Category: Europe January 2019

We arrived at the Munich Airport safe ‘n’ sound! We had great flights; we arrived early in Amsterdam, so we didn’t have to sprint to our connection to Munich! Our bags were the last off 🙁 but they made it! 🙂 Here’s Brian in the Airport:

We took the S-Bahn (surface train) into Central Munich.

After a wee rest in the afternoon, we wandered around Central Munich for the evening:

Another in Central Munich… just to prove I was there!

Supper at the Hofbräuhaus! (where Octoberfest is held)

Beer for Brian, wine for me, and German sausage and sauerkraut for both of us…

We had a safe, but long drive from Munich to Ruhpolding… in and out of rain, snow and gigantic snowflakes! We took the back roads, so got to see lots of villages.

The Alps had been hammered by snow… they called it a “100 Year Storm”. The last 15 km of our drive, which should have taken 20 min, took nearly 3 hours! We’re not really sure what happened… but, it was not an avalanche. Partly accidents, for sure; and we heard that in some of the smaller villages snow being removed from roofs dumped onto the roads, so then the roads needed to be cleared.

We finally made it safe ‘n’ sound into Ruhpolding. We checked into our nice little apartment, then went out for supper. Here are a couple pics from The Village (the central part of Ruhpolding).

We had supper at a wonderful Hungarian restaurant recommended by our Hostess – she owns (or manages) our apartment house. The “kids” were just finishing supper in The Village, a block from our restaurant, so popped by to say hi. Sorry, no pics of them! 🙁 They told us about Glühwein Huts, and, of course, we found one!

The Men’s Sprint was postponed from Wednesday to Thursday. We heard that the German Government had declared a state of emergency in the region – we were safe ‘n’ sound, and Ruhpolding was just fine. But, sadly, the Opening Ceremonies Tuesday night had to be cancelled.

We had lunch with Scott and Christian (Emma was training at the time) …

Here’s our apartment, and Brian standing by our SUV… it’s a Kia… we wanted a BMW, but they wouldn’t rent us one cuz we were going to Italy… guess the BMW is highly sought after by Italian thieves! Our apartment is third floor, left side of the balcony.

The Hotel Post in the afternoon, and supper there in the evening. Brian had traditional Wiener Schnitzel and I had thin-sliced roast beef salad sort of thing… both were excellent! And, my favorite way to eat beef… rare, thin-sliced, cold, and with a great dressing! And fried potatoes too! So far, hadn’t seen too much “green” on the plates! They definitely like meat and potatoes!!!!!

Glühwein: And, a shot of amaretto with it this evening… be still my heart!

Sun! The sun came out… it was spectacular! Here are a couple pics from our balcony in the morning…

Ruhpolding, like every town we were in, has lovely churches.

Off to Berchtesgaden

In the afternoon we drove east to Berchtesgaden (this is where Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest is). Unfortunately, Eagle’s Nest is closed in the Winter… I think the road up there is pretty nasty in the Winter. The town of Berchtesgaden is lovely and the drive there was incredible… especially after the dump of snow. Here are some pics from along the way…

Some pics of the Eagle’s Nest… at least we think this is Eagle’s Nest 😉

A few pics in Berchtesgaden…

We had a great first day at the Ruhpolding races!! We parked near the Zentrum (Center) of Ruhpolding and took a shuttle to the Chiemgau Arena. We were in the Grandstand, in the Standing Section. We were looking at the Shooting Range, looking straight down lane 9, and we were able to see the finish line.

The Canadians had mixed results, but all-in-all a great day!

The Range area was in the shade, so the light in the photos was not great.

Between the Men’s Sprint and the Women’s Sprint we wandered around… beer huts, food huts, tons of people! Lots of languages; many speak some, or even lots, of English.

And, amazingly, we bumped into Scott and Christian during their cool-down!

I had great fun watching the people watch Brian!!! All the way from funny faces to “I want a photo with you”!! 😃 At €5 each, he coulda made €125+ from photos!!!😂 And those are only the photos we know about! 🤣 He stayed nice and warm though!

