fresh snow and a week off!

Really short one, since Geoff wants his computer back.

Pix from today:

From Return to Austria

From Return to Austria

workiework

Just a quick one.  I've all of a sudden found myself really busy as all the holiday tourists arrive.  I have a group of 8 Esprit intermediates in the morning (who rejected our original team name the 'Powder Pirates' for the 'Cheese Team' *sigh*) who are great skiiers but really sap the energy from me.  In the afternoon I'm on privates, today and yesterday I had two lovely Scottish women who were decent intermediates but seriously lacking confidence so I coaxed them back into it.  They were really enjoyable to teach!

Flo is still living with us and the plans for NYE are flying around.  We might do something similar to Xmas.  Sadly working from 10am on new years day :(

Mere arrives on the 3rd which is rapidly approaching!

Tatum (I don't know how many people reading this know who that is) might be coming as well which is really exciting!  I havn't seen her since 2001!

All for now, more coming once I have some breathing room.

xx Maz

Salzburg, returning home, white christmas...

Sorry for being awful at the blog. I've been too busy skiing to want to sit inside on the computer for an afternoon. I'll pick up where we left off *gulp* a MONTH ago.

I really loved Salzburg! I was a bit ashamed that last season we lived 2 hours away and never went to see it so this time on the way to Kapun we stopped for a few days. The old city is so beautiful - it really feels like it hasn't changed for centuries, but there was no tacky tourism like in parts of Paris. It felt really authentic. We had a wander around the old city (see photos) and went up to the Festung Hohensalzburg (a fortress) which was my favourite thing. We could see it straight out the window from our youth hostel. Construction of it started in the 1100s and it felt like walking into the middle ages. There was a little museum inside, we took an audioguide tour and some great photos from the top tower! The fortress was never taken by force in history, except it was surrendered once to Napoleon. In the town there was this gorgeous Christmas market where you could buy beautiful homemade ornaments and candies and candles. I will definitely come back one day on a high enough budget to shop for that kind of thing! There was an outdoor ice skating rink in the middle of the Mozart square so Tom and I went for a skate in the evening which was really nice! It was such a picturesque spot and they were playing music. And on rental skates I was so terrible that going around in circles on the tiny rink kept me occupied. Tom did have one terrific stack where he literally went face first onto the rink :D I was going to do the Sound of Music tour but it ended up feeling a little kitch so I passed, preferring to explore the city.

We took the train from Salzburg to Kaprun, and arriving in Kaprun felt sooo nice. After travelling around the whole year this is the first place I've been that I've been before so it felt so welcoming and familiar. We hung around at the ski school catching up with people for the afternoon before we were shown our accomodation which is MUCH better than last season. We are in the Neumair apartments which are directly above the supermarket right in the middle of town. It's not a particularly fancy apartment but it has everything we need and it's not expensive. It's also great and social since the rest of our floor is all other ski instructors so theres always someone to hang out with. Across the hall are Wieke and Evelyn who are both Dutch, next to them are Nout and Mattijs (also Dutch) and next to us is Bianca who is German. (No, there aren't many actual Austrian instructors!) We can see the slopes out the window which is great motivation to get out skiing!

I've already written about my birthday but there are some added photos in the slideshow album (link at the bottom.) We went skiing on Tom's birthday (both on new skis!) which was a lot of fun. I can't believe Tom is 20 though...he certainly doesn't act it yet!

Work properly started last week and I've already finished with my first group of the season. I had Esprit children (duh) but kids that can ski this season! I only had 3 and it was a pretty easy week (bar one day where the oldest boy chucked a tantie and refused to ski). We saw Santa skiing on Christmas day and it was gorgeous to see the kids critiquing his skiing!

We have had a friend staying at our place for a few weeks now. Florian (he works at the cafe in the ski school) who we knew from last season was really struggling to find a place to stay this year and the flat that he found is only available from early Jan so we let him sleep on our couch. Though a few things are now trickier (organising showers in the morning, who gets the keys, etc) he has been a really great guest - he's cooked dinner for us a few times, keeps his stuff really neat, so I have no complaints :) He's leaving just before Meredith arrives from Canada on Jan 3.

