Ze Austrian Alps

I am told these are the "baby mountains" by our Austrian hosts

I went to the Alps this past weekend. I still have no clue what the name of the resort was because it was really tiny and we had Austrian friends taking care of us the whole time. I know it was near the town of Ebensee which is between Linz and Salzburg.

Anyway, it was a really sick weekend. We stayed in a resort which was started and owned by this Austrian guys' Grandpa and now run by his cousin so it was more like staying in someone's home. It was on top of the mountain so you had to take a gondola to get to it and it stops running at 5pm so you're stuck up top all night. This originally sounded terrible to me but ended up being a blast.

To get to the place on Friday we knocked off work early and got a rental car. I had to drive since I'm the only American who knows how to drive stick...ever. We arrived at the gondola at 5:30pm and found our Austrian friend waiting for us. Apparently he held the last gondola for us and this was not a problem because we were 4 out of the 12 guests staying on the mountain that night.

We got to the top of the gondola and found that it was windy, snowy, and all around miserably cold. We had to hike up the mountain for about 5 minutes to get to the lodge and my filipina coworker, obviously experienced in snowy situations, wore her boots with heels. Anyway, she got to ride on the snowmobile that transported our luggage while the rest of us trudged up the mountain.

That night we ate bomb ass food called knödel (kanoodle) and schnitzel. Then we played drinking games for a few hours. Then we hit the bar in the basement of this old ass ski haus (with a nice wine cellar) where it was just us chilling and playing more drinking games including one called "noggin" where you try to hit a nail into a stump faster than everyone else using the wrong end of the hammer.

The next day we hit the slopes. Even though it was really windy and snowy it was tight because none of the locals wanted to ski. We basically had the whole mountain to ourselves and there was fresh powder (not the kind you find in Manila and Eastern Europe).

Late run on Sunday

That day a cool ass Austrian couple who works for Redbull showed up and skied with us. We then all had another big Austrian dinner that night complete with some baked pork that was really fucking tastey. Afterwards we had a private wine tasting in the hotel's wine cellar. Later we basically repeated the night before but drank even more and ended up having a huge dance party in the basement. Lots of Jaeger bombs (called a "flying hirsch" in Austria) were consumed and fun was had by all.

The next morning I woke up early and hit the expert slope that goes all the way down the mountain with our Austrian friend. We were the only ones good enough to do it (I'm awesome) and it was a nice start to the day which turned out to be sunny and gorgeous.

Picture riding up the slow lift in the morning

The rest of the day was awesome and after skiing we decided to go to Salzburg with the cool Austrian couple. They took us to see this hangar that is owned by Redbull that has all of their airplanes and F1 cars and a couple of really exclusive restaurants and cafes. That part is in the blog pipeline. For now check out the pics and be jealous.

View from close to our lodge

Morning run as the sun was coming up