Ah Bruges, DU BIST WUNDERBAR!!!

Could I love Bruges more?  Such a shame that we only planned a one night stay here as I could have stayed a lot longer!

This place is gorgeous!  The people are friendly and we got really lucky with the hotel we chose…although parts of it are being renovated, our room had already been done and was spacious and modern with a lovely bathroom.  We were a lazy 10 minute stroll from Market Square, which was the main gathering point in town with lots of restaurants and gorgeous buildings :)

No matter which direction you looked in there would be a church spire in view and the canal that surrounds Bruges gave it a very romantic feel…if we had been able to stay longer we would have definitely done a canal cruise.

It was hard to choose a restaurant as there were so many but we finally settled on one that had a 3 course meal for €16 with about 5 choice each for entrée and main and 2 for dessert.  The first thing we ordered was a cherry beer as we had heard that Belgium was famous for this and wow! We were certainly not disappointed!  If it had not been so high in alcohol I would have had another!

Our waiter was lovely and patient and we nicknamed him Terry as he had an amazing resemblance to TMay!

The food was amazing and I went with the Flemish Stew as the waiter told me whenever he came home from a trip that would be the first thing he would eat.  Nathan went with Waterzooi Chicken which is another common Flemish dish. 

If only I liked mussels, they seem to be the national dish and are served with frites but I just couldn’t bring myself to get them.

On to the Chocolate Museum!!

Although we were stuffed full from lunch of course we still had a bit of room for chocolate!

The Chocolate Museum was great, a sample plate greets you at the door and sets the scene J

We followed the tour guide (not a person but an information sheet) and made our way from the Mayans to the modern day and learned about the history of chocolate before watching a display of chocolate making followed by a tasting of the freshly made chocolate!  I have never liked Pralines but after having one here I may have to say I only like Belgian Pralines!

Back at the hotel we had a few issues with finding accommodation for the following day at Florenville, the nearest town to Orval Abbey, the Trappist Monk Monastery we wanted to visit but finally succeeded in finding a place.  We then booked 2 nights accommodation in Paris :)

Heading back out for a late dinner, we picked another restaurant.  The only criteria we had for this choice was they needed to serve waffles!

This time we chose raspberry beer that I loved and Nathan loved less (haha more for me!) and ordered local seafood dishes (prawns for Nathan, plaice for me) followed by some famous Belgian waffles with chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream and cream for Nathan and Crepes Suzette for me :)

A relaxing walk home in the moonlight topped off a wonderful day.

This morning we had a breakfast booking for 8.30am and weren’t disappointed, freshly baked rolls, croissants and chocolate Danish on our table plus the usual fare in the buffet meant we left Bruges with full stomachs although we saved a little room for another serving of Belgian Waffles, this time with hot cherries, at the station as we waited for our train.

We are on the train to Florenville as I type and looking forward to visiting the Monastery, this is one of the first things that was recommended to us when we started asking friends what they would see in Europe and why.  And strangely, for people that usually don’t drink beer, this trip is turning into a beerfest that we are both enjoying very much!

Update: Saga of the Skis

When we got to Bruges we decided to try and find a post office immediately to try and unload these damned skis!!!!  The girl was lovely and told us that they were too big to post but there was a courier in Brussells that would be able to take them for us.  Yep. 

Beautiful Brugge

In the morning we jumped a train from Brussels to Brugge, this took us about an hour. Please note, I'm referring to Brugge in the proper way that the Bruggians do, in Dutch! Mariya has decided to use the French approach with Bruges =P

The first thing that leapt out at me as we pulled into the Brugge train station was the message on the train announcing our arrival at Brugge, "We Komen aan in Brugge" ... ok that's not French, it's surprisingly close to German and I understand what they're saying (basically "We're coming into Brugge"), I took a guess and said to Mariya, "Hey that's probably Dutch!" and it turned out I was right.

We jumped into a taxi to head to our hotel and I asked the driver what language they spoke here. Brugge is close to the border with the Netherlands so they speak Dutch, English and German. He told us that Dutch is basically a mixture of German and English, and there wasn't much, if any, French spoken in Brugge. This did surprise me a little as I thought Belgium was a pseudo-French country, it appears I was very wrong.

The drive to our hotel in Brugge was pleasant. Brugge is a small circular town surrounded by a moat which likely served them very well a few hundred years ago. There are also a few canals running through the town. These days a "new bitumen road" rings around the town and moat, but to get into the town proper you then cross one of the bridges over the moat and head into the cobblestoned road area of the old town.

It was a nice 10 minute trip along the cobblestoned road to our hotel in the middle of Brugge. We arrived very early at our hotel without any prior notice but they took it in their stride and let us just drop our bags in the bar area of the hotel and then we headed out to explore the town of Brugge.

We were given a map by the hotel concierge and some basic instructions to find our way to the Market Square, the centre of town. With my innate Leyland Brother DNA I'm usually very good at waundering around places and getting my bearings but Brugge had me running round in circles well and truly. After about 15 minutes we finally figured out that I was reading the map incorrectly and with a few adjustments we were all sorted and on our way to the Market Square. Most of the roads in Brugge are like you see in the movies when they show you a small European town. All the roads were cobblestoned and just wide enough for one car to drive through.

Our first stop was, yep you guessed it, the Post Office. We've spent the better part of a week now trying to post my skis back to Australia! The girl at the Post Office was very helpful and while she said they certainly couldn't send the skis themselves she recommended the DHL courier company and found their phone number for us. We've now resigned ourselves to carrying the skis to atleast Paris ... hopefully we can find a courier more easily there in a big city.

Once we were finished at the post office it was about lunch time. The Market Square is ringed by old Belgian restaurants and cafes and huge buildings with big spires, clocks and bell towers. We waundered around the square perusing the menus of the restaurants and finally just settled on one as all their menus were very similar serving the traditional Belgian delicacies. Mariya and I both ordered cherry beers, unique to Belgium, and they came out in a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. Apparently sunlight reacts with cherry beer and the bottle needs to be covered in paper to stop this reaction so as not to detract from the flavour of the beer. This is by far the best beer I have ever tasted, it's a very sweet beer with a strong cherry flavour and at 6% alcohol it wouldn't take many beers to knock your block off. For lunch we both ordered the 16 Euro Meal Deal which included a starter, main and dessert. Mariya had a prawn cocktail for her starter, a flemish beef stew for her main (which is like a steak and guiness stew) and then a chocolate mousse for dessert. I went with a cheese croquet to start, Waterzooi of Chicken for my main (basically a chicken thigh cooked in a cream sauce with potatoes, carrot and onion) and chocolate mousse for dessert as well.