Having a white Christmas was really wonderful, it definitely is more magical with some snow. On Christmas Eve Tom and I had a nice dinner on our own and opened presents. I was working on Xmas morning but in the evening we had a group of 10 instructors for dinner. Wieke did entree and dessert (goat cheese cooked in pastry on a bed of salad, homemade apple pie) and Tom did the main course (chicked breat stuffed with brie and sun-dried tomatoes). It was a really great evening! Everyone enjoyed themselves and it was great to have a group Christmas dinner with friends since no one had family around.

We now have enough chocolate so sink a ship (which we are slowly getting through). Tom has been working in the shop for the last few days and I get my next group tomorrow morning!

I hope that post makes up for the lack in the last month. http://picasaweb.google.com/amanda.jane.cohn/ReturnToAustria is the link for the new photos.

Love always
Amanda

Reflections of a 19 year old

*Written yesterday but only posted now*

Okay, okay. I'm sorry for being terrible with the blog lately. The mood just really hasn't struck me, and while I realise there is a lot missing from it I want to do it properly. This is just a quickie about my first overseas birthday.

I was a little bit worried about my birthday - it's still early season here so I don't know many people and no one wants to spend their birthday alone. The few days beforehand I was the most homesick I've been this whole year - I'd never had a birthday without Mum making me cake! (And only one without Sarah getting grumpy at me for ageing). The original plan was to ski at the little hill in town in the morning (on my new birthday skis), open presents and then maybe go out? There wasn't much of one.

Birthday Skis

Much kudos has to go to Tom for organising me a really nice birthday! We actually didn't end up skiing (because we were stupid and left our boots at the Alpine Centre on the Kitzsteinhorn) so we slept in, then there was breakfast with presents and general hanging around in the morning. Then at 2pm ish we went down to the Ski Dome for a champagne afternoon gathering with some of the other instructors. Tom had a few surprises up his sleeve there - there were more people than I expected, there were gummy bears and fruit in the pink champagne and he had even organised Florian to make me a birthday cake! Much merriness was had, chocolate cake eaten and pink champagne drunk. It was a really well organised event considering I'm in a foreign town! I really enjoyed my afternoon :)

We walked home just after it had gotten dark, and the best birthday surprise of all for me was that it had started to snow during my party! Giant fat sticky flakes, that perfect beautiful romantic kind, and with Christmas lights starting to go up around town it was a really beautiful sight. We had quick pasta on our own and then Colin and Karl (the only other native English speaking instructors here this season) came over for drinks and more general celebration. (Thank goodness this was at our place as we all ended up very drunk and I was already at home! A whole bottle of Jagermeister disappeared amongst other things).

We spent most of today getting over our hangovers (unfortunately not skiing, AGAIN) and then we went out for a nice dinner tonight (using my birthday money from Oma and Opa) at the Dorfkrug, I had a very Austrian meal of pork cutlets with creamy mushroom sauce, vegetable, and spätzle. (Tom of course had a giant bloody steak). Now I am at home snuggled up in bed with Geoff Bennett's new tiny laptop (we have a 2 month loan of it here), vanilla scented candles and lots of birthday chocolate!

All things considered it was a fantastic birthday, I never expected it to be a big deal here in Kaprun.

Plan for tomorrow: SKIING. About time. Hopefully the recent snow opens up a bit more terrain on the glacier!
Added note: Went skiing today and hit up the first off-piste of the season! A bit safer with my dandy avalanche tracker (above). Visibility was terrible (as skiing through a snowstorm tends to be) but the fresh powder was GREAT. Hit a couple rocks but that was to be expected this early in the season. Bring it on!

home sweet home

Just a quick post to say that Tom and I are both in Salzburg, about to watch the Sound of Music at the hostel.

It feels great and was like coming home landing in Austria. Nothing like crisp air and snow-capped mountains to make me feel better :)

rainy and cold

So far today has been pretty disappointing. The plan was first to check out the National Museum. After navigating my way there in the rain, I found out it was shut on Mondays. So due to my own under-researching I was left with not much to do. And the weather was MISERABLE. (As one would expect from Ireland.) I am embarrassed to admit it, but I actually ended up on a bus tour. I wanted to get out and explore the city but in bad weather by myself badly researched I didn't know where to go. The tour was interesting enough and I did learn a few things about the city, but it was overpriced and I would have preferred a Sandeman's tour had there been one. I did get to see Trinity College, Ireland's smallest pub, the Guinness stockhouse, Wellington Monument, and St. Patrick's cathedral amongst other things. From my bus. I'm off to dinner tonight with Tim and Mik again (I could totally go a nice stew or pie - now I know why they enjoy hot heavy bland meals!)

