Skiing!

Living in such a gorgeous alpine country, I'm always excited for any activity involving beautiful mountain vistas.  Combine that with the piles of snow we got on Thursday, and I was definitely ready for some skiing! Thankfully my friend Philipp also thought this seemed like a perfect day for skiing, so we got up Saturday and drove the hour or so to one of the local ski places here.  The weather in Vienna has been fairly cloudy even when it isn't snowing, so I was thrilled that once we got down closer to the mountains we had beautiful blue sky. 

This ski area itself isn't huge, basically one mountain with multiple ways down, but breathtakingly gorgeous views all out in front of you.  This was my nice relaxing ski day, so I had just about as much fun taking pictures as actually skiing.

Looking down to the base

They also have this really long sledding run here, and you can rent these sleds and take the gondola up to the top and then sled down on this special course.  Honestly it looked terrifying, I have no idea how you steer through these switchbacks...but I'm sure I'll try it at some point!

The lifts and runs close about 4pm so the groomers can come out and prepare for night skiing.  We decided to stay at the top during this couple hour window and eat and stay warm in the lodge up there while we waited for the machines to do their work.

mmmm. Austrians definitely do the warm comfort food very well.

All dark and groomed and ready for night skiing!

This is actually the run they use for the world cup skiing when it comes through here, the run itself is super nice, thankfully it's mostly the flag placement that makes it difficult.  Also awesome to be one of the first down after it was freshly groomed!

Après-ski is definitely its own unique beast here...there are entire albums put out with "après-ski hits" and the bar at the bottom of the mountain is basically one big party.  Lots of drinking and singing and dancing...thankfully I am friends with enough of the right people to have been properly exposed to many of these songs before so I didn't feel quite so out of place.  

The roof of the bar spins open...this is it closing back up...very cool.

It was a wonderful and exhausting full day, I've been slowly recovering from being sick so I don't think I quite had the full energy I would have liked to, but still a fantastic outing.  I also hadn't been skiing in nearly 2 years and whatever weird muscles you seem to only use for skiing definitely let me hear about it for a couple days, but I'm excited for other opportunities for more skiing soon!  

Classes are officially done for the semester, which seems crazy! I still have a couple papers to write, but I'm basically now on semester break until March.  This was an amazing semester, and I'm sad to have some of these classes end.  I'm sure I'll write something slightly more reflective once everything is turned in, but now it's also time to figure out what to do for the next month!

Lots of Snow!

Vienna has been getting snow fairly regularly, a few inches here and there, which has been perfect to just sort of remind you that it's winter without altering your daily schedule at all.  The road up the mountain to school has been quite slippery at times, but again, nothing so bad that we couldn't make it.  Also. I think I've mentioned this before, but the weather forecast is generally very nonchalant about snow.  It might say "maybe it will snow" and then we get several inches.  Yesterday however, the forecast was for "strong snow" and "maybe snow drifts" so I figured this might actually be serious.  And boy were they correct.  Thankfully I didn't have any classes scheduled for today, so I grabbed my camera and met up with a friend to go wander around and look at the snow for a while!

Of course public transit and cars and everything still runs basically as normal...even while there is lots of snow on the ground and it is continuing to accumulate.

I've gotten pretty good with my fahrenheit to celsius conversions, so I try not to be the one saying..."oh I heard it's going to be 25 tomorrow" and my friends stop and look at me like I'm crazy thinking we're about to get a heat wave.  I am not however even remotely good with measurements of length, or in this case...snow.  So today...when my friend says..."I heard this morning we got 30cm of snow, and we could get up to 50!" I responded with..."what does that mean?" so he repeated himself..."30cm...maybe to 50"...so I got out my trusty phone app with conversions...and put in those amounts...which are nearly 11in and over 19in...and my eyes got big and I said "ELEVEN TO NINETEEN!!?" and my friend looks back with my same blank stare and says..."what does that mean?".  ha. I will figure this out eventually...but until then it's even worse than a foreign language.

These little plows go through the parks and things to create walking paths

nearly to my knees and still going...

a sign where the farmers market should be...basically says..."because of the extreme weather situation there will be no market this week!"

guys tethered to the roof of the Hofburg clearing off the snow

And then...being a bit frozen...seemed like tea time 

so nice to watch the snow from the warm inside

This is the little plow for the tram tracks...i'm sad that it's blurry, but you perhaps get the general idea...it has plows on the front that help it clear away the actual tracks. 

