What is January without some good sledding? We thought we were coming to "winter "wunder" land", but alas the snow has been somewhat lacking. We get it, and when it snows it often snows a lot, but then it is followed by rain that washes all the snow away. We haven't had real cold, freezing temps. to keep the snow around. The last few years we had started a tradition where we go sledding on New Years day. This year New Years day was on a Sunday, so that was out. Plus we were visiting friends, and MORE to the point, there was No snow! When we were back in Germany, a few days later, it snowed. We have a small hill in our backyard, so the kids got out their saucers and did some minor sledding.
I say "Minor", because a few weekends later we went "real" sledding. I call it "Alpine" Sledding. Matt's office has a tradition that every Civil Rights weekend they all go down to a little town in the Austrian Alps to sled. So when the long weekend came, we hopped in our car and drove a few hours to Mieders, Austria
A view from the balcony of the pension we stayed at
Getting ready to do some sledding!
Who's in there...why it is Anya!
It's a beautiful view Mom!
The pension we stayed at was like a 5 minute walk from the ski slopes. Yes, I said ski slopes...wait, I thought we were sledding?
Waiting for Anya and dad to come back from their test run
Gross...I don't want to know!
So, sledding...in my head I was thinking of the "sledding" we do in Utah. We find a big hill, get some inner tubes and go down the hill. We hit the bottom in like 15 seconds, 20 if it is a really big hill. Not so, my friend. Here they do "real" sledding. We had these runner sleds that go fast! I swear it seemed like the locals were going 50 mph down the mountain. Next shock of the day, we need to take the lift (which, luckily for me, was gondola style) up to the top of the mountain! Then we sled down the mountain on a series of runs set up like ski runs. So, if you go fast, it takes about 15 minutes to get down the hill. We were very slow at first, the girls were all nervous, so it took us maybe 40 minutes to get down the mountain. That is some serious sledding!
Europeans love their shrines. These dotted the sled run as we were going down. Inside are actual paintings depicting the events leading up to Christ's crucifixion.
I was proud of the girls, they over came a fear and really started to cruise down the hill. However, in the time it took the girls, Hunter and I to get down once, Matt had gone down twice with Jack. The boys liked it at first, but got nervous if we went too fast. By the end they were just cold and wanted to be warm. I managed to get a shot of the girls during a slow patch...not bad from moving sled taking a picture of another moving sled!
View of Mieders from the slopes
On the way home we hit a stretch of road that is one castle ruin after another. I tried to take some pictures but we were going fast...so trees and other obstacles kept getting in my way!
Rattenburg, Austria
I did make Matt stop in a cool little village that we passed. Here are the streets lined with shops
Here is a little bit of the castle ruin above the little village
Some more of the ruin of Rattenburg
Hunter and I
Here we are, back at home, trying to sled again.
It looked like a real promising saturday sled day, but as soon as we got to a good hill about 5 minutes from our house, the rain began. We still sled while we could, until the rain soaked us too much and the snow was too washed away.
Matt and Jack
Hannah, at the top, waiting to come down
Anya was too fast, I didn't get any pictures of her going down. So here she is as we are loading up to go home!
Cora had decided to go bowling with some friends. Silly girl, choosing warmth over freezing, wet fun!
So, far we have had some fun "winter" adventures in Germany. We have been sledding, done some skiing, built snowman, had a snowball war with Neighbors across the fence. We are looking forward to the rest of Winter, now if only the snow would stick...:)