We enjoyed “Currywurst Mit Frites” (sausage with a mild curry sauce and fries) for lunch.

And, GLÜHWEIN!! 😀 This time Weiß Glühwein (with white wine) … it was good! Not as flavorful as the red, but very good!

A couple more pics from between the races…

I was able to get a couple okay pics of “the kids” in the range. I couldn’t get Scott and Christian in prone, cuz they chose the lane that had a speaker in my line of sight. 😂

We stopped at the Supermarket (grocery store) on our way ‘home’ after the races… found the ingredients for fixing our own glühwein (red)!!!!! 😄

We finished our day with Scott and Christian and Emma and their teammates for supper at Hotel Post. We had a great visit!!! Sorry, I forgot to take a pic…again! 🙁

What an exciting day and race!!!!  We were sandwiched in in the Grandstand Standing Section… in amongst a large group of Norwegians. Yet, whenever the Germans did anything, the noise drowned out everything!! It was impossible to take photos from the Grandstand… way too crowded and too many heads and flags in my line of sight. 16,000 people at Friday’s race!!

It was soooo exciting to see how well Christian and Scott did, WOW!!!!!! Unfortunate for Aiden to have a penalty loop, but it happens. He and Jules show lots of potential!!!

I only have a couple pics from the Arena area…. they show a bit of what it was like with the crowds. This first pic has the Range in the background (where the flags are). The little huts are all for food and drink and drink and drink! 😃

We had a great day watching the Women’s Relay. Emma did a fabulous job and got us up into 5th! Then Megan and Rosanna had a tough go in the Range, both with a penalty loop, and Canada ended in 12th, which is still respectable. It was wonderful to see Emma shoot the way she usually does!!!

Here are a couple pics from the day… I’m on our apartment balcony, Brian is along the walk we used to go to The Village to catch the shuttle, and one of the good ones of Emma…

We decided to try a different viewing spot…. instead of being in the Standing section of the Grandstand, we went On Course. It was very exciting to be so close to the racers!! The Grandstand was quite packed on Friday (with 16,000) people at the race. There were 22,000 there for the Women’s Relay. Where we stood was reasonably quiet, we saw lots of skiing, and watched with some young Canadians who used to compete with Scott & Christian. We followed the shooting on the LiveData (internet).

OMG, what an exciting race!!!!!!!! Christian did so well!!! He was always in the mix… his skiing…. man, he stayed right there with all the big names!!! And his shooting… awesome!!… 19/20! And finishing with a Personal Best of 11th place, only 34 sec behind the Winner (the race was 15 km long, and the Winner finished in 36:44 (min:sec).

We saw Christian in his warm-up and he waved to us as he went by, and Scott stopped on his way up to where he wanted/needed to be. After the race, Scott came down to where we were and Christian came by during his cool-down… we had a wonderful chat and a few pics.

We didn’t hear a count for the number of people, but we think at least 25,000, maybe more. We watched from the Course again… back in the same spot as on Saturday, and in the sun!

We did not stay for the Women’s Mass Start; with no Canadians in it, we decided to miss the mass exodus (and I mean MASSIVE exodus), and came back to town early. We had a rest, then went to a nearby town called Inzell for an early supper.

Here are some pics from today… Scott, before the race started, all of us together after the race and one of Brian on our walk back from the shuttle.

Sharing one of Christian’s photos, with Emma, from after today’s race.

We left Ruhpolding about 10:30 am, with a gift of a bottle of Glühwein from our Hostess; and armed with our mandatory-for-Austria Yellow Vests (for safety, already in the trunk of our SUV) and mandatory-for-Austria “Vignette” (a sticker we had to buy for the car, €9 for 10 days, to pay for Austrian roads). Off we went to Salzburg!!

On a side note…driving has gone fairly well here, we have Google Maps and the SUV has navigation… between the two navigational systems and road signs, we seem to figure it out.