Last night ended up being terrific though! We went to a pub with live Irish music and dancing, which I really enjoyed. None of my photos of the dancers came out nearly well enough :( and the music made a great atmosphere with everyone clapping along.

Flying back to Germany tomorrow. I'm a little bit disappointed with Dublin - not the city itself, which I quite like - I just havn't had the best time here and I was really looking forward to it. I guess I've learned my lesson and I'll plan better next time.

Ciao
Maz

Hamburg and Dublin

I'll continue this one chronologically:

I really enjoyed my day alone in Hamburg. I bought a day pass for public tranport and explored bits of the city we didn't do there last time. I took the S-bahn out to a cute suburb called Blankenese where I found a little market selling flowers, meats and cheeses. I bought myself a sausage, chatting to the lady in German but I ended up eating it with mustard because there wasn't help-yourself ketchup and I couldnt remember what it was in German. It was really nice to wander around the suburbs, it felt really genuine, I didn't see a single other tourist out there. The weather was terrible but I was starting to be used to it. I also bought myself a comic to help practice my German, its the Donald Duck XXL-Winter-Spass book. Has cute duck comics and children's puzzles in it which are useful for my level of German.

Then I went to the famous harbour and following directions from my guidebook took a few ferries to get a decent tour of the harbour. It was really nice in the cold and mist to sit inside the boat with my iPod and just chill and watch everything go past. Hamburg harbour is pretty memorable - its not particularly cute or scenic because it is a real functional harbour, I saw tons of tugs and container ships and machinery which was interesting.

Back at the hostel I met some other people travelling alone and we got on really well. There was Nelson, from Darwin, and Riley from Vancouver. We ended up all going out Friday night to an Irish pub, it was a good fun night and it was nice to have some people to talk to after spending the whole day alone.

The next day I was up reasonably early to catch my flight to Dublin. The airport was a serious hike from the hostel - the bus took over an hour getting there. Services at the airport were terrible because I was flying on a budget airline from a tiny airport. The flight crew were Irish which was really bizarre after struggling with foreign languages all year. After arriving in Dublin airport I took a sandwich break and ordering in English felt so so wierd. I caught the bus to my hostel without problems. It was a green double decker :D

I am staying in the Kinlay House which is a giant hostel in a really cool part of the city. I am in a 6 bed dorm with people who arent particularly interesting, but hey, you cant win em all. The hostel has free internet which is incredibly useful. It also has breakfast, tv, dvd player with a massive movie library and a shared kitchen. So there is no shortage of things to do here. Last night I ended up chilling here and watching some movies with the other travellers. Not knowing anyone here it was hard to find people to go out on Saturday night, unfortunately.

Today I had a bit of a wander around the city and got my bearings. I had lunch with Tim (the Canadian I met in Paris) and it was nice to see a familiar face. We had bangers n mash with Guinness (trying to be as Irish as we could) but I thought the Guinness tasted terrible. I'm back at the hostel now for a short break (I might finally get my laundry done) but I'm going out tonight with Tim and Mikaela (who is arriving here this evening from Paris!). We're going to go check out some Irish dancing which I am pretty excited for. No more Guinness for me though.

I had a look into walking tours here and there is a serious lack of good ones. They are all very expensive and area or theme specific, leaving a perfect spot for Sandeman to open up. They'd do well here.

One of the things that strikes me here though is that its even harder for me to meet people, which is counter-intuitive, I thought the English speaking would have made it easy. But in Holland and Germany, the English speakers cling to each other at the hostel and its really easy to find people to chat to. At the hostel here I've met Germans and French and Spaniards, but I don't know where the English speakers have all got to!

That's my travels up to date!
I might post again tomorrow, but if not, until Salzburg!

xoxox Amanda