After lunch we were off to the Belgian Chocolate Museum (Choco-Story!), our motivation for visiting Brugge in the first place! What can I say, is there truly a better place on earth than one that dedicates itself to the cataloguing and worship of the almighty chocolate?! This is an experience that everyone should have, from beginning to end it was a fun and tasty learning experience ... mmm geschmackt. As Mariya has said, the museum basically catalogues the history of chocolate from it's humble beginnings in the 1400's with the Mayans (and even records as early as 600BC!) up to the present day with the Belgians proudly demonstrating their international dominance in this field. It was a wonderful experience and we took many photos as usual, these will obviously arrive on Mariya's facebook in the near future.

We then headed home to start organising the next leg of the trip, our visit to the Trappist Monk Monestary in Orval. After some struggling for accommodation in Paris and in a little town near Orval, finally a few hours later we came out winners. So with our next few days of travel and accommodation sorted we decided to head back out for a nice Belgian meal for dinner, the priority being Belgian Waffles of course! How could we come to Belgium and not have the waffles?!

We found a cosy restaurant and settled in for a feed. We decided to try the other flavoured Belgian beer and it turned out to be a Raspberry beer (framboise beer?), this was nowhere near as good as the cheery beer but Mariya loved it. For dinner we both gravitated towards the seafood. We've both been on a diet of mostly beef and pork (with some chicken) and haven't had seafood over the month. I went with Scampi Maison (prawns of the house) which was a really nice prawn curry, surprisingly close to a panang. Mariya ordered the crumbed fish (plaice) which she loved as well. For dessert I had the BelgianWaffles (duh, obviously, we are in Belgium after all) with Vanilla Icecream and Chocolate topping. Om nom nom nom nom nom. Mariya had Crepes Suzette which were very nice too.

That brought our day in Brugge to an end, a very different side to Belgium that we both thought was much nice than Brussels. We could easily spend a few days in Brugge in the future.

Ah Brussels….du bist Wunderbar nicht also :(

The best thing about Brussels?  It has a direct train to Bruges!!

Again, first impressions last and my first impression of Brussels was the smell! 

We had been dropped to our hotel where we checked in and dropped our bags then left to go walking to the famous Grand Place and it smelled like we were walking through a Men’s Public Toilet….and when I spotted a man using the street as a public toilet I understood why :/

Again, there was rubbish and spit and cigarette butts everywhere and every few minutes we were approached by beggars wanting money.  At lunch we were even approached by a young girl with a baby asking for money.  I watched her walk from table to table and when people would say no, she would give them the filthiest looks, so sad that a baby is being brought up into this lifestyle.

Arriving at Grand Place I could see why this was a major attraction, the buildings and the huge cobblestoned courtyard were stunning!  We took heaps of photos and then spent some time looking at the street art on display for sale.  We bought a lovely picture for Amanda and would have bought some larger ones for ourselves if we had a way of getting them home without damaging them.

Walking back to our hotel we decided we would stop for a coffee at one of the streetside cafes.  Nathan didn’t notice there was one thing missing from every café we came to….women!!  Not a single woman to be seen just tables filled with men drinking coffee.  I have no idea if there are some strange social rules or if this was just a weird coincidence but I decided that maybe stopping for coffee wasn’t a great idea….so we went home and arranged our accommodation for Bruges the next day.  A quick dinner at a local takeaway café and an early night were on the cards and despite the noise and the sirens (again!) I slept like a log!

The next morning after breakfast we packed our bags, headed back to the train station and jumped on the train to Bruges :)

Update: The Saga of the Skis.

There was a moment of hope when we went to the post office and were told we could post the skis but sadly the next day when we went back with them the staff person looked at us in horror and told us they were much too big to post!!

The Muscles from Brussels

So it seems the famous food dish from Brussels is mussels, now we get the "inside joke" on Jean Claude Vandam's nick name.

I'll leave the detailed blog on Brussels to Mariya, I'll just mention a few things that stood out for me. As expected, this was our first enounter on the trip with the French Language. There was a few small miscommunications during the day but once again almost all people spoke english as well (including the large number of beggars that would try french first and then fluidly change to english when they saw it was your language of choice).

The first disappointing thing was we got a bit ripped off on our accommodation. We payed about 130 euros for our hotel room here but to say it was budget would be extremely generous. The bed was lumpy, our window was broken and let a lot of noise in and our shower never got hot. Not great, but what can you do?!

After we checked in we decided to grab a bite to eat at the train station before heading off sightseeing. We tried Belgium's version of MacDonalds called Quick, it was actually very good. We got a couple of different burgers and about 10 kilos of french fries and all you can drink softdrink (like Macca's and HJ's used to do!).

After lunch we headed into the Brussels city centre to the Grand Place. There was a collection of very old buildings in the city square and many photographs were taken as per normal.

We then headed back to the hotel for a few hours to arrange our travel itinerary for our next stop in Belgium, out to Brugge to visit the Belgium Chocolate Museum (awww yea baby!). After we were sorted for the next day we ducked to a local take away shop and grabbed a light dinner before retiring back to the Hotel for the night.

Our stay in Brussels was short and sharp, with some good and bad but I don't think we'll head back to Brussels for awhile either unfortunately =(

Ah Berlin, du bist Wunderbar….nicht!!!!

Nathan covered off on our final week in St Anton and I don’t feel the need to add anything to his blog J

I was very sad to be leaving St Anton but on the other hand I was excited to finally be visiting all the places I had only ever heard or read about and our first stop was going to be Berlin!

The train trip was pleasant as we had a reserved cabin with 6 seats and an older couple were the only ones sharing with us until Frankfurt.  At Frankfurt they left and then Nathan and I were adopted by a couple of young girls, Clara and Sophie (maybe 4 and 2), travelling with their mother.  They took to us very fast and kept offering to share their fruit and lollies.  We ended up sharing all of our food, playing card games and chatting with their Mum as the interpreter.

We arrived at Berlin HBF at about 8.30pm and I was immediately overwhelmed!  This train station looks about the same size as Brisbane Airport!  It was 5 stories high, there were 100’s of shops and there were trains arriving and leaving from the Subway above us and the Underground below us!  We checked our directions and finally found the correct exit then tried to get a cab but it seems that our destination was too close for the cabbie so all we got was directions.  Walking in a strange city at night with all our luggage and vague directions was disconcerting but I didn’t feel uncomfortable until we had to turn down a dark sidestreet!  The building number we were looking for was nowhere to be found and I was starting to get worried.  A cab was at the kerb so I quickly asked him for more directions and strangely, even though we were on the right street, he didn’t know the building we were looking for.  Finally a local knew what we were looking for and gave us specific instructions on how to get there.  What a relief to finally walk in the door and check in!!!

