Well we've been in St Anton am Alberg for about 5 days. We were impressed to discover that the train from Innsbruck will take you to the centre of St Anton as the mountain has a train station in the middle of it. After some mooching about we caught a taxi to our accommodation, which I think moonlights as accommodation while being a full time award winning diary farm. The smell is amazing. It infiltrates every orifice whether you cover your nose and mouth or not. It's in the house too, though thankfully not in our room. Oh I could never be a farmer.
On a positive note however, it does have two cats: a fraidy one and a very very smoochy one. The smoochy one has been snuck into our room several times whereby she blissfully rolls on the bed purring and nipping your fingers while you scritch her. She is clearly not allowed on beds, or even in guest rooms so I think we may have taught her some bad habits. The whole mountain seems to be cat central actually, which is a nice change from the plethora of dogs in Germany and the rest of Austria where dogs are allowed in trains, shops and restaurants .
As the title suggests, while we have been in St Anton for a week we haven't done much skiing. I have unfortunately been sick for the last fortnight and it came to a head here in St Anton (plus a mild bout of gastro) . I have alas not really been up for downhill skiing. We did do about a day and a half of cross country, but it is so different from the Australian style that it took both Tom and I ages to get the hang of the new skis and the ruts. Cross country skiing here is a bit like being your own personal tram; they groom the track with two narrow grooves for skis and dammit you'll stay in that even down insane hills. I fell over. Lots. My hips and knees will never be the same. Tom fell over too, which made me feel better (talk about schädenfreude). With this in mind, we decided, regretfully to give downhill a miss, which is a real shame.
I think also that Australians invented a new ski level: green. Green slopes do not exist here. You have blue, red and black. And the blues do not look friendly.
We did take the lift to the summit just to see the top which was spectacular and bloody freezing, where Tom immediately got a moderate bout of vertigo. Interestingly the ski slopes almost look less steep up here. Seems you have to get right up to get the flat bits. I did look longingly at the skiers at this point but my knees are wrecked so I think it was safer to avoid it. I should really have ski lessons but perhaps in English would be a better starting point.
Tomorrow we have a long train trip ahead of us as we head from Austria to Italy.
Auf wiedersehen Österreich!
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