The center of Salzburg is absolutely beautiful!! I wish we had had sun, rather than overcast, but it was wonderful to be warm enough for our lighter coats (sweaters).

In the first pic, Brian is on a pedestrian bridge with the Old City of Salzburg behind him, including the Hohensalzburg Fortress (“High Salzburg Fortress”).  It’s one of the largest medieval castles in Europe, construction began in 1077!

The next two pics are of streets in the Aldstadt (“Old City”) … lots of shops and more shops and restaurants.

Salzburg Cathedral

The current Salzburg Cathedral is a 17th Century Baroque Cathedral (it was founded in 774, rebuilt in 1181 after a fire, then rebuilt again in the 17C in the Baroque style).  We didn’t get a good photo of the outside, but here are a few from the inside…

Salzburg: St Peter’s Cemetery Near Cathedral

Close to the Cathedral was a little cemetery…  up in the cliff is what we think is an entrance to the Fortress; the second pic is a close-up…

Austrian Alps

We had a beautiful drive from Salzburg to South Tyrol in Italy.  Here are some pics in Austria from the drive…

We arrived and settled into our apartment in Italy! We had a lovely drive… really amazing roads/tunnels; part autobahn, part smaller highway.

But…. we had a bit of an adventure upon arrival, all turned out just fine, not to worry!  Two addresses on hotel voucher, one address on itinerary, none the same! 😬 Our Host had to leave before we arrived for a dental emergency, but we were able to find the apartment with a few e-mails with him.  We got into our apartment, then headed out to get more of our bags from the suv. We left the front door unlocked, and left the apartment key in the room… UH-OH… the front door had a secret self-lock… oh, caa-caa, both apartment keys are IN the room, and so is my cell!!! Eeks! Fortunately, we had B’s cell in the suv and we had the keys to the suv! We went next door for supper, emailed our Host…his father met us and let us back in! And, he bought us wine for OUR mistake!!! 🍷🍷 We figured we should make another mistake the next day!!!😆

We decided to be out-and-about the next day, exploring our area… and figuring out EXACTLY where we were! 😂

So, as promised we found out exactly where we were!

We were in Italy… although this region used to be Austria. Right after WW1, this region was given to Italy. Mussolini demanded Italian in the area, and had all of the towns, cities, roads and even people’s names renamed in Italian; he actually jailed people for speaking German in public! After WW2, things relaxed, but… everything now has two names, one in German and one in Italian.

So, we were in the Province of South Tyrol (German), Province of Bolzano (Italian).  We were in the village of Olang (German), Valdaora (Italian). AND… the village had what I can only say are like neighborhoods… we were in Oberolang (German), Valdaora di Sopra (Italian), meaning Upper Olang. Nearby is Mitterolang (G), Valdaora Mezzo (I), meaning Middle Olang.

It explains why the World Cup is in Antholz-Anterselva… German name, then Italian name.

Over 60% speak German, so most people were using the German names.

On Tuesday, we wandered around Oberolang, in the beautiful sunshine!

This Church was just outside the front door of our apartment building; this is the back of the Church, Brian is at the top of a set of stairs to the road below our apartment, and the last photo is on the east side of Oberolang, looking approximately north, into the valley where the races will be.

Some more pics from the east side of Oberolang…

And yes, that is a ski area behind me in one of the pics… called Kronplatz. (We thought about going up for a couple hours Wednesday. We could have rented equipment, and made do with the clothes we brought, but it was overcast and without goggles, it would have been tough to see. So our Wednesday adventure took us in another direction!)

We wandered down to Mitterolang, to a little grocery store, to pick up… wine and cheese and olives and smoked salmon and chocolate and …. Grappa!!! A little bottle of Italian “white lightning”! And, I know why I don’t drink it much at our Italian friends’ home in Calgary!!! Tastes like White Lightning! 😆 

Brian couldn’t decide on wine or grappa or pills! Turns out, all three! 🤣