. We could do our shopping without even going outside! We were there when they opened at 8, picked up breakfast, and had time to eat before leaving at 8:30.
While Zermatt has been lucky this year and already received a lot of snow, it is still too early for all the ski areas to be open. There are three main ski areas, and two of them were closed, leaving Matterhorn Glacier Paradise as the place where we would ski.
Since Zermatt is car-free, we had to walk one kilometer to the ski lift, where we met our guide, Petr. The ride up to the Matterhorn Glacier took almost 30 minutes, so we had plenty of time to get to know Petr and discuss what we wanted to work on. He was such an awesome guy from the Czech Republic. Every winter, he lives in Zermatt and runs a ski school there. During the summers, he travels and teaches diving.
Unfortunately, the weather conditions were not ideal. It was cloudy and snowing down in Zermatt. When we reached the top of the mountain, it was so windy that the chairlift to the main ski area closed, leaving only one trail open. Even though we knew we were just in front of the Matterhorn, we could not see it as it was shrouded in clouds.
Petr took us down the one open slope several times and gave us lots of feedback on ways we could improve. The slope we were on felt challenging but not too bad. My anxiety has been really high in recent years, so I was shocked when he told me that we were actually skiing on a black slope. I’m glad I did not know that beforehand, or I probably would not have gone down. Petr definitely helped ease my anxiety. Since this was the only trail open that day, everybody was skiing on the same slope. We even saw some people we knew from Stuttgart! But that also meant the slope turned slushy and formed many moguls because it was so crowded. Ryan asked to do a jump and, unfortunately, wiped out. From where we were, all we saw were his skis flying through the air, which was scary. Fortunately, when we got to him, he only had a bloody nose and could put his skis back on to ski away. However, he was pretty shaken up and did not want to ski anymore that day. At that point, it was also time for our lesson to be over, so we said goodbye to Petr, grabbed a late lunch at the ski lodge, and jumped on the gondola back to Zermatt.
After returning to the apartment, we went back to Coop to pick up a few more items for dinner. We all took a long nap and then called our family back home before making a big spaghetti dinner for our Thanksgiving meal. We finished the night watching a Thanksgiving movie, ‘Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,’ which we’d never seen before but thought was hilarious.
Friday, we woke up to a sun shining without a cloud in the sky. We headed back to the Matterhorn Glacier and were glad to see all of the lifts were open. We also got to see the Matterhorn for the first time. Wow! It is so impressive; it was hard to believe we were seeing such a huge mountain!
Instead of hopping off the gondola at the base station, we rode another 15 minutes to the mountain station at the top of the Klein Matterhorn, which is the highest in Europe at an elevation of 12,740 ft. I think this has also got to be the highest altitude we’ve ever been. We climbed the steps even further up to the panoramic terrace, which is also the highest in Europe. The air was thin, which definitely made you winded when climbing the steps. You can see Italy, Austria, France, and Switzerland from there. The views were incredible; you can start to see the Earth’s curve and the atmosphere’s different colors. It is so cool that you almost can’t take in how high you are. It was also really cold! There were a lot of social media influencers at the top in regular clothes trying to take pictures, and I don’t know how they did it!
When we were done taking in the views from the peak, we put on our skis and started the journey down the mountain. The top part was challenging and really scared me, but we made it through without incident. We eventually made it all the way to the Italian border, where we got many pictures before continuing the journey.
We eventually made it all the way back to where we disembarked from the Zermatt gondola. The total journey took over an hour! Our next destination was the Trockener Steg ski lift area at the top of the chairlift. We made a couple of trips up, skiing back down before we decided it was time for lunch.
After lunch, we decided to do the Italy loop one more time. Again, we took the gondola to the Klein Matterhorn peak, skied to Italy, and then back down to the Zermatt gondola. Matt and the kids made a final loop on the Trockener Steg while I had a prosecco break on the terrace. It was a great way to wrap up the day!
We returned to the apartment, where we decided to cook dinner again after two days of pricy Swiss lunches on the mountain, then finished the night with another movie and card games.
Saturday was another gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky. I’m not sure how we got so lucky! We headed back up to Glacier Paradise, got off at the mid-station, and started with the Trockener Steg area. We spent just about all day there, breaking for lunch midway through. The kids continued skiing while Matt and I shared a prosecco on the terrace. Another great day on the slopes! We rode the gondola back down to Zermatt for the final time. I’m thankful for a fun weekend and no injuries!
Sunday morning, we were up early to get packed. We layered our clothes since it was so cold, and somehow, we were able to make the half-kilometer walk to the taxi station with all our ski gear and luggage. For once in our lives, we were early, but luckily, our taxi was already waiting for us, so we were able to get back to the car and on the road early.
We were home by midday and had enough time to completely unpack and pick up the dogs before heading to Sindelfingen to celebrate our friend Nick’s retirement at the Sindelfingen Winter Hut. All I can say is that it ended up being a late night and Monday came too soon!
We are looking forward to a week ahead of Christmas activities!
Gilcrests Abroad 