The room was very basic but the shower was amazing!  Scalding hot water and nice shower gel made the cares of the day melt away and I think I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!  Sadly the sleep didn’t last long as there seemed to be a major incident across the road that required police and other emergency services to attend and then stay for hours with all of their lights flashing and our curtains did nothing to block it out!

Waking up the next morning to thick fog and wet cold I really wasn’t in the mood to go sightseeing but we needed to try and find a post office to send Nathan’s skis home as lugging them around was going to be difficult.

The saga of the skis is not a story I will tell right now….I may laugh one day but today is not that day…but when you walk up to an information booth and ask for directions to a post office and the man behind the counter yells “VAS!!??  VAS DO YOU VANT!!???” you know it’s not off to a good start L

Nathan is doing details on our day in Berlin so I won’t go into details, all I will say is that the Berlin I saw was not what I was expecting….I was overwhelmed with the filth, garbage everywhere, almost every surface (including the remains of the wall) covered in graffiti, spit EVERYWHERE and literally thousands of cigarette butts. 

It was hard to reconcile the image I had in my head of a place filled with history and the reality that no one seemed to care about preserving this.

The Brandenburg Gate was truly spectacular and lifted my mood, at least there was an effort made to maintain the area surrounding and this was the first thing that wasn’t covered in graffiti!

The train system is amazing and we decided to go to the Ku’Dam to take photo’s (anyone that knows about our German lessons will know why) but on the way we spotted the station for the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium!

We spent a couple of pleasant hours here before rushing off to catch another train to take us to the Reichstag where we had booked a viewing of the dome for 3.15.  Again, this was very impressive and the photo’s dating back to the early 1900’s told the history of German politics beautifully.

A quick stop at the café as we hadn’t eaten all day completed the visit.

Heading back to the Berlin HBF I decided that I didn’t want to spend another day in Berlin so we went and booked our tickets for the next day to travel to Brussels.

Ah Berlin, du bist wunderbar!

Our train trip to Berlin was uneventful and took about 10 hours. We actually got to see a lot more of Germany than we expected going through towns like Ulm, Stuttgard and Hamburg to name a few.

We got into Berlin at about 8pm and had a little more trouble finding our accommodation than we expected. It was called the JungendGaestehaus and was only about 500 meters from the train station. But it ended up being on a different road to the one their "address" is on so after a bit of searching, asking some taxi drivers and eventually a local, we managed to find the Hostel and checkin. The staff were very friendly and the checkin was easy and quick. The accommodation was alittle spartan but you can't expect much for 50 euros a night.

We woke up on Sunday with a huge Berlin agenda on the cards. First we had to hit the Post Office to send my skis off to Australia. We didn't end up getting this done and headed off for some sightseeing instead.

Our first stop, Checkpoint Charlie! Checkpoint Charlie is one of the most renowned locations of the Berlin Wall during the East/West Berlin separation. Here they had a whole block surrounded in billboards detailing the East/West separation and the history of Berlin from the end of World War 2 up until the reunification in 1990. This was interesting but the walk was about 5 kilometers from our hotel in cold weather and thick fog so I think we were a little disappointed and expecting something more (but the horrible weather probably killed the mood a bit as well). Shortly after, the sun came out with beautiful blue skies and the temperature jumped up nicely, this would prove to be a good omen for the remainder of the day.

As we continued to walk around the city, there were a number of billboards stating "Ah Berlin, du bist wunderbar!" hence the title of the blog =P This translates to "Ah Berlin, you are wonderful!". Mariya couldn't bring herself to agree =P

The next stop on our agenda was the Brandenburger Tor (aka the Brandenburg Gate). On our way to the Brandenburg Gate we stumbled across a very big Holocaust Memorial. We took a few photo's and the memorial was quite large. It was nice to see there was a lot of people wandering around the memorial. After spending some time here we moved on to the Brandenburg Gate. This was very impressive and one of Mariya's favorite things in Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate was one of 17 entrances to inner Berlin in the 1700's and a toll/tax point for anyone taking goods into inner Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate was enormous, it would have been atleast 10 meters high with huge pillars and many sculptures across the gates. It's a very impressive piece of architecture. As always, the photo's can be seen on Mariya's Facebook page.

After the Brandenburg Gate we decided to jump on the U-Bahn and head to Kurfensten'damm. This is a place Elizabeth told us about a number of times during our German lessons. The Public transport system in Berlin is outstanding and once again Australia has much to learn. We grabbed an above ground train one stop down the line and then an underground train out to a station called something like the Zoological Garten as this was the closest stop to the Ku'damm on the train we were on. When we got off the train here there were signs everywhere pointing to the Aquarium and the Zoo, that was it, Mariya was sold and all thought of the Ku'damm abandoned =P

So oft to the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium we went! We bought a Kombi-Ticket (which I ordered in German of course!) for both the Zoo and Aquarium and decided to do the Aquarium first. The Aquarium was enormous and had sealife, reptiles and amphibians from all over the world. After over an hour in the Aquarium we had to rush over to the Zoo as we were running out of time! The Zoo was also very large with a wide variety of wildlife from all over the globe. The big standouts for us being the huge (and noisy) lions, tigers, rhinos, monkeys, gorillas and elephants.

After the Zoo we had to head back into Central Berlin for our booked appointment at the Reichstag, Germany's new "Parliament House". You have to book 3 days in advance online to visit the Reichstag so we didn't want to miss this after making the booking. After a quick security check we headed into the Reichstag and up to the dome area. At the top of the Reichstag is a giant glass dome that you can walk up to have a wonderful view of Berlin. In the dome is the history of the Reichstag and Germany's parliament over the past few centuries. The view of Berlin was beautiful and the history was enlightening. Once we were finished in the dome we dropped in to the Reichstag Cafe for some German Waffles with cherries and cream.

We then headed back to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Berlin Central Station) to book our train to Brussels (in Belgium) for the next leg of our journey. We decided to grab dinner at the MacDonalds here, I had a "New York Special Burger" and Mariya had a "Bacon something Special". MacDonalds is really good in Germany and alot more like Hungry Jacks in Australia (or how our MacDonalds used to be like 15 years ago!).

As we were booked in for the first train out of Berlin in the morning (at 6:45am!) we decided to head home and have an early night.

While Berlin wasn't as exciting as we had hoped it was going to be some of the sights were certainly still nice, maybe our expectations were just a little too high. I don't think Mariya will be heading back to Berlin any time soon.

Our last week in St Anton

Well it's been ages since my last blog so I need to summarise our last week in St Anton!

