This past weekend was a full one for us. Friday night was my first experience at a Christmas party in Germany. It was for my husband's company. This Friday night I will get to go to my own Christmas party for my work. It should be quite interesting. Saturday was the parade, as you know. But Sunday, we got up very early and braved the slopes. It was really quite a lovely day. Not too cold by still cold enough. Not too sunny, but definitely not gloomy. No snow was falling, but for our first day, this was probably a good thing.
It had been nearly two years since we had gone skiing, and that time two years ago was the first ever for our two sons. We weren't exactly sure what it would be like for us and how much they would remember. But we wanted to get our ski legs back as soon as possible, since (question of the day alert!!) skiing is the most popular winter sport in Germany, as far as I can tell in my research. Now of course, this is not scientific, and defining what is meant by popular is important - popular to participate in or popular to watch. Every German person we've talked to has an opinion about the slopes. Most ski, but some do snowboard - particularly the younger ones. Most think the slopes are easy, but of course they have been living on them all their lives!! To us southern chickens who see snow as often as icebergs floating by in the Charleston harbor, well, this was no easy task.
We first got out of the rental building and were looking for the bunny slope so that the kids could practice going downhill with some control, and we could practice helping the kids with their control. Our German friends said (in German of course), "No no - it is easier at the top." After some hesitation on my part, we let them take our youngest, and off we went on the chair lift. Well it got us half way up. But we all did manage to get on and off the lift without incident. What a relief. Then they ski us down to the next little stopping point - the lift to the top. Ugg! It is what they call a Schlepplifte - that is, there is a T bar on a stretchable line. You put the T behind your bottom and then proceed to let it pull you, jerkily, up the mountain while you try to keep your skis from veering off the path. With the help of our friends, we got the kids up this part of the mountain too, to the easy run. And we could manage it, sorta. But it very quickly became obvious that our youngest had not remembered much of what to do. So our friend took our youngest and got him down to the Schlepplifte again for us. Then, they went on their way.
We thought to ourselves, we've done this before today, so we should be able to do it again. My husband took our older one, and I took the younger one. And we braved the dreaded lift. We had gone second, so the others did not know that just at the top of the first large hill, we fell off the lift. Now falling off the lift means that you fall over, and the T-bar goes on without you. It was not dangerous or painful, but here we were in the middle of the T-lift path. So we quickly removed our skis and scurried off the path. Since we could not just jump back onto the T-lift without going to the start, there was no choice but to hike down. The snow on either side of the lift path was very soft and deep. My son could not walk through it; he had to go on his bottom to get down. That meant that I was carrying his skis, my skis, my poles and schlepping through the deep snow. I thought I would die!! We finally get to the bottom, and I call my husband on his cell to let him know that we would not be behind him and for him to go ahead and ski on down to help me decide what to do. No answer. After a great deal of waiting and discussing (yes, I used that word loosely) what we should do next, the rest of my family finally shows up, but not without their own tale of falling off the lift much higher up the mountain and also having to hike out to a ski run to be able to make it back down. Our choices were to hike out of the lift area or to figure out how to manage our skis and our youngest up the lift. Finally, after we were unable to decide, our German friends arrived to rescue us again. They got us to the top again, at which point we were going to ski to the bottom and be done for the day.
The top, as we have seen, is the easy section. We had not been to the bottom yet. We get to the halfway point, and then start the bottom half. Hmmm. We look over the edge of the slope and see nothing. We get closer, and then see the significantly slanted slope. Hmmmmm. Our friends seeing that our youngest will not be able to handle this section, go ahead and ski him on down - thankfully. But the rest of us had to do it the hard way. I can proudly say I only fell two times of my own account, and once more because I was watching how my other son was doing and not where I was going. We made it down to the bottom, and I asked - where were the easy slopes??! And they said, "This was it - it was the family run." I was aghast. I have skied in Colorado and in Canada, and this was NOT family runs in those areas. So we have gained a whole new appreciation for the ski talents of these hearty people here.
I mentioned before about defining popular. Here in Germany, there are many winter spectator sports in addition to skiing. This southern part of Germany has been the scene of the Winter Olympics in 1936 and partially in 1940. It has also been in nearby Austria and Switzerland 4 other times. So to the locals, these sports are ingrained into their daily winter lives. There are serious world-class ski jumps nearby just 15 minutes from my husband's work. Germany is the only country to have 4 luge tracks used for bobsled, luge and skeleton races. These are really fun to watch. There are also snowboarding, cross-country skiing, tobogganing, ice skating, snow-hiking, curling, and for a few willing to brave it, even spending the night in igloos can be experienced here.
One of the most popular places to ski in Germany is Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the site of the 1936 Olympics and home to the highest peak in Germany - the Zugspitz. It will also be the site for the Alpine Skiing World Cup for Men in 2011. It is only 1.5 hours from us, so we hope to have pictures at some point from this excellent ski village, but of course once we have gotten much more practice in!! Here are some pictures from Sunday's skiing taken again by our friend, Monica Brow
n. Thanks again Monica for letting me borrow the pictures!!
The words for today are Snow skiing: das Schneeskifahren (shnay shee fah rehn or shnay skee fah rehn - I've heard both) and Mountain: der Berg (burg).
The question for the day is "Do Germans sing English Christmas songs?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
