Bruised, but not broken

I'm baaaaaaaack. And here's where I've been for the last week...


Well, not actually on the top of this mountain all week, but in Rauris, Austria, learning to snowboard. I've had the best time. Snowboarding is awesome. I fell over a shed load, but it was totally worth it.

I was up at 2.30 am last Saturday, ready for our 6.30 am flight. Seriously, why do airports insist you are there 2 hours before your flight time!? We flew into Salzburg, which I didn't see a lot of, and then transfered to the tiny little alpine village of Rauris. The village was so cute, really tiny. All the buildings had that lovely alpine feel. They also all seem to have pretty massive houses.


This is the village of Rauris from the chair lift. Our hotel was right next to the church.


You can see our hotel in this photo, the building in the sunlight at the far end.

Every morning we walked along this lovely little street to the ski slopes of Rauris. We had snowboarding lessons with a guy called Ru, who'd been boarding for 20 years. He was an awesome teacher, lets just say, he had me on my feet and heading down the nursery slope without falling over on my first day.


That's not to say that I didn't fall over, far from it. You spend your whole first few days falling on your bum or your knees. I have a lot of bruises. But by the end of the week I felt like I had achieved a lot. I could get down a blue run without falling over and on our third day we even boarded all the way down from the top of the mountain. It probably wasn't such a great idea, but it was worth going up to the top just to see the great views.






I'm not sure what kind of eagle this is, but it was massive

Ben was pretty damn good by the end of the week.


This made me even more frustrated that I couldn't quite get the turns right. I'd manage a couple then fall on my butt. So while Ben kept heading back up the slopes, I decided my bum couldn't take any more pain and much prefered this ....


The hot chocolate in Austria is amazing. I wish I'd taken a picture of it sooner as it had loads of yummy cream on the top. Clearly I couldn't wait.

I also spent a lot of time filming Ben's progress from the lift. He'd actually manage to get out of the lift, board down the slope and then get back into the same lift with me.



Austria is such a lovely country and we've both decided that we'd definitely like to go back and board again. Ben's even on about buying his own board, I don't think I'm quite ready for that. I also really liked learning some german, I'm thinking I'll get one of those learn to speak german cds. I really need to learn more than just please and thank you. I always feel really lazy just speaking english when people like Ru speak about four different languages.

Anyway, I'd definitely recommend snowboarding, it was so much fun. And if you can get to Austria then I'd go for it. The people are so friendly and helpful and the country is stunning. Here's a few more piccies for you.