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Published: April 21st 2006
I was in two minds as to whether to add a blog entry for a skiing trip. After all, skiing isn't Travel in a purist's sense, it's Holiday. And Austria didn’t seem to be exactly exotic, at least from a Brit’s point of view. On the other hand, for non-UK-based folks and for UK-based non-skiers, the photos, at least, might be of passing interest. In any event, by popular demand (= my sister, representing the latter group), here I am. My apologies in advance to my fellow skiers: I considered changing your names “to protect the innocent”… but didn’t.
We'd elected to go DIY this year, rather than choose a package trip. How would we cope without the harassed-but-need-to-be-smiley-and-welcoming ski rep to check us off one mode of transport and onto another, to sort out lift passes and book lessons for us, to give us the intro-to-the-resort spiel on the coach in the tone of voice that suggests s/he has done it a gazillion times before but is trying really hard to make it sound original (one suspects more for his/her benefit than ours), to invite us to the package company weekly get-together (which, in all honesty, we'd never attended)
and then to make sure we made our return flights/trains? Easy - we had Jenny!
One of my longest-standing friends (yikes, “we’ll” be 20 years old this year!), Jenny is a born organiser as well as being very experienced at dealing with European transportation systems. Occasionally, the rest of us feel guilty about leaving her to co-ordinate our ski trips, but why take it out of the hands of the expert? At least Pelve and I could claim this year to have played a critically important role in choosing the accommodation. Well, Jenny had already dented the Amazon rainforest more than somewhat in printing out the blurb for a couple of dozen options, as well has compiling a spreadsheet of the pros and cons of each before we all met up at Smithfield’s Club Gascon (you don’t imagine this sort of thing gets sorted out over a glass of tap water, do you?)… so, I guess you could more accurately say that Pelve and I only assisted in choosing the accommodation - but that’s still important and we’ll share the credit for what turned out to be a quirky, but nevertheless excellent, choice!
Our destination this year was
Oberlech in Austria’s Arlberg. Some of us had been to the area three years’ ago, and had enjoyed a particularly idyllic holiday: snow conditions had been perfect, the sun had shone, and our chalet in Zug, a little village out of the main bustle of Lech, had been comfortable and its rooms had given us glorious views up the valley. While we appreciated that, going this late in the season, the conditions would not be as guarantee-ably good, we had chosen a “real live Austrian” guesthouse in Oberlech, dramatically situated up the slopes from Lech itself.
One thing that I had idly wondered when passing over Oberlech in the chairlift on several occasions during our previous trip was to wonder where the roads were. You pass over a road at the start of the chairlift, then once again higher up, but how were each of Oberlech’s hotels, guesthouses and chalets actually accessed? Fear not: clambering up the mountain-side with multiple bags was not required - there’s a tunnel, or, rather, a comprehensive tunnel system that, with typical Germanic efficiency, gives access to each of the buildings without spoiling the appearance of the village. It also proved to be the
Zug
where we stayed last timequickest and most efficient way for pedestrians to move between buildings, albeit the tunnels were pretty creepy and claustrophobic, as well as the coldest place in the resort, whatever the weather was doing.
Pension Sabine, the result of the Club Gascon deliberations, was delightful, and, rather less intentionally, entertaining. Our hosts, a father and eponymous daughter, both garbed in traditional Austrian/Tyrolean dress, greeted us warmly and, together with the associated mother and son-in-law, looked after us extremely well. Five-course evening meals were de rigeur, though, fortunately, this was not as daunting a prospect as it could have been: a consommé and buffet-style salad course featured almost every night (the latter allowing a breather for those among us less inclined to emulate rabbits), and the portions were not as daunting as we have experienced elsewhere in the area. One of the biggest surprises, however, was the wine list: without exception, the wines ordered by Colin, our appointed oenologist , were superb. And, they were all from Austria. Jokes about antifreeze - whether or not still applicable to exported Austrian wine (added hurriedly, before I get sued!) - clearly don’t
apply to wine that is kept for local consumption. Sabine herself has a sommelier-type qualification, and every bottle we ordered was presented with a flourish, its genesis explained to us in some detail (albeit to our somewhat blank countenances), and, if we had ordered red wine, this was decanted well in advance of consumption - something I have rarely seen in any other restaurant in any other place in the world.
And, of course, we went skiing. Some more enthusiastically than others, it must be said. Top skiing points should be awarded to Jenny (for perseverance: she went out on more occasions than the rest of us) and Couchy (for additional runs covered while the rest of us were making our way down in a somewhat more leisurely fashion). The rest of us wimped out completely on the third day when we awoke to continuous precipitation which started, depressingly, as rain and then developed into a gentle but persistent blizzard. Still, it was a great excuse for a blow-out lunch in St Christophe, part of the neighbouring St Anton ski area, as this coincided with the Pension Sabine staff’s night off. Particularly memorable was Ross’s order of spare ribs,
Pension Sabine
(the one to the left) and there are “before” and “after” shots to prove he ate every last one (but I won’t bore you with those). The rest of us left room for the obligatory (and, invariably, enormous) apple strudel and an Austrian pancake/plum speciality whose name escapes me. The effects of that lunch were still being felt the following afternoon!
Other highlights of the week? For Jenny, Pelve and I, tobogganing (or bum-boarding, to be more accurate) has to be one! At the end of one day’s skiing, the three of us braved endless numbers of speeding children to attempt the toboggan run from Oberlech to Lech. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. If there’s a way to steer these things, I certainly didn’t find it (having tried, variously, feet, hands, and the phallic thing in the middle that you hang onto), though I was most impressed to find that, after a while, I could just about right myself if the board was on its edge and/or going side-on down the mountain. But, for anyone that hasn’t tried it, these things go fast and there didn’t seem to be any proper way to prevent yourself going off piste: the rule of the
Lech
early morning view from our room day was “if in doubt, fall off”, and we had war-wound bruises the next day to prove it.
And then there was the evening of the Scotland -v- England table football matches. The nationals teams played first and yes, I’ll admit, a few own goals on my side helped Colin take the honours in our Scotland match (personally, I blame the quality of the table, the distractions from the crowd - of 2 - anything rather than my (lack of) skill!). However, the tension was palpable when Jimmy, having conquered Couchy in the all-England match, took on Colin in the final. Strains of “Flower of Scotland” (very strained and out-of-tune strains, I hasten to add) were heard over the sporadic commentary as Colin sought to narrow the gap after Jimmy had taken an early lead….. before winning the championship and another glass of wine back at the bar.
As for the nightlife outside the confines of
the bar and games room of Pension Sabine, I’ll have to defer to the others. I continue to emulate the sleeping habits of a dormouse and failed to make it out of the hostel almost every night - and the one night I did, I ended up going home before “The Band” came on. I gather it was very entertaining. But I love my bed. And I was less hung-over in the mornings.
All in all, the week was heaps of fun. Even Colin, cursed, as ever, by demanding clients who ate into a couple of days’ worth of the trip, professed himself relaxed and recuperated by the trip, and we all certainly looked a lot healthier on the way back home. And Jimmy, having been giving us daily updates of the body-count during the week, finally got to finish Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons".
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Rich
non-member comment
How kind of you....
.....to subscribe me to your blogspace so that those of us who are still slaves to the corporate machine can marvel at your travels...... :o) Where next?!