“Best 9 days ever” . . .eventually

Picture this; missed connecting flight; all economy flights from Frankfurt to Salzburg booked out for 6 days! Only option, upgrade to a business class seat the next day for a measly 700 euro + hotel or we could catch an overnight train from Frankfurt to Salzburg via Munich. 12 of the longest and most frustrating hours later, we arrived at Theresia Gartenhotel, in Saalbach-Hinterglemm.

Theresia Gartenhotel was amazing. We are both psyched with the hotel, spa facilities, mountains and the weather. The owner of the hotel, Marianne Brettermeler, actually lent me her ski jacket for the duration, but as the temps range from 4 to 12 degrees up on the slopes Brad and I are very comfortable wearing long sleeve tops, thermals courtesy of Barrie from the Turkey tour and our spunky new ski pants.

We can’t believe that every day our culinary senses are tempted with magnificent food. We start the day with a fantastic (best yet) brekkie, from 3pm we are served fantastic cakes and/or ice cream Sundays and at night we sit down to a full al la carte “6 course meal” after sampling an extensive range of international wines and beers, all part of the “half board package” at the hotel. Naturally my diet was put on hold.

Now let me tell you about the spa, each day after a strenuous day of skiing we relaxed downstairs in “Sauna-world” where we indulged in whirl-pools, Finnish sauna both 60 & 100 degrees, salt-steam and aroma steam-baths, “event” showers (personally I feel like I am drowning but they are fun), Jacuzzi, meditation rooms, plunge pools and large heated pools both indoors and out (overlooking the mountains).

There is over 110 km of intermediate slopes for us to choose from, it is spring snow here (translation brilliant in the morning but by 12:00 really wet and sticky), only 85% of the lifts are working but considering there are 62 cable cars, chair lifts and T-bars from 1,050m to 2,363m and a free ski bus links us to our door we are not complaining.

Just some of the highlights include on a couple of mornings we were one of the 1st on the slopes, it was amazing creating your own tracks in fresh power. We even skied in white out for an hour until the clouds finally moved away below us. The plunge pool is saving our lives, 10 degree water after 100 degree sauna, I feel like a professional athlete without the whole yucky training stuff. Brad did a great job of skiing for the 8 days, even with very loose boots by the end, he is looking forward to showing off his new skills on our “tiny” hills in Australia and Brad also wanted me to tell you that with only a minutes head start he almost beat me down to the hot chocolate chalet – I was very impressed. I was really happy with my skiing even with the falls and by the end of the week I could match myself with any 12 year old Austrian.

On our last day I saw the most amazing sight, a Doe was caught between some racing fences and got spooked and took off down the hill until it escaped into the pines, I think it would have matched the speed of the Austrian downhill slalom ski team that we watched each day.

We did have a few doh moments, Brad broke his glasses on the 1st day on the way to the slopes, around day 4 Brad smacked himself in the eye with his stock when he pulled up too quickly, cut his eye, thankfully no stiches required, but it bled a lot and looked very painful, I had to put in some serious TLC, didn’t actually see the fall but due to the extent of the bruising and concussion Brad gets his first “9”. I did a whopper of a fall, lost both stocks and 1 ski, on a black run slid down 20 metres and had to walk back up the hill, hit myself in the face and lost some pride in the process, no black eye so I will quit winging now. Also fell and gave myself a nasty bruise on the knee but even with all the scrapes and scratches we still had a ball. Of course the best part was if either of us had had enough, we would call it quits early that day, giving us a great excuse to chill out in the lounge eating way too many cakes, chewing pain killers and drinking lots of Merlot.

Personally the highlight for me was Brad announcing that he can finally see what all the skiing fuss is about and I got the opportunity to tell a lovely German couple that I was sorry I didn’t recognise them from the Spa as they now had their clothes on. I still can’t deal very well with the naked spa thing but when in Rome . . . I am not even going to tell you about our bungled flight to Barcelona, but as I am typing this whilst on the last leg of the flight we are at least going to get there as planned. All I will say is we are a lot lot, lot, poorer as a result. We will post again in 3 weeks after we leave Spain. Nur acht und ein bisschen Wochen gehen, traurig und aufgeregt. Liebe auf alle Christine und Bradley.