Where In The World Is Deb?

Got to the ski lodge amazingly early (none of us are morning people!) only to have the outfitting take just over an hour. I will be SO glad when my kids can do everything for themselves!! Much to my chagrin, we discovered that there are no snowboard lessons for children under 12 and further, no ski lessons for children under 7 during the week. Eli promptly refused to do lessons by himself, so I had no choice but to stay on the bunny hill with them. I am a great ski instructor... to other people's children. Jake is absolutely going to be the athlete in the family. He very quickly picked up how to not only use the rope tow (gads I hate those things) but how to get down the bunny hill gracefully and even do some wide turns (on purpose hahahaha). Eli, on the other hand, could not be bothered to stay with us. He decided that since he had skiied several times about three years ago, that he did not need lessons (and especially not from his mother). So he spent most of the morning realizing that he could not, in fact, get down the slope in an upright position. Fortunately by mid morning, Eli met a kid who was also not listening to his mother and both of them decided to listen to me because Jake was doing so well.

After playing around all morning and then eating lunch in the lodge, I decided to take us all up the mountain on the cable car up and ski down an easy trail.






Yah, let me just say that it did not go well. The cable car was really neat (although I did flash on the F-16 crashing into the cable car in the Italian Alps). We got off the cable car and headed over to the map to plan out our trail. Looked simple enough. We got onto the easiest trail and discovered that it was so flat that if you did not have momentum, you were left trying to skate on your skiis. Jake promptly developed a blister in his boot (I am sure it started with all the morning snow plowing that he did). We miserably slogged through with hopes that the trail would head downhill soon. It did, around the half mile mark. As soon as we saw that the trail would have some decline to it, we also saw, up in the distance, ski patrol blocking off... the easy trail. I had a sinking feeling and started prepping the boys that no matter what, we could always take off our skiis and walk down. After the first hill and about fifty thousand falls (complete with skiis popping off), we did just that. Walking downhill in ski boots is a special trick. If you have never had ski boots on, picture walking (at all, let alone downhill) with two casts up to your ankles that do not allow your foot to bend. Now add wind, snowfall and nearly zero visibility to it. Uh huh. It sucked bad... two MILES worth of bad (I checked the map back at the hotel). Needless to say, we nearly cried with relief three hours later when we got back to the lodge, fifteen minutes after closing time and thirty MINUTES prior to sunset. There is no night skiing here which means no lights so we were staring to get scared on top of our misery. Along the way, not one person offered to help, nor did we see any ski patrol (after the ones that blocked off the easy trail that is). Argh.

I forgot to mention that if you got off the ski trail at all, the drifts were at least 3-4 feet deep. I have never ever skiied anything like that in my life. I learned to ski in New England where ice is all you get and ANY covering over the ice is considered to be a really great day hahahaha.

And, while it was a miserable three hours, the day as a whole was FANTASTIC. I cannot stress enough just how beautiful Germany is. I have lived in snow before, this is different. THIS is what the term winter wonderland really means. I wish the Navy had a base in Germany - I would be stationed there in a heartbeat.

Stay tuned for part three.