trip report: part 5

More trip recap….

Day Five: February 19

I spent the morning skiing at Alpendorf and Wagrain. Hannes Schaller gave me a lift to the pistes, as he was teaching the Welsh teens yet again. I made a quick rush up to the Sonnenkogel so that I could enjoy my favorite piste a few more times. The day was overcast in the beginning, which meant that the snow held up well for my limited skiing time.

After about 12 runs, I headed back down to Alpendorf, where I returned my skis to Intersport, then walked down to the shuttle bus stop at the gondola base. I perused the various ski shops, where all were trying to clear out their 2006-07 ski inventory. Because the winter, to that point, had been a bust, the prices were really affordable – I almost bought a pair of Atomic GS:11 racing skis, but held off. In hindsight, this was a good thing – they’d have been a pain when navigating the London Underground on the return trip!

(Speaking of snow at Alpendorf: they’ve received almost a meter of new snow in the past few days – great for the Easter skiing crowds! And if I had the money and the time, I’d be there in a heartbeat!)

After returning to the Schaller house, I met up with mom, who had checked us out of Haus Olga. Helumt, Maria and Reini Schaller were on lunch break, and our friends, Elfi and Ernstl Krammer, were waiting to meet us. They live south of Munich, Germany, and we’ve known them for years.

I quickly changed my clothes, then said my goodbyes to the Schallers. Reini gave mom and me some lovely felted wool clogs as a going-away present – they are simply wonderful to wear around the house! It was a bit of a tearful goodbye, but we’ll be back soon.

We all hopped into the Krammers’ Audi A8 (a great car for the autobahn) and headed north to Salzburg, where we met Toni and Cristl for lunch. The drive on the autobahn was great, and I finally got to take a nice shot of Hohenwerfen, which featured in The Sound Of Music. The rest of the drive was quick, and we made it to the hazy outskirts of Salzburg in less than an hour.

Lunch was wonderful: good food, good beer and good friends. Cristl was really nice, as she placed little flags in all of our salads to indicate our place of origin: a U.S. flag for me, German flags for Toni, Ernstl and Elfi, an Austrian flag for her, and an EU flag for my mom to symbolize her multiple “homelands”). We stayed for over an hour, talking about all kinds of things. A quick tour of their garden was also lovely, and the flowers were in bloom.

After saying our goodbyes (and receiving boxes of Mozart chocolates – the signature confection of the area), we motored up the A8 autobahn toward Munich. Along the way, we stopped in Prien am Chiemsee for some espresso and dessert. This was a great stop, as I’d been to Herrenchiemsee in 1990. Herrenchiemsee is one of King Ludwig II’s castles, and was intended to be a “better Versailles.” It was never completed, but it’s still impressive. While we didn’t visit the island with the castle, we enjoyed our home-roasted espresso and marzipan tortes. I even got to see my namesake boat – the Rudolf – making its rounds in the lake. I was tempted to commandeer the vessel, but…

As the sun sank lower into the sky, we hit the road for Munich, proper. In Germany, there are no strict speed limits on the autobahn – unlike Austria, where there are speed cameras every 5 kilometers or so. So we put the turbocharged engine of the Audi to the test, and averaged a spry 150 km/hour for much of the ride into Munich.

By early evening, we had made it to the Rehle house – our home for our stay in Munich. Doris and Bernd Rehle are other family friends – Doris is Toni’s daughter – and I’ve known their kids, Dominik and Pia, since they were toddlers. Of course, they’ve since grown up into wonderful adults, and we spent quote a bit of time eating dinner and catching up with each other – we hadn’t seen the Rehles since 1990.

But there was more fun in store!

Pia invited me to the Nachtgalerie, a huge dance party happening in the west end of Munich. Dominik joined us for the outing, and we made our way to the party via bus and U-Bahn. The venue was a huge converted warehouse, and the crowd was thick but very jovial. I’m over a decade older than Pia, but the general feeling of the party and friendly nature of Pia’s friends made me feel like I was back in college – I had a great time! I also got to hear a lot of music, both older (stuff I knew from college) and newer. I think that the visit definitely affected my choices when I went music shopping a few days later.

We made it back to the Rehle house over four hours later, around 2 am. We were all winded, but we had a great time.