This post is Part 3 of my series about my 2015-6 winter trip. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
14 years ago, while I was living in Europe, my parents and I took what I think we all agree was one of the best family vacations we’d ever taken. We took the slow train from Geneva to Vienna, traversing the Austrian Alps in late December at sunset. A year ago, when we began planning this trip, I suggested that we do the same. And this is how I came to be in in Kitzbühel.
Kitzbühel is a famous ski town in Tyrol, about halfway between Innsbruck and Salzburg. Its famous Hahnenkahmm downhill run is one of the most celebrated and challenging races in skiing. Its snow, most years, is some of the best in the world. This time, I learned that its artificial snow is also some of the greatest.
My first stop, though, wasn’t the ski hill. It was the ice rink.I hadn’t skated since leaving the United States. In fact, I didn’t even bring my skates to Kyrgyzstan with me. So, after spending so much time away, my inner spinner was going absolutely ballistic at the prospect of being on the ice and doing kitschy activities, such as my strange bucket list item of performing the Austrian Waltz in Austria.
A few hours had me feeling sore, but I went back several times over the course of our time in Kitzbühel to brush off old skills and try a few new ones.
Kitz was both a place for activity and for relaxation. My parents and I tend to be pretty active when we travel, and this was no exception. I went up on the mountain to ski for three days, despite there being no snow.
Europe is having a bad winter. Thankfully, a few of the major mountains have enough snowmaking capacity to create all the snow they need to operate. You can see in these photos that there is literally no natural snow anywhere.
The only snow that there was were these little roads of snow created by the snow guns that would be crisp and powdery in the morning and harshly slushy by the mid-afternoon. You know global warming is real when there’s better skiing at Ski Dubai than in the Austrian Alps.
Kitz was also a great launching off point to visit some other nearby towns. One day, we traveled back to Germany to visit the town of Berchtesgaden, which in addition to being spectacularly beautiful, is well known as being the preferred retreat of leaders under National Socialism. Their hideouts have mostly been razed, replaced with an amazing museum about the regime and its atrocities. It was one of the best World War II museums I’ve been to, and my mom said it’s one of the best ones she’s seen in Germany.
We spent a week in Kitz, hiking, skating, skiing, and eating as much of my mom’s cooking as I could manage to. While my family doesn’t do much for Christmas, I did bring a few gifts to my parents, including a kalpak and a scarf, some wallets, magnets, and even a little kalpak Christmas tree ornament (that stood in for a star on our miniature tree).
All in all, it was a wonderful trip. It was nice to have some time away from Kyrgyzstan, but by the end of it all, I was ready to come home. It’s a very good sign to me that, for as much fun as I was having, I couldn’t wait to get back to Kyrgyzstan. I’m both very happy and very lucky to live where I do. It was the time back in Europe that reminded me of this.