On Monday the heavens opened up a little and we got some snow. It wasn't a huge dump but a good solid 15cm or so. So with poor skiing conditions on Monday due to visibility and wind issues I took the day off skiing and Mariya and I built the St Anton Mega Ultimate Extreme Snowman XXXL. Pics of it can be found on Mariya's Facebook =)

On Tuesday we woke up to lots of clouds again but after 15cm of snow on the Monday I figured I'd risk the cloud cover and head to Stuben (aka powderville) and it didn't disappoint. The cloud cover was very bad with 5-10m visibilty up the chairlifts on my way to Stuben but as I came to the top of the last chairlift I left the clouds behind and came out into perfect blue skies, God bless Stuben. The ski conditions were perfect with 15cm of fresh and there was powder to be had everywhere. After lunch I decided to head out to Rendl again as Marco said it would be really good in the afternoon. It only seems to be the locals at Rendl most days and most of Rendl wasn't skied out in afternoon so there was still plenty of powder pockets around there too. On the way home one of my skis was feeling a bit funny but I guessed it was just because I was completely trashed after lots of powder skiing all day! On Tuesday night we headed out with Marco to his favorite pub, Mondschein (which means Moonlight, but by the end of the night both Mariya and I reckoned it really meant Moonshine). Marco drank a few beers while Mariya and I tried an Amaretto and Applejuice cocktail, it was bloody amazing and Mariya drank like 12 of them. After a few hours Marco bought everyone an Austrian Schnapps shot. Everyone got into the spirit and shot their schnapps, Mariya and I still weren't fans. However, Marco finally convinced me to try a bootleg schnapps made by a local in St Anton. Hey, everything in St Anton has been amazing, maybe their Austrian Schnapps could be awesome afterall. So Marco and I shot some of this bootleg schnapps ... now I'm going to need to get some hair clippers to deal with the 2 inches of hair that instantly grew out of my chest! This stuff really knocks your socks off!

On Wednesday we woke up to blue skies again so I decided to head up the Valluga Bahn (aka gondola) to get some photos from the top of the Austrian Alps. When I pulled my skis out of the ski cupboard it really looked like the front of one of my skis was bent, but maybe it was just my imagination. As I skied over to the Valluga Gondola I began to have some concerns about my skis as they weren't performing properly but I headed up the Valluga to take a bunch of amazing pictures anyway (check them out on Mariya's Facebook!). After taking the pictures at Valluga I skied home for an early lunch with Mariya and something was definitely up with the skis. When I got home I laid the skis down on the floor and unfortunately my misgivings of the last day were founded, the front of one of my skis was very bent. So after a quick snack for lunch Mariya had an awesome massage and facial booked at the Schwarter Adler Hotel. I decided to walk with Mariya into town and take my skis into the shop to see if they could be repaired. After walking Mariya to the massage place I proceeded onto the Ski Shop to have a chat with the Ski dudes. Basically I was told that the ski was broken internally and could not be fixed ... yay, well that's a $700 pair of skis headed to the tip, that's skiing I guess. So, after a "colourful" discussion with Mariya, she convinced me to return to the shop and politely request (ie firmly demand) a warranty claim on the skis. We headed back into the shop before dinner and had a chat to Jeff (you remember Jeff right? He's the guy who sold me the skis in the first place, we like Jeff). Jeff basically said that it was very unlikely that a warranty claim would be honoured as they would consider the ski damaged as a part of normal skiing activity. I guess we'll have to claim the damaged ski on our Travel Insurance ... and then Jeff said why claim on the travel insurance when the skis have insurance too! Music to my ears! Have I mentioned today that Austria is the best country on the planet? So after some paperwork Jeff ordered in a new pair of skis from Salsburg for me that would arrive and be ready to be picked up on Saturday morning. Well that's a shame, no more skiing for this holiday I guess, BUT on the other hand, a new pair of skis are in my pocket as we leave Austria, score! So with the skis settled, Mariya and I headed off to the St Anton Museum for dinner. This place was very nice and rustic and the food was fantastic. I had venison yet again (for like the 30th time this holiday) with rotkraut (om nom nom!) and Mariya had an Eye Filet with potato and cheese croquets and bacon (duh, this is Austria after all). After dinner we walked around the museum and learnt about the history of Alpine Skiing in St Anton. Austria is the motherland of Alpine Skiing and Ski Instruction and we learnt all about a man name Hannes Schneider who is basically the father of Skiing as it stands today. It was really interesting and alot of fun. After dinner we decided to check out the Ski Show at 9pm in the middle of St Anton but unfortuantely it had been cancelled. So with dispirited hearts and lowered heads we decided to smash down on some Chocolate Fondue for dessert! The fondue was awesome and looking across at some of the other people eating a MEAT!! fondue we instantly decided on our dinner location for the next night.

Thursday we decided to have a quiet one, we did some basic shopping around town and bought a new Austrian food to try at home, Marillen Knoedel! It was basically a dumpling filled with an apricot and covered with cinnamon biscuit crumbs, it was bloody awesome! For dinner we headed out for our new Meat Fondue experience. This was incredible! Brock, you'd love it! We had a few different meats (Veal, Pork and Beef cut into chunks) and they give you a weird fondue pot that is filled with a very hot oil with some spices in it. Basically you pop the meat onto a fondue stick and put it in the oil, after an extremely satisfying deep frying sound, in about 15 seconds the meat is cooked and ready to eat! They give you about 6 different dipping sauces for the meat (stuff like a garlic aeoli, a curry, a tatziki, a cocktail sauce, a whiskey sauce and others). My favorite was definitely the whiskey sauce and Mariya went for the garlic one as expected. We also grabbed a cheese fondue which was very similar to the one we had earlier in our stay.

Friday was another cruisy day finalising our train booking to Berlin and sorting out our final packing for our trip on Saturday. For our last night out we decided to splurge and head out to a restaurant called the Rasthaus Ferwall. This was about a 15 minute drive out of town by taxi in a nice little chalet on a hill covered in snow. Yet again, pictures are on Mariya's facebook. The food here was outstanding, I had Veal Cheeks with a Gorgonzola sauce and bacon and onion dumplings while Mariya had lamb cutlets with a meat jus and potato croquets (blergh). We had an aperitif (which is a pre-meal drink) which was a white champagne mixed with a cranberry cordial. It was so gesmackt that Mariya had to have two. For dessert Mariya had Panna Cotta with Passionfruit Sorbet and I had a Vanilla Bean and Cassis Parfait. Rasthaus Ferwall was incredible and we'd certainly recommend it to anyone visiting St Anton in the future. After dinner we hit the Mondschein pub with Marco, Konny and Dominic (Marco's brother) for the last time. We sat around chatting for a few hours over beers and amaretto applejuices while fending off Marco's offers of Austrian schnapps. We finally got a photo of Marco and this went up in usual fashion on Mariya's facebook.

