The Hills Are Alive....

Hey yawl,

Just so you don't think all I do is go on trips to go surfing, I thought I had better blog about my snowboarding trips to Austria I did during the season. Haha.
Sorry I am well behind schedule with the blogs, but will catch up soon.

I managed to get to the ski fields in Austria twice while there was some snow, which was a very hot winter so most of the fields had to use snow makers, it was still cold enough to freeze the little water falls in the shadow of the mountains, parts of the lakes were frozen as well.

The first time I flew to Salzburg where Johanna picked me up and we headed to the mountains. We stayed in a luxury hotel that is a health centre, so plenty of post snowboarding sauna's and spa's were the go.

Johanna's father Manfred came and met us during the weekend, he like every other Austrian it seems is an amazing ski'er so he got a cool video of me on my first day, kooking it on the slopes. They were really good coaches, patience being the key.
Here is a link to a video (You will need quicktime, 7 or 8 to view it) http://www.annode.net/paulsmith/content/video/Travel/FirstdaySnowboarding.MP4

I had a great time on the mountain, and had much more fun when I wasn't always falling on my butt. It was strange to see people riding along on fake snow trails and just a few meters to the side was brown grass, real snow is better to ride on, so Johanna took me to the areas that were higher up.

I met Johanna's Grandfather who had been in the Germany army, and was 19 when he was captured in Italy by NZ soldiers. My Grandfather was in Italy as a soldier and perhaps he may have been one of the soldiers. He told me that if you were a German soldier captured during combat in Italy you were sent to British POW camp, but if you surrendered you were taken by the Italian partizan's, which were alot harsher in their treatment. His regiment was surrounded by the British and knew the would have to surrendered, so they flew a white flag, then agreed with the Brits to have a mock fight and spent the rest of the war in a pleasant British POW camp by the lake.

Salzburg and the surrounding areas, are simply amazing, beautiful lakes in the valleys of amazing snow covered mountains.







In the middle of Salzburg is an old fortress which has commanding views over the city, and through to the mountains.
There are so many ski fields in the region, most of the skiing mountains are set up with lifts which join so you can ski for a whole day across different mountains.

Calum (a flatmate from Hamilton who was studying in Vienna) came and met us later in the week, and we moved to another hotel, which was more rural, but very cool. It had an old Sauna that had a mechanism to drop a metal cage of heated rocks into a pool of water. The roof was curved so the steam came back rushing down onto our backs, the seasoned Austrian sauna veterans could handle 3 sessions in there, I was ready for a lie down after the first. I would have photos for you, but the other naked people wouldn't have appreciated it.

My second trip was a sneaky little extended weekend mission, as Johanna and some friends were heading to the slopes with the prospect of fresh powder on Monday. It was great, my riding was good and even tried doing some little jumps, but some of the best parts of the day was just relaxing in a deck chair at a hut on the middle of the mountain, shirt off in the sunshine enjoying the view across to Germany. We briefly went through Germany as there is a small area where Germany splits the Salzburg area.

I am actually really looking forward to go snowboarding again. But am happy to wait as the summer is pretty nice here in the UK.

Love to you all, especially to my niece Neeve Kate just born two days ago on the 7th June. I can't wait to meet you!

- Paul