On our way to the Allgäu we made a little stop and hiked the Ministersteig in Austria right before we entered Germany and were again amazed by the beauty of the alps. From there we made it to the little village Nesselwang where we enjoyed the good weather, a close game of Minigolf and some Tabletennis. In Sonthofen we enjoyed the Sauna, that we had already visited so many times and the next day, I could really use the Wakeboard that we had taken with us in Rosi since Berlin for the first time. In summerly warm temperatures although it was March, I could ride at Wasserskilift Allgäu and as the start of every wakeboard season that gave me sore muscles for the next few days, but it felt so good. In Kempten we visited a few