Saturday I woke up with an unbearable headache and in severe depression. Ok maybe not, but it was very disappointing to be leaving St Anton at last. This is one of the most amazing places Mariya and I have been to and we'll certainly be heading back here as soon as possible.

Thus endeth our Austrian stay.

So begins our last week in St Anton

I woke up this morning to find the weather forecasters were spot on again!  They had predicted snow and when I opened the curtains that’s all I could see.  Everything was covered in a layer of brand new snow and it was coming down hard!

Nathan and I had learned that the weather forecasters are pretty good here, so he already knew that with such heavy snowfall visibility would be very low and skiing wouldn’t be as good so we had planned a day of non skiing activities!

We had spoken to Marco about hiring toboggans and he told us he had a couple of brand new ones that we were welcome to use for free, he also showed us where the tools were for us to be able to make a snowman :)

So that was the plan for today!

Like all plans it didn’t really work out that way….

While I was waiting for Nathan to wake up I checked Facebook (of course) and my emails.

There was an email from Dane (our Lawyer in Port Vila) with our draft contract to buy La Casa, the restaurant in Port Vila that we had put the offer on.  A couple of changes needed to be made so I sent it back to him to have the amendments made.

Next was an email from our Solicitor in Brisbane for the Newnham sale….the buyer has been a pain in the arse from day one and today was no different!  Missing contract dates, asking for extensions…this guy just seemed to be determined to drive us to terminating the contract!  Just to piss him off I refused and after a few stressful hours of back and forth with the solicitors he finally (3 days late!!!) gave the last approval and we went unconditional….hoofreakingray!

To celebrate Nathan and I decided we needed to have desserts and Heisse Punsch (a hot Rum, Sangria and Juice Punch) at Fuhrmannstube.

First we went shopping and we bought Nathan his first GoreTex ski jacket!  It doesn’t look flash but it’s top of the range ski gear, super light and super thin.  We then bought a nice new fleece to go underneath just in case the temperature dipped again.

Then off to find lunch!  I had been craving pizza, so we went to Dolce Vita.  Great value food there, I got a huge pizza and Nathan got Spaghetti Alla Matriciana, both were very tasty :)

Another plus is they are right across the road from Fuhrmannstube so we wandered over and ordered our Heisse Punsch and desserts.

I couldn’t resist the Palatschinken mit Marillenmarmalade und Shlagobers (Pancakes with apricot jam and cream, dear Lord I am addicted to them!) but Nathan tried Chocolate Souffle with Vanilla Ice Cream and Cream (I can’t remember the German name for this) and enjoyed it very much.  We will have to make time for one more visit before we leave so we can both have the Apfelstrudel mit Vanillesauce one more time….

Feeling extremely full and quite relaxed and warm inside from the Punsch, we strolled home where I decided a nap would be better than toboganning….when I woke 3 hours later it was too late to think about toboganning, we had a snowman to build!

Gathering together our accessories and a shovel we went out into the back yard and created a masterpiece!  I think this is the biggest snowman we have ever made!  The conditions were perfect, tonnes of light fluffy show had fallen and continued to fall as we were building :)

Pictures are on Facebook (of course)!

To top off the day we returned home where I cooked us a simple dinner of marinated turkey breasts, potatoes in garlic and mustard cream and rotkraut.

We bumped into Marco on the way back in and he invited us to go to his local pub tomorrow night for some drinks and traditional Tyrolean music, should make for an interesting blog tomorrow ;)

Travel around the country side, ask Nathan and Mariya brothers!

Yesterday I decided to have my first ski lesson. In the morning I strolled down to the Ski Lesson meeting area and was told by the ski instructor that he'd get a few of us to ski down the baby slope to decide which class we should be placed in.

So up the baby slope tow rope I went, at the top I had to wait for a few minutes for everything to get organised. Once everyone was settled the instructor told us to ski down. I waited for the first 2 to ski down ... mmm very pro snow ploughs guys, but I'm hoping I get put in another group ... so I skied down behind the pair to the instructors at the bottom. Once down there, the 2 others were placed in the same group and were sent off with an instructor. The head ski instructor looked at me and said "How do you feel about joining the off piste/powder group?". "Hells yea biatch!", came my instant reply! Ok maybe not, I had to tell the guy I didn't have an avalanche beacon or avalanche pack. He told me no problems and to follow him. He sorted me out with a beacon and pack for the day and sent me up the slopes to meet up with the Off Piste/Powder group that were already out and about.

When I met up with the group we had to ski down the mountain and jump on another lift as we were heading out to Stuben for some off piste spring skiing. The ski down the mountain took like a million years and I thought my legs were going to shrivel up and die, omg my legs were in agony by the time we got to the lift. Ok, so this Off Piste Ski Instructor is a sadist. Hmm the rest of the group didn't seem to be looking like they were about to die though ... so it was time for me to man up!

After a couple more lifts to the top of Stuben we headed over the backside of the top lift and down some seriously awesome Off Piste skiing. About half way down the run the instructor (Meinhard, very interesting Austrian name?!) stopped at a huge patch of grass on the side of the mountain. "This is Spring Skiing for you!" he shouted and pulled off his skis. So we walked across a couple of hundred meters of grass and rocks in the middle of the run and then got to snow again, clipped back into our skis and finished at the bottom of the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain we had a pretty hairy goat track trail for about 10km's to get back to a bus stop which then took us back to St Anton. This took us about 30 minutes with some hiking involved to get up and around some parts, I was pretty wrecked by the end of this and excited to see a bus turn up to return us to St Anton!

The bus delivered us to a nice little pub on the side of the ski slopes for lunch. I had a grosser bier (750ml beer with 5.0% alcohol) and Salmon and Salad for lunch. This could make for an interesting afternoon of skiing, the beer was like 3-4 aussie beers and we drank them in about half an hour. During lunch one of the guys asked our instructor if we were going to do the Rendl Waterfall Off Piste run after lunch but he thought there was about 30 minutes of walking involved. Meinhard's response was short and to the point, "We have a lift pass, not a hiking pass!" I seconded that opinion =P

Once we finished lunch we headed back outside to get back into our ski gear. One of the Austrian guys started passing around a bottle with medicine for all our sore knees ... Austrian Schnapps. Remember that schnapps Mariya and I tried the other day? It's about 35% alcohol and the guys all took a shot or 2 before we headed out after lunch (after also knocking over those big beers!), I said "No thanks, I'll pass on the schnapps." Afterall, I have more than enough hair on my chest.