And that's about it! Only 2 more days of class for the semester, so I'm still in a lot of paper writing mode and studying for a couple final exams.  I'm off for some local skiing on Saturday, so this extra added bunch of powder should make that even better!

A Rainy Weekend in Linz

And now for some place a bit closer to home...without actually being in Vienna.  I feel like I need to take more trips to see things in Austria while I'm here, and not just other major cities around Europe (as lovely as those are).  Austria is such an insanely gorgeous country, with so many neat cities and towns and mountains and old monasteries etc. that aren't very far away.  I really do need to make a better effort to get out to more of them.  After my family left last week, I had a weekend trip planned with my friend Philipp to go visit his hometown of Linz and get the insider tour...the weather was rainy and drizzly all weekend, but we still managed to see so much and do all sorts of fun things!

After a lovely rainy day lunch, we headed over to the Voestalpine steel plant to visit their museum/visitors center and learn all we could about steel and how it is processed and used.

The inside of the museum...you basically wind up stairs and cross back and forth through these bubbles which have all sorts of interactive exhibits inside.

Trying our hand at making correct decisions about the mix of raw material inputs to get a desired output...not exactly great at this one...

After the steel plant we headed back into the main part of town to walk around a bit since it wasn't currently raining...just a light mist...

We walked up to the castle where there is this bronze replica of Linz around 1800 so you could see where all the buildings were.

Looking out from the terrace of the palace over the city

And looking down over the other side of the palace at the Danube.

A giant nativity scene hand-carved by local children.  Very cool.

Beautiful main square.  So many neat architectural fronts to all the buildings surrounding it.

The Cathedral which is actually the largest (although not the highest) cathedral in Austria.  It was originally planned to be taller than St. Stephens in Vienna, but that idea got quickly squashed by some of the higher ups in Vienna at the time.  They lowered the spire by 2 meters...but then increased the height of the cross on top, so that it is now equal to the height of Stephansdom. (don't be too confused...the picture of the outside was on a totally different day than the pictures on the inside...the light shining through the stained glass is real)

So many beautiful stained glass windows and stone carvings inside

It was pretty dark inside the church when we came in...very few lights on...which made the giant space look especially beautiful, although then they were setting up for a service so the lights slowly started being turned on, which was also nice to see.

Back in the main square and ready for the little tourist train! It is most definitely the off season...we were the only people on there...

One part of the weekend I was especially excited about was my first Austrian Ice Hockey game!  After Philipp was able to go to a Yankees game with me over the summer, he thought it only fair that I get to see a professional hockey game in Linz...so off we went! 

 It was easily one of the most exciting hockey games I've ever been to...Linz was down 0-2 going into the third period...but then managed to score 4 goals...including 2 in the final minute!  Everyone was going nuts which definitely added to the whole experience.  We were sitting right in front of the sort of main fan club area...and they were drumming and cheering insanely loud through the entire game...including several all-stadium chants that seem oddly complicated but everyone knows them...so so fun.

The art museum all glowing at night

 Monday morning we headed up on the train to Pöstlingberg which gives you a great view over the city and the surrounding area.

The train begins in the main square and ends up here on the mountain and is one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world (as opposed to a cog railway or something else with teeth on the track)

At the top there is a circular trail that goes around the entire top so you are able to see out in all directions.  Down in this almost moat type area there are also deer! I'm not sure I've ever seen deer looking so relaxed this close before.

The view out over Linz

And towards the mountains...I'm definitely looking forward to going back up here sometime on a clearer day and getting to see out even farther

More of a closeup of the city...you can see the castle and the cathedral and the steel plant pretty easily.

The church at the top of Pöstlingberg

more ornate and baroque inside

neat statues on top of the organ

When we got back down on the train the giant Christmas tree was being chopped up...I guess the season really is officially over.

One last stop to get proper Linzer Torte from the original location...so delicious.

At some point along our drive back to Vienna all that drizzle and rain turned to snow making for a very picturesque drive back.

It was such a fun weekend and I'm so glad to have friends who can give me these local tours of the places they grew up and know so much about.  It is always way more enjoyable than just reading about places or trusting wherever the tour guides tell you to go.  I'm looking forward to another (hopefully sunnier) trip to Linz in the future!