Christmas in Austria

To me, holidays weren’t too big of a deal. Getting together with family wasn’t a necessity. I would at least try to get together with friends but if that didn’t work out, no bigee. 

To my wife, holidays with family were a BIG deal. This year, however, we weren’t going to be able to afford to travel to California. I decided that we at least needed to do something special to distract Laura from her deprivation. 

The cool thing about living in London is that you can easily get to Europe, otherwise known as The Continent. There’s a bit of a controversy between the UK and the rest of Europe. Some English people don’t consider themselves European since the island is separated from the rest of the continent, although it’s more of a cultural thing than topographical. Anyway, there are lots of great places you can easily get to on The Continent from London for a fairly reasonable cost.

We found a special package to Austria. It was a coach trip to the Channel (this was before the Chunnel), a ferry across and another coach the rest of the way - an all-night-and-day trip. The destination was a little town named Maurach in the middle of the mountains. We stayed in a room in a local person’s house (way before Airbnb) where we had breakfast and then there was a communal building where we had dinner and some Austrian cultural entertainment.

Maurach is at the base of a mountain with ski facilities but when we arrived there was very little snow. Overnight, however, it came down. We woke up the next morning to feet of it. Laura grew up snow skiing in Tahoe so she was pretty good. I had still never been downhill skiing but it was time for me to start. Up we went to the top of the mountain where Laura started her runs down the big slope while I started on the bunny hill.

I finally got up enough courage to go for the big hill and off I went, falling all the way. By this time, it was getting warmer and the snow was melting. As I got further down the mountain, rocks were starting to show through the snow until I was mainly just skiing on gravel. I didn’t want to pay for new skis so I ended up having to take them off and walk the rest of the way.

Over the next couple of days we went on some day trips. The first was to Salzburg where The Sound of Music was filmed. The other was to the beautiful town of Innsbruck where the winter Olympics were held in 1964 and ’76.

There were people from several countries on the trip, including some New Zealanders. There are plenty of New Zealanders in London. Being that it is a Commonwealth country, New Zealanders can legally spend up to two years working in England. A lot of young people take advantage of that while making multiple trips to The Continent.

The New Zealanders on the trip were pretty laid back, taking things as they came - a general feature of the nationality. Some of the British, on the other hand, were some serious complainers, also a generalization of that nationality. It was a very cheap trip so we didn’t have super high expectations. I guess some of them did. They complained so much that it got to be funny. We hung out with the New Zealanders and even got together with them after we got back to London.

Innsbruck Olympic site with our New Zealand friends


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