Greetings from Kuhtai! We’re skiing this week in a tiny little town about 30 miles outside of Innsbruck, Austria. The town is the highest elevation ski-town in Austria and has a population of 13 in the summer time and about 500 in the winter, including tourists. A nice, small town Austrian skiing experience! Even plenty of native Austrians have never heard of this place.
Here we are eating breakfast. We got a great deal on this vacation apartment, which included lift tickets. And it’s nice because as you can see out the window, the lift is just across the street. The only downside is Ollie looks out the window all day, pointing at the cable car saying “waaaa go choochoo” which means he wants to go up on the train (he doesn’t differentiate a cable car from a train apparently). Then he cries when the cable car stops at the end of the day.
Elora is taking ski school classes for 5 days in a row, 4 hours a day! We watched a lot of Warren Miller films to get her stoked about skiing and it seemed to work. She’s so excited to go to ski school, and unlike last year the excitement continues after she has put on her skis too!
She’s learning how to make a pizza with her skis, but still struggles a bit with that. Mostly she just slides around on her skis, walks a way up the hill and then slides down until she stops.
Elora is probably the only kid in the world who does not like pizza, but when they asked her if she wanted to make a pizza with her skis she said yes, but then said excitedly “I’m going to make french fries instead!” And since she does not make a triangle snow plow shape with her skis, but has her skis in a straight line, she’s right about the french fry thing.
Karen is now rocking a ski mask after freezing her cheeks off (top and bottom) in Zermatt. She is taking ski school classes too. She says it’s an all ladies group with various skill levels, but they have a happy energetic teacher who has really helped everyone improve. A quick note about this photo… if you click and look closely at the billboard, the ad on the bottom shows what looks like a bride and a groom. The bride is thinking about a baby and the groom thinking about a motorcycle, while the caption says in German, “everyone has their own individual dream”. Nice.
Our first day of skiing was white! Nothing but white! If you can’t see anything behind Karen, that’s great because neither could we. The view is supposed to be nice. It would be even nicer if you could see whether or not you were skiing off a cliff before the ground disappeared underneath you Wiley Coyote style.
Zoom!
Check out all that snow spray! We’ll have more pictures once the weather gets better.