We ski'd a few more runs in the afternoon and were then done for the day. Everyone said their goodbyes all around the group. It's alot more friendly than anything I've seen in any other lesson anywhere else, with lots of comraderie. There's a very different attitude to skiing over here, it's all about the fun.

Today Mariya and I decided to jump on the bus and head out to Lech and Zurs for the day for a little sight seeing. I took my skis just incase the opportunity arose for some impromptu skiing at these resorts.

First we headed to Lech to see what it was like. It was a lot less commercial than St Anton, there were much fewer shops and restaurants. However, it was also much busier. There is much more accommodation in Lech than there is in St Anton and Lech is actually on the highway (whereas St Anton is off the highway) so there is a signifcant amount of car and bus traffic always travelling through the town. We took heaps of photos and then stopped for lunch. I had Kase Spaetzle (which was like a really awesome Austrian Macaroni cheese but about a million times better, the Italians have a lot to learn). Mariya had 2 venison sausages with mustard, tomato sauce and grated horseradish which was bloody awesome as well. For dessert Mariya had pancakes with apricot jam (her new addiction, who would have thought Mariya would become addicted to sweets in Austria?!) and I tried their apple strudel (not as good as the one in St Anton but still good).

After lunch we decided to catch a taxi to Zurs, it's only 10 minutes down the road and the Taxi only cost us 15 Euros. We figured we'd spend about an hour in Zurs before jumping on the bus back to St Anton. Or not ... the main road in Zurs was about 200 meters long and it took us 15 minutes to finish browsing Zurs. The highlight being an absolutely enormous snowman about 5 meters wide and 3 meters high, check in out on Mariya's Facebook! We had 40 minutes before the bus to St Anton arrived so stopped for a quick coffee, which was tiny, maybe 4 sips and you're done?! We then jumped on the bus again and headed back to St Anton. The round trip for the bus for the entire day cost only 12 Euro's for the both of us! Once again, Australia has a lot to learn on the pricing of their public transport ...

All the photos of Lech and Zurs are up on Mariya's Facebook, so make sure you take a look!

St Anton: The Halfway Mark

Well, we're halfway through the St Anton stay and quite a lot has happened since the last blog.

Over the last few days I've managed to ski all of St Anton, St Christoph and Stuben. The ski conditions here in Austria are second to none and the weather has been outstanding. I'm waiting for some nice snowfall so that I can head out to Stuben (aka Powdersville) and get some powder skiing action happening, sounds like that will be early next week if the Austrian Weather Man is right, and he's been right on the money with his reports so far.

With a perfect bluebird day today (with not even a single cloud in the sky and no wind at all) we decided to head up the Galzig Bergbahn (aka Gondola) for lunch at the top of the Austrian Alps and to take some photo's of the surrounding mountains (the photo's are on Mariya's facebook). The view was amazing with visibility for hundreds of kilometers and the food at the restaurant was outstanding. We both ordered Wiener Schnitzel and ended up with 2 schnitzels each and about 12 kilograms of french fries. Obviously we didn't manage to get through the food but we had a pretty good crack and only paid like 13 Euro each for the experience.

With 8 days of skiing down it was about time for some therapeutic ski massage loving! Mariya popped down to the massage joint recommended by Marco (our landlord) and booked herself in for a Relaxation Massage and me in for a Sports Massage. Mariya's massage was scheduled for 2:15pm and mine was slated for 5:45pm (at the end of the ski day!). When I got home at around 5pm, Mariya gave 2 thumbs up to her massage and I knew I was in for some sweet therapy to mend the broken body. After 8 days of skiing I was in serious need of some remedial work to make the body last another 8 ... and I haven't even done anything rough yet or got a mountain guide to run me through my paces =P Needless to say, the massage was fabulous and not half as painful as the sadistic, little korean sports masseuse from Queenstown on our last ski holiday. Fingers crossed the body now lasts another 8 days of intense skiing abuse.

After my massage we were off to a "Mexican" restaurant called Bobo's for dinner, their specialty a pork ribs and chicken wings combo. Does Austria have what it takes to usurp BRT and claim the title of Best Ribs In The World?! Unfortunately not, but they gave a strong showing and easily push into second place. I guess Austria can't be the best at everything or their population would be roughly 7 billion. But if their worst performance is 2nd place in the world for Pork Ribs I think they're in pretty good stead.

The last few days have been bright and sunny with perfect conditions but now we're hoping for a few clouds to roll in and show us some snow loving. All the sun over the past week has been melting away some snow and creating some icy conditions. Apparently the snow might roll in on Sunday (and hopefully the skies open up and spew mountains of snow!) but for now we continue with perfect blue skies and warm positive temperates in the 1-2 degree range. I guess we can't really complain about perfect weather, we couldn't really ask for much more.

Last night Marco came over for a beer and chat. We sat around for a couple of hours chatting and drinking beers, the night actually disappeared really quickly as it always seems to do for us when we sit around chatting. Mariya bought an Authentic Austrian Apricot Schnapps to try and we both had a taste ... to say it would put hairs on your chest is probably an understatement, the Yeti probably drinks this stuff by the bottle. When Marco came around we showed him the schnapps and asked him if that was a good one (as Mariya and I both almost died trying it). Marco gave it high praise and smacked down a shot of it instantly ... I wonder how hairy his chest is ... I'm guessing a massive rug is on display under his tshirt based on his schnapps sculling abilities.

With plenty more on our plates and still over a week to go, there'll be plenty more action to report from the snow fields of St Anton in the coming days!

The wrong sort of cold.....

Last night we went and had our first genuine Austrian Fondue!  It was so delicious!  Not only was there an assortment of breads to dip but also pickled onions, gherkins, baby corn, whole jalapenos, cherries, pear and peach!

The side salad was exactly what I had been craving as well, German potato salad, pickled cabbage, carrots, lettuce and tomato with a zingy dressing.

We decided to try Glüwein (hot mulled wine) as well.  I drank mine straight but Nathan really didn’t like it, he kept adding more and more sugar to try and make it more palatable but gave up in the end.  After tasting his I wished I’d sugared mine as well!!

I woke up this morning a bit down in the dumps.  I had thought that I escaped unscathed from being locked in a plane for 15 hours with a woman that was coughing non stop but the sore throat and runny nose have stripped away that illusion.

On the upside, vitamins are super cheap here! €2,99 for 60 Vitamin C and Zinc capsules!

The supermarket fridge shelves are also well stocked with probiotic drinks so I’m sure this will pass very quickly.

