...more Austria photos.

We rounded out our day of skiing and headed down the mountain. By 5pm we were down, packing up gear and heading for our hotel...40K or 25 miles away, but Bossy (the GPS) kept telling us it was going to take a solid 2 hours to get there. We were a little confused, but went with it. Within 15 minutes we had knocked out 24K and still Bossy was telling us we had 1 hour 40 minutes to go. Still confused we kept driving...then when Bossy told us to take a right...onto some train tracks, we figured it out. We had to drive our car onto a 'train ferry' to take us through a mountain. OHHHH. Silly us, why didn't we think of that earlier *insert sarcasm here*. Well it didn't take an hour but we didn't have to wait too long before the train came and we loaded the car up. Once on the train we had to get out and ride in a passenger car.

We finally made it to the hotel in Bad Gastein. In Germany and in Austria any city beginning with BAD has a 'therme' or spa located in the town. Well in Bad Gastein, ours happened to be right outside of our hotel. The 4 of us headed off for the therme to relax and recoop after a day of sking. We were more like kids in a candy store. There was a slide - which we went down about 40 times, a diving board - that Brian used to smack his face on the pool bottom, and awesome heated pools outdoors and inside and a sauna, that we didn't go in, b/c you had to be naked or have a towel - no bathing suits allowed.

After hanging out in the therme for a few hours we hit up a chinese restaurant across the street and heading home for some much needed sleep.



taking a break


the FOUR year old that smoked me


Derrek and Josh with their Dunkel (dark) bier


hanging out waiting for the boys


last 3 on the mountain..they look like little black dots (and I zoomed in!)


Bossy, Josh's GPS showing us the way onto the train




unloading


View from our hotel

Austria (sorry...LOTS of photos)

Since our good friend Derrek missed all of last ski/snowboard season recovering from this last year. The boys (Derrek, Josh and Brian) havn't stopped talking about hitting the slopes since Derrek got back to Europe earlier this summer. Now that he's moved up to Germany (from Italy) it's much easier to hang out with him since he's only 2 hours away.

Friday night we went out to the Irish Pub of Ansbach to toast our good German friend, Achim Mueller before he left for Afghanistan. We wish him safe travels and hope he comes home soon. It was an early night though because we were set to leave for Austria at 4am on Saturday.


Four AM came way to soon. WAY WAY too soon. I was just glad I wasn't driving. We took Josh's new-to-him BMW 5 series wagon. WAGONS ROCK! The trip down took much longer than expected (thanks to Bossy the GPS), but we made it by around 10:30.

We skied/boarded from 11 until about 2, took a break for beers and a coke and the boys went back out while I got some sun (burned) and took a little nap. The guys were the LAST ones off the slopes for the day - even getting a shovel thrown their way for making one last run. We came off the mountain by 5 pm and headed towards the hotel.

Welcome to Austria! One of the most beautiful places on earth!


I woke up just as the boys were screaming 'PARADE' just in time to catch this one blurry photo:


The boys, Brian, Josh and Derrek






umm...guys...there's no snow...


heading above the clouds:




SNOW! (not a lot, but enough!)


There were lots of small professionals (kids) sking this day - with their fancy gear and coaches in tow - they smoked us all.

A walk in the park...err Dietenhofen.

Yesterday was AMAZING. At one point it got up to 76* (I was in the car) and was suppose to reach 81*. Since Brian is away for the week at Graf the girls and I are free to roam about town looking for trouble. Trouble is what we found! One duck fight, one hissing swan and multiple times shouting "Ginger, DO NOT EAT THAT!!"...overall it was a great day!

Fall has arrived!


Happy Ducks eating...except the two males in the upper left corner of the photo...not happy campers. These two went at it for a solid 2 minutes. Finally the weaker one got away and just kept swimming. Poor little guy.






Ginger went for a swim...several times today. She didn't even give me a chance to take her leash off.


I'm FREE...Ginger...always pushing the limits of her freedom. (She walks off leash 90% of the time.


So MANY field mice...so little time


Always hunting...always.




Ginger making friends...always making friends. She will befriend anyone and anything who has food or is willing to rub her belly.


Kyla getting hissed at. What you don't see in this photo is about 2 seconds after I took it Kyla got scared, fell off the rock and almost landed in the water. Classic.


Our town church.


Yumm...dinner. Nürnbergers and Kraut! YUM.

Oktoberfest 2.0

You can click on highlighted words for links to more infomation on the tents and other Oktoberfest facts.

This past weekend we headed down to Munich for Oktoberfest 2.0. Another pilot in Brian's company had gotten reserved seats in the world famous Hofbräu Festhalle. With seating for 6,900 people inside and another 3,100 outside, this tent was a busy place! Lucky for us, reserved seating is much more relaxed and calm than fighting for your life and seat in the center of the fest tent. It's a little more like a normal restaurant...well as normal as Oktoberfest can be! Our reservations were from 11am to 5pm - we arrived early which gave us a little time to shop around and try out the new camera.


A side note: Last weekend we were in the Armbrustschützen known as the Bull's Eye! Smaller than the Hofbraeu tent the Bull's Eye seats 5,800 on the inside and 1,600 on the outside. The upside to being in the Bull's Eye is they serve Paulaner beer. I'm not a big beer fan - but I would have to say so far - Paulaner is my favorite!


Our crew for the day:


Some people get really excited about Oktoberfest!


The Budweiser horses don't have anything on these guys!


Brian with the Paulaner Wagon:

In Poland...drinking is a team sport:


My FAVORITE thing about fests: fruit on a stick covered in chocolate!


Some of the other tents:


The Löwenbräu lion roars and moves his tail every few minutes!







No one says 'Auf Wiedersehen!' in Bavaria! Tschüss!!

New Shoes...

Not for me this time...but the Volvo! It's getting to be that time of year when we had to put winter tires on the Volvo. We looked at tires tires and more tires and had just about found some that would work that were a good price (shipping is a big deal!) when we found a set locally that had some fancy 17s included. I've always hated the wheels on the Volvo. They are hard to clean and I just plain didn't like them. So Saturday Brian went to the shop/garage on Post and put new tires on! Woohoo! We're ready for winter now :)

Before new wheels and tires:


After new wheels and tires: