I started skiing relatively late, when I was 19. I was absolutely terrible at first. But I loved it and stuck with it and have been skiing for at least one day every year ever since.
This winter I decided to return to Austria, to a resort called Gastein which I visited back in early 2010 (see my post on that trip here).
My girlfriend and I flew to Salzburg on Saturday night. We stayed the night and had the biggest Austrian feast of all sorts of meat that you have ever seen at the beautiful hotel Grünauerhof in the suburbs.
The next day we headed for the mountains of Salzburg state to Bad Gastein. There, we skied for 2 and a half days in the warm sunshine, enjoying Austrian beer, schnitzels, sausages and goulash. Bad Gastein is a town built on thermal springs, which meant that after a hard day's skiing we were able to relax in the comfort of the spa, enjoying the region's healing waters.
We were due to fly back to London on Wednesday but a need to see some clients came up, so instead of jetting back to London, we caught a train to Vienna so that I could attend business meetings and that we could enjoy more of the Austrian cuisine. We visited a number of those classic Viennese coffee houses to sample traditional meals such as Sachertorte, Apple Strudel and Viennese coffee.
Ironically, even though it was sunny and warm when we were in the mountains for skiing, it was cold, snowy and windy in Vienna. Battling the snow to get to business meetings was certainly fun, however, and beats a day in the office in London.
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