Skiing in Austria

All of last week, from Monday to Sunday, I was skiing in Austria with 3 other exchange students and 5 or 6 Rotary families. We were staying in the small city of Mariazell, where there are 4 or 5 ski hills within a half hour drive of the city center. We skied for 5 days of the 7 and were treated to almost perfect weather. While the mountains in Austria reminded me a great deal of the Rockies, I would say that, in general, the Austrian mountains are smaller. There are no big monster resorts like Lake Louise in Austria. Each resort takes up only one mountain and will have maybe 3 chair lifts and a t-bar at maximum.

Everyone stayed together in a big house with rooms full of bunk beds. All of us kids slept in one giant room and we played poker and swapped swear words from our native languages. Our house was right across the street from the ski hill that we spent most of our time on, so everyone could come and go as they please, which was wonderful. Gemeindealpe (don't ask me to pronounce it) is the name of the ski resort we were at, and when you took one of the chair lifts to the very top of the mountain, you had a 360 degree view--gorgeous!

Mariazell is an important pilgrimage site in Austria because (according to Wikipedia) "the object of veneration is a miracle-working image of the Virgin, carved in lime-tree wood." I have no idea what that means, but it must be important because last September, the Pope chose to visit Mariazell.

All in all, I am happy to report that Austria is beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the people there and my time on the ski hill. The snow was near perfect, and we couldn't have asked for a better week.