I’m in my hotel room at the Weisses Kruez in Bregenz, Austria, after a hard day snowboarding in the Austrian Alps. Right now I have the window cracked open to let some fresh air into the 100 year old hotel, and from time to time over the constant pitter-patter of the rain I hear thunder roll across the valley. Today I was jet lagged, hung over, and sleep deprived while playing in some of the best snow I’ve experienced in years. It all began the night before, after a long day at work and a nice meal and a fine beer at a brewery in Boblingen outside Stuttgart.

From there, I left my co-workers at the Sindelfingen hotel and hopped in the Mercedes ML400 diesel rental 4x4 and headed south. I had planned this weekend out in detail the week before, so I knew exactly where to go. The drive on the Autobahn was really enjoyable despite the rain. I found some techno radio station and enjoyed one particular song which they said was “Detroit” inspired – although I don’t know who the artist was or where he was from. There’s nothing quite like cruising at 150 km/hr in the rain at night while listening to good tunes and anticipating a fun filled weekend.

Once I checked in around midnight, I went to a club and bar called Cuba a few blocks over that supposedly had a good mixed crowd. It turned out to be a hip-hop club with a second floor balcony overlooking the ground floor and the dee-jay spinning from a corner dance floor up on the balcony. It was loud and I was annoyed at the stand-offish crowd, but I must say some of the young Austrians are beautiful people. After sitting at the bar in vain hoping someone would sit next to me so I could strike up a conversation, finally I managed to have an interesting discussion about travel and what life’s like in Austria with a fellow by the name of Martin who spoke about as good English as I speak Japanese. So it was a struggle, but he seemed to at least understand most of what I was saying. I ended up drinking far too many excellent beers and getting drunk, and then magically my German language skills reappeared after a 5 year absence. I am not sure where the skills went now or where they came from, but for a while there I was pulling out all kinds of grammar and vocab that I can’t begin to remember today. I do not understand how my mind processes language.

So anyway, this guy (who was straight, just for the record) and I talked for several hours it seems, because soon it was 4AM and they were shutting down the place. We parted ways and I promised to return tonight, although frankly if I go back I’m not sure I really want to talk to him for another 3 hours. So I’m thinking I might just forget it and crash for the evening. On the other hand, I could meet someone that’s actually interesting to me, although the club was so noisy and stand-offish that I am seriously questioning why I should go back. My original plan was to only go to this club tonight, Saturday, and go to bed early yesterday so I could get up early and go snowboarding. But I screwed that up by going Friday night.

Instead, I woke up with a start at 9:20 AM and realized somehow I improperly set the alarm the night before after getting home drunk. I guess things like this are expected, and honestly I don’t think I would have wanted to get up any earlier. It was actually painful to contemplate getting out of bed and go snowboarding, but damn it I didn’t travel half way around the world to stay in my hotel room and sleep in. Although it was tempting. So instead I roused myself, showered, and ate some yummy eggs and yoghurt downstairs in the breakfast room provided by the hotel. I hit the road at 10:00 and was sort of disappointed in myself for wasting hours and hours the night before getting drunk and talking to someone I suppose I’ll not see again. The drive up was uneventful, although I was really wanting to just pull over and take a nap rather than go snowboarding. But, damn it! I was going snowboarding.

Once there I was surprised by how few cars were in the parking lot and I proceeded directly to the rental place where I got a snowboard for 24 euro. I then picked up the lift ticket for 40 euro and went straight to the cable car to the top. I haven’t been in too many cable cars, but this one had all the trappings of a traditional Alps cable car. It was old, crowded, and went on little cables taking you ridiculously high in the air over almost vertical terrain.

My first run was a bit disconcerting because I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. For one thing, I’ve only snowboarded once before this year, and that was at Pine Knob in Michigan and that almost doesn’t count as snowboarding (take no offense, please)! For another, I had no idea how the rental board would respond or if it was set up for me properly. I’m also out of shape for snowboarding and particularly for snowboarding at one of the best resorts in the Austrian Alps. And lastly and most importantly, the trail maps are not the same as in the States. On the trail maps back home, you have green for easy, blue for intermediate, and black for designating the most difficult. In Europe, they have blue and black runs, but there’s no green and there’s red instead. I was afraid they had shifted the whole scale to get rid of green and introduce a new category, red, to indicate the really most difficult. Red like the color of blood.