On a brighter note, one thing that we have forgotten to mention is how many people here ski in fancy dress!

On our first day we went past a large group of superheroes, the next day we have no idea what the theme was but there were lots of people wearing skin tight fluorescent lycra and today there seemed to be a farmyard theme with pigs and cows everywhere.

It certainly puts a smile on my face! 

Maybe next time I will have my camera handy and get some pics :)

Nathan's New Skis

OMG what's going on? A non-german blog title? Oh the humanity!

So today I tested the Kastle (kayst-lay) James 175 skis.

I jumped on them this morning and they felt very different to any other ski I've ever ski'd. It took me awhile to get used to the very different feel but by lunch time I was very comfortable on the skis. When I got home for lunch I checked the skis and sure enough, their binding was mounted at the centre of the ski. This is the first time I've ever ski'd a centre mounted ski and it certainly is a very different feel.

After lunch I hit the slopes again with a new mindset on the skis, their feel was different because of the way the skis were mounted. After a few more hours on the ski I was completely comfortable and scooting around the slopes. Weirdly enough, Mariya saw me blast down the trail on the last section on the way home. She said I was absolutely flying and completely awesome!! Ok, I think she was humouring me.

Even with a centre mounting these skis were far superior to the Salomon 2012's so Mariya and I headed off to the Ski shop to discuss an option for purchase. When we arrived at the shop I indicated to the Sales guy (Jeff, we like Jeff) that I was keen to buy a pair of the Kastle skis. He said he would call his Kastle rep in Salzburg and see if he could arrange a pair to be delivered. But then he decided he'd look in the shop front windows to see if they had a pair on display. And guess what? They did! Everything's working out for Nathan! So after some serious negotiations with Jeff, where he basically just told us he was going to drop the price by 200 euros, I purchased the Kastle skis and had them mounted at the Freeride setting rather than the centre mount.

So tomorrow I will ride the skis for the first time in the Freeride mount position, I think it will be quite a big improvement for me as it's the way I have always ski'd in the past. I'm pretty stoked and looking forward to tomorrow's skiing!

So yea, I missed all the cool stuff that actually happened today. When I woke up, Mariya told me to look out the window. I figured it was going to be another bluebird day like yesterday, score! Well even better, I looked out the window and it was bucketing down snow, double score!! The conditions today were perfect for skiing, there was a good bit of snow that had already fallen and the sky continued to spew all day long. Amazing conditions and by far the best skiing I've encountered in my entire life. Move over Canada, you've just been schooled by the Austrian Alps!

For dinner, Mariya made an amazing assortment of marinated pork steaks, rotkraut and mushroom gravy spaetzle. What can I say, the food in Europe is amazing and Mariya is some kind of food magician savant thingy.

Another great day in the Austrian Alps with many more to come.

Guess what? Wir sint im Osterreich! Next trip here everyone comes!

St Anton am Arlberg – my first impressions

Arriving in St Anton felt like coming home, I immediately felt at ease here.

It looks similar to Banff being surrounded by snow capped mountains but it feels really empty, there are very few cars and no crowds. 

One surprise to me was the ski lifts every few hundred feet just behind the houses that people are staying in.  No need for car hire or buses to get around, simply walk out the door and onto the first gondola and you’re away!

The houses are so quaint and it’s like walking through a picture book on European history.

Houses, pubs, restaurants, apartments, hotels are all jumbled together although there is a main street that has most of the shops and lots of little cafes.

On our first morning we stumbled into a café called Café Haferl where the waitress was happy to be patient and allow us to practice our German, I’m sure she was amused but she hid it quite well.  We went back there this morning for breakfast and I can see us spending a bit of time there, the coffee and hot chocolates are great and the people are lovely.

The first big surprise here was how cheap everything is!  We went to the only supermarket in town to stock up on some basics and were blown away at the prices!

We’re not big drinkers but when you can buy a bottle of beer for €0,79 or cider for €1,49 it’s tempting to pick up a few bottles to have with dinner

Most grocery prices seem to be about ¼ - ½ the price we pay in Australia.

The restaurants and cafes also seem to be very competitive.  You can buy a coffee for as little as €1,20 and a pizza large enough for 2 people to share was €11,80.  Two hotdogs with the lot and two beers cost us under €12.

On our second night here we went to a nice restaurant and still only paid around what one meal would cost us in Australia.

Everyone knows we prefer to self cater when we are on holidays but at the prices they are charging here we are happy to go out a little more often.

I haven’t done anything exciting since arriving here.  After the stress of the last few months I’m actually happy to just be sitting around looking out the window at the snow and daydreaming or wandering to the shops.  Cooking basic meals or strolling to a café.  Having a nap after lunch.  I haven’t even started building a snowman yet.

I have plenty of time to get into the activities they have available here but if I don’t do any more than this then that’s fine as well….after all this is a holiday and not a competition!

Nathan on the other hand has been his usual ‘energiser bunny’ self!  He already has his new ski boots (very nice ones!) and is onto his 3^rd set of demo skis.  Pretty sure he will buy this set though, they are the best rated skis (of course) and look really cool (also of course).

First day back on the slopes after a long break and he was back on the blacks already…I suppose no one has ever accused him of doing things by halves!

It’s been snowing consistently since we woke up this morning so he’s very happy to be skiing new powder today.

I’ll be leaving the daily blogging to Nathan as he is doing the exciting stuff and I’ll probably just do a week in review summary for the rest of our stay in St Anton.  

Probably be another story once we start the 2nd part of our trip though!

Schifahren: Eins Tag bei Nathan

Today will officially be known as Ski Test Day.

However, it will also be known as Epic Fail Ski Test Day.

Ideally today I was supposed to test 2 different ski's. In the morning I was to test a Salomon 2012, and in the afternoon I was scheduled to test a Black Crows Viator.

The Salomon 2012 was all set and I ran it through it's paces this morning, more accurately it ran me through mine. I don't remember skiing being this hard!

The 2012 was a great ski but probably a bit long for me at 179cm.

At lunch time I headed back to the apartment for lunch with Mariya, we had Austrian Knackers, Austrian cheese made with Tirol milk, tomato, mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches, a proverbial feast! After lunch I had to drop my ski boots in for a few adjustments to the shell and was given a pair of rental boots to use for free for the afternoon.

Now back to the ski shop to trade in my Salomon 2012's for the Black Crows Viator ... or not. I was told that the Viator would be ready for me to pick up after lunch but it appears it wasn't and none were to be found in St Anton ... That's ok, I'll test the ski I was told about yesterday that I hadn't even known about, the Kastle (pronounced kayst-leh) James 175 ... ok none of those either ... in fact the only ski they had was a shorter version of the 2012 ... ok I guess that will have to do, the one I had was too long for me anyway. So with a shorter 2012 on my feet I headed up the slopes to run this ski through the paces again. Not an optimal solution as I wanted to test multiple skis and pick my favorite, but atleast I got to ski the 2012 in a length more suitable to me. Still a great ski and even better as the length was much nicer. The only problem being the mountain was ski'd out alittle and the 2012 isn't a super ski for ski'd out conditions.

So a bit of an anti-climatic day on the ski testing side. I headed back into town with Mariya to pick up my adjusted Ski boots and to speak with the guy at the Ski shop about testing some more skis. The guy I initially spoke with managed to find the Kastle James 175's for testing in about 2 minutes in the computer system ... and they were downstairs at the shop ... ok so the other rental guys were a bit fail but what can you do?

So after a bit of organising we walked out of the shop with the Kastle James 175's for me to test tomorrow ... I'm hoping I really like these ski's because they look amazing and they're Austrian! The only problem being there's actually no new pairs of these skis in St Anton so if I do end up liking them I'll have to order a pair in from Salzburg and this would mean the ski's wouldn't arrive until next Monday ... we'll wait and see how the skis go tomorrow before I get too excited one way or the other, they could be terrible =p The guy did say that we might be able to arrange something where I could hold onto his Kastle skis while I wait for mine to arrive from Salzburg.

After all the Ski drama we headed home for Mariya to cook up our dinner, chicken breast with onion gravy, rotkraut and spaetzle, accompanied by a bottle of pear cider from Sweden, a feast for a king, the dinner was absolutely amazing!

We may have a later night tonight as we have recovered from the jetlag and should be ok with less sleep from here on in =)

Sankt Anton am Arlberg: Tag Eins by Nathan

We woke up in St Anton on March 6 after a huge sleep to recover from our jetlag. Day 1 in St Anton we decided to get everything sorted to carry us through our 3 weeks in Austria.

First things first, off to the Ski Shops! I needed to organise some Ski Boots as a priority. After speaking with Marco (our landlord!) for advise on the best shop to visit, we headed into the middle of St Anton to Intersports to check out their boot selection and get a fitting. After a couple of hours of customised fitting by an Austrian Boot Fitter I came out the other end with a slick pair of pretty, new, brown ski boots. Mariya loves them!

Onto the Ski Testing! I knew the type of Ski I wanted to purchase this time around so we had to waunder around quite a few shops to find a place that stocked the ones I was interested in. After many hours of browsing we found a place that had 3 of the 4 skis I wanted to try and a suggestion on another ski I hadn't considered. So March 7 will see me testing some ski's to figure out what I like!

With the Boots and Skis sorted it was now onto bigger and better things, food shopping!! We found a local Spa supermarket on the main street and ducked in to see what Austrian delicacies we could indulge in over the coming weeks. So we grabbed some local food and headed home for the day to relax and prepare for the next big day.

Oh yea, for lunch we had a hotdog and an Austrian beer at a little hole in the wall take away. Om nom nom, it was bloody fantastic, it appears the Austrian beer called "Fohrenburger Stiftle" is very similar to a Carlton middy, not a bad drop!

For dinner we dropped into one of the first Pubs built in St Anton and had some traditional Austrian chow for dinner. Mariya had a weird Austrian stir fry consisting of pork, potato and onion; very weird but surpisingly tasty. I had venison with Austrian dumplings in a mushroom and onion gravy, with cranberry and pear on the side! What a weird combo, but also a winner. However, Mariya wasn't a big fan, she thought it was too sweet, but you know me and my sweet tooth!

We headed home for another early night and plenty of sleep for a huge next day.

Getting there: The Nathan Experience

Well, Europe is a bloody long way away. You know in Star Wars where they say "In a Galaxy far, far away"? Well George Lucas is referring to the distance between Australia and Europe.

The first leg of the trip was from Brisbane to Dubai, and this was almost 15 hours in a Boeing 777. That's a long time to be cooped up in a small airplane chair. Thank god for lots of movies and a good plane entertainment system. Unfortunately the games sucked the big one but there was a good selection of movies to watch and apparently it changes every month so we'll have new ones on the way home. I ended up watching In Time, Warrior and The Green Lantern and surprisingly they were all quite good.

After landing in Dubai they got us off the plane and onto the tarmac and then put us in buses for transit to the actual airport, that was a bit weird. It's the first time I've exited a large plane onto the tarmac and the first time I've ever had to be transported by bus from my plane to the airport and that took almost 15 minutes! As you can imagine, Dubai Airport was huge!

We spent about 4 hours at Dubai before jumping on the next plane headed to Munich in Germany, an Airbus A380. OMG, this plane is huge! it has 2 levels and they board through 3 different entry ramps across the 2 levels. The wings would have been atleast 10 meters long and probably 40 meters wide each side, this plane is enourmous! This is one of the things I was really looking forward on the trip over. Everyone knows that I generally have space issues in a place seat due to my shoulder width and on the previous Boeing 777 I was a bit cramped as per usual. Not on the A380! I had room to spare in my seat and we were only in cattle (er I mean Economy) class. I give 2 big Nathan Thumbs Up for the travelling experience on the A380. So, the flight from Dubai to Munich was about 6 hours long at 38,000 feet flying at about 600 miles per hour. I watched the Tin Tin movie (what an epic disappointment, don't bother! or maybe I was just too tired...), napped a little and played some of the disappointing games. Even with the crappy movie and boring video games my A380 experience wasn't tarnished in the slightest.

So, in about 30 hours of travel, we've flown about 16,000km. Wow, that's almost a world away.

Touching down in Munich was painless and while customs did take a little while, our Customers Officer (a German Police Officer!) was very friendly and didn't even threaten to arrest me.

We picked up our bags and then headed to the Munich Airport Train Station. All my research suggested that it would be very easy to simply catch a train from Munich Airport to our Ski Resort in St Anton (Austria) but to say I was a little nervous about it would probably be a slight understatement.

We bought our ticket from a gruff German Lady, direct from Munich Aiport to St Anton. We jumped on the train and after a couple of easy transfers we arrived in St Anton 4 hours later. Europe has such a simple and efficient transport system, Australia has a lot to learn.

Jumping in a taxi we were at our Apartment in 5 minutes and we were both completely wrecked after almost 40 hours in transit.

After ducking out for a quick pizza (which cost about $15, I was told St Anton was very expensive ... apparently not if you go to the right places!) we both hit the hay and slept like logs for about 11 hours.

Thus endeth our transit. A few lessons were learned and we'll be better prepared for our next trip here next year! =p