Austria! Part. 1

Austria is a really cool place, there’s no denying it! This being my first time to Europe, everything felt a bit different at first, a bit strange. Arriving in Munich at about 4am local time, I was just about ready to go to bed after being awake for over twelve hours. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be another seventeen hours before I could get a good night’s sleep.

Jet lag is not very fun, this being said, the 5 hours or so that we spent waiting in the airport went by rather quickly, as we slowly saw the morning crowds come in buying breakfast with not so much coffee, but full half-liter glasses of beer! Welcome to Germany, difference number one, beer for breakfast! We opted for a small grocery store and bought some bread, Steffan (Lloyd) managed to find the closest thing to a jos Louis in Europe within the first minute and ranted to us about how good a deal it was for a half kilo package of them. The rest of the crew showed up at about 9 am and an hour later we were on the road heading to Ramsau Austria, a three hour drive away.

Team Sweden was here

Roads in Europe are narrower, speed limits are higher and the drivers, more aggressive. Difference number two, driving. This made me quite reluctant that I was not the one driving us to Austria. The drive went by uneventfully and we made it into Ramsau after about a half hour of sickening mountain roads that almost made me puke. We disembarked the van wide-eyed to the scenery that was before us; beautiful green pastures dotted with cows, sheep and even Bison, surrounded by evergreen trees and topped off with huge mountains in the background. Swiss style houses seemed to be the only style of home that existed, and dotted the countryside everywhere. I was looking forward to staying here undeniably!

View From our house

The first day we went to our house we were staying in to drop off our stuff and then did a short 45 minute run. Supper was eaten quickly and we made it to bed by 8:30. I slept perhaps the best 10 hours of my life and woke up, still partially jet-lagged to an amazing breakfast of fresh croissants, bread, fruit, nutoka (nutella look alike), and, strangely enough, meat and cheese. We quickly got on our ski clothes and packed our bags with water and food, we embarked into the nine-person vans we were using and sped off up the winding mountain roads to the base of thecable car. The cable car ride takes five minutes and climbs 1km vertical, from 1800 meters to 2800 meters. The ride is far from comfortable, as they manage to find a way to stuff 70 people into the small car.

Cable car up

Preping for the ski

Once arrived at the top, we got out to some beautiful weather, as the sun was just coming over the surrounding mountains. We walked about 5 minutes downhill until we made it to the ski track. Conditions the first day were far from ideal; the snow was black coloured and made for some dirty skis. The plan for the camp was to ski five days on the glacier, then three “off” days and then another 5 days of skiing.

The plan was to ski around 2 hours every morning on the glacier and then another hour to an hour and a half of training in the pm. Unfortunately, I skied a bit long the first day (2h15min), not to mention my heart rate was averaging about 150+bpm. This set me back a bit for the rest of the week and I found myself craving the off days by the 3^rd day of skiing. Luckily, I managed to pull through and finished the fifth day at an all time low. I had made it through the week and the rest days were upon us! Yes!