As it turned out, red just meant a designated easier groomed and marked way down the open slope. Since there are no trees at all, there aren’t trails to designate the right way down the mountain. I quickly discovered that there was some excellent power just off the side of the marked route. But it also is very difficult to turn or keep moving in deep powder when it’s a gentle slope, so I found myself shying away from the designated area in search of the good stuff in the steeper areas. But I was snowboarding in the clouds, and the visibility was near fifty feet if my goggles weren’t fogged up, which they usually were, so it was more like 5 feet and you could barely see outlines of what’s coming up ahead.

I was more than a little worried about accidentally ending up in an run ending in a cliff, which nearly happened more than a few times throughout the day. It was very disconcerting at times, because I really didn’t want to accidentally go over a cliff. But all the best snow was there to be had if only one didn’t mind being the first person to explore. Usually tracks are a good sign that there’s a way out, but where I wanted to go there were no tracks, not that I could really see anyway if there were or not. As it was, on one particular occasion I was somewhat blindly turning in beautiful untracked powder when I completely had a weightless feeling and had ridden off a 5 foot high outcropping only to land face first in 2 feet of powder. It didn’t hurt in the slightest, but it was enough to wake me up to the very real possibility that I could very easily end up snowboarding off a real cliff and I might not be so lucky then. This was the kind of skiing in the clouds on powder feeling where you can’t tell if you’re actually moving or not until you suddenly find yourself landing on your hands, butt, or occasionally face. You turn and think you’ve come to a complete stop, only to have the rude realization that you’re still moving and that the snow beneath you isn’t shaped like you thought it was. On a few occasions I had to jump rocky drops to get myself out of some messes I’d gotten myself into, but they weren’t of the “stick this landing or face the consequences” (ie, a cliff) variety so I was okay.

I also freaked myself out when I accidentally snowboarded into a narrow gulley of rock that was obviously a stream or something in the summer and an avalanche chute in the winter. There were no tracks into this thing and there was a reason for it. When you ski a lot, you learn to recognize geographical features that create avalanche chutes. These are the very rare perfect pathways that snow takes when it decides to slide off a mountain in one particular narrow area. However, I had committed myself to going there already and was having a tough enough time just staying standing on the flat approach to the entrance. It turned out to be really fun and sort of like a natural half-pipe, and when it narrowed down to the smallest area which was barely two snowboard lengths laid end-to-end, sure enough I started a mini-avalanche and pushed all the fresh fluffy powder down through the chute and I surfed it down. So that was pretty stupid, but in Europe they don’t mark these things. I would have taken pictures but I wanted to get the hell out of there as quick as possible.

On the other hand, whenever I got below the clouds it was like heaven. You could see everything and see where to turn and where to go to get the best terrain. If not for being jet lagged, hung over, and exhausted, I would have ridden all day. Instead, I took an early lunch at the top of the mountain on the other side from the cable car, and enjoyed a nice goulash soup and salad. After eating, I felt a thousand percent better and rode hard for the rest of the day until my legs no longer would respond to my commands and I spent half of each run sitting in the snow resting. By 4:00 I’d had enough and packed it up to go home after taking a little walking tour through the village of Zurs. It was cute, but I think I like staying down here in Bregenz more because there are actually people here. Zurs seemed like a sleepy little hamlet with lots of quaint hotel lodges, but not much of a vibrant nightlife.

Once back at the hotel in Bregenz, I napped from 6 – 7:45 and finally got myself up to find a restaurant for dinner. I picked a crazy Chinese owned fish restaurant and ate all kinds of weird sea creatures. I was having flashbacks of Japan and remembered why I no longer am adventurous in eating everything from the sea. I asked for recommendations and it was suggested to choose the fish and sea creature on a stick entrée over salad. I didn’t realize that was what I’d ordered, but it was the recommended dish. I recognized the shrimp, which still had it’s head and tail and shell on, but the rest could have been mystery meat from the sea. I think some of it was squid and it was actually good. But my mind plays tricks on me when eating weird animals and I always regret not just being a vegetarian to save myself the anguish. But it’s expanding my mind and palate, if nothing else.

So now here I am in the hotel, and it’s quarter past midnight and I haven’t decided whether or not to go to the club, although I don’t think I’m up for it. On the other hand, I napped at entirely the wrong time of day and I’m not tired now. Plus I have jet lag and it feels like 6PM so I really have no excuse. Well it closes at 4am so I have time to decide later. Ciao.

- SAN
- posted by freestyle @ 12:27 AM