Announcement!

I spent most of this week skiing. Today was my 24th time on the slopes this season. On Wednesday, I skiied as far away from Kirchberg as I have been so far (not including taking the train to Zell am See/Kaprun). I kept taking lifts and gondolas as far as I could for almost 3 hours. I visited 6 or 7 towns and took the gondola up from each one. I finally decided to head back, without even going as far as I could have. Skiing back required the help of a map several times. When I got back, I realized I had not taken the same run, the same lift, or the same gondola twice the entire day! It was a lot of fun skiing on so much new terrain.

Alright now on to my announcement. I will get right to it. I am leaving in April, after the ski season is over, to continue my backpacking adventure. For 3 months, I will travel through Europe, Africa, Asia, and end up in North America! And here is the best part: I won't be travelling alone!!! Maren and I have decided to do this trip together, and I am incredibly excited. This is the third part of my adventure so far, with the first being travel through Europe, the second being working in Austria. This third part is definitely the craziest and coolest part!! As I have mentioned in other blogs, neither Maren nor I are big on planning trips. We would both prefer to just take off without much of a plan and figure it all out along the way. It keeps us flexible and able to change directions every time we hear about a cool place. But for this type of trip, we both think we will need to do a bit of planning, given the expense of flights across continents. If we were staying in Europe, it would be no big deal as there are cheap flights everywhere. But we need to book some flights very soon for the places we plan on travelling to. We will probably only book the longest and most expensive flights, and not plan anything else until the trip begins. So here is our tentative itinerary:

We will fly from Germany to Istanbul, Turkey. From there, we will take a bus out to the western coast of Turkey for a bit, and then a ferry out to the Greek islands. After the Greek islands, we will end up in Athens, from where we will fly to Tel Aviv, Israel. We plan on about 2 weeks in Israel, then will probably take a bus to Cairo. After some time in Egypt (and hopefully a Nile River cruise!), we will fly to Mumbai, India! We will have about 3 weeks in India, then will somehow get to China for another 3 weeks! After that, we are hoping to go to southeast Asia, probably Thailand, Malaysia, or the Phillippines (we will only have time for one, I think). By the middle of July, we will fly from southeast Asia to Seattle, just in time for my sister Lauren's wedding! Maren and I are still working on our plans for the U.S. and beyond after the wedding, so I won't mention any of that just yet.

So, there ya go. Turkey, Greece, Israel, Egypt, India, China, Thailand (?). I plan on finishing work here in Kirchberg by April 1st, then heading to Frankfurt to meet up with Maren when she flies back from South Africa. We will meet up with most of her family and get things ready for the trip. We intend to leave the second week of April. I guess I should say it again: I am incredibly excited for this trip! I couldn't imagine a better plan or a better travel partner!

Midway Through the Season

Life is still great in the mountains! My living situation has finally stabilized, no changes there. The snow has picked up a lot since my last post. It snowed about half a meter here last week. That meant lots of snow shovelling at work, but it is worth it for the powder on the slopes!

I spent 4 days with Maren in Germany. It was relatively simple to take a few trains to get to the Memmingen (near Munich) airport. I landed in Bremen where Maren was waiting for me, and we drove back to her flat in Oldenburg. Her parents are currently in the market for a new house in Oldenburg, so for the time being they are living in a flat with Maren's younger sister Johanna. Maren is living there for pretty much just the month of February. She has stopped travelling to work for the month before she leaves for South Africa. It was snowing as soon as I arrived and didn't stop much for the next few days. In fact, I left the same day a massive storm hit northern Germany. Maren and I spent our time walking into town, shopping, and biking. On Friday we left with her mother and sister for a house her family owns north of Bremen in the middle of nowhere. It is a massive warehouse that they have converted into a house and storage space for all her family's stuff. Her father (who was out of town) seems to be a bit of a packrat. The place was really cool despite there not being a whole lot to do in the area. We drove to nearby Wilhelmshaven to the indoor swimming pool Friday evening.

I had to wake up very early Saturday morning. My first train left the town of Sande before 8 o'clock. It stopped in the tracks for no apparent reason for about 15 minutes. This caused me to miss my connection in Oldenburg, so I also missed my connection in Bremen, then missed my connection in Hamburg to the airport. I arrived at the Hamburg airport an hour and a half later than I had planned, at 12:35 for my 12:50 flight! Shockingly, I somehow made it onto the plane! It involved a lot of pleading and running. I flew into Innsbruck and took a couple of trains to get back to Kirchberg to work that evening. In the end, I didn't get to really see any of Bremen or Hamburg which was a shame, but I will have plenty of time to do that in the future. I got to spend time with Maren and meet some of her family, which was the main point of the visit. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and I made use of every second of my free time from work!

I went skiing several times last week. On Thursday, I decided to head to Zell am See and Kaprun for my 20th time on the slopes. It took a little over an hour by train to get there, but it was well worth it. Both of those ski areas are covered by my season ski pass, and I had heard many good things so I decided to check it out. Zell am See had a large ski area with great snow and amazing views over the huge lake next to the town. I stayed for a couple of hours, then headed over to Kaprun. I took a taxi with some other people who didn't want to wait for the bus either. The mountain next to the town of Kaprun is called Kitzsteinhorn and is one of the tallest peaks in Austria at over 3200 meters. Some of you may recognize the name, there was a fire in the funicular tunnel in the year 2000 that killed 155 people. I took 2 gondolas up, then a chairlift, then a T-bar (2000 vertical meters total) and I was at the highest skiing point, at over 2900 meters. I was actually on a glacier that is open for skiing year-round. It was incredibly windy and cold up there, despite very warm weather down below. As I skiied down, I was getting blown right and left by the wind, but the snow was perfect and I had a lot of fun. I managed to forget my sunglasses in one of the gondolas, which was the only disappointment of the day.

Some other things to mention:

My friend Lisa (who I met in Lisbon, then visited in Dublin) is coming here for a visit in a week and half. We will get some skiing in, see some Austrian sights, and I will get to repay her for letting me crash at her place in Dublin!

On a side note, everyone please root for Yulia in today's Ukrainian election! The polls don't look so great, but I am still hoping that damn rapist doesn't win...

Alright, just to give you a little tease for my next blog post: I have, until recently, been uncertain as to my plans after the ski season. But a plan has been developing lately, and I will have huge news to report very soon! I will let you all know about my next epic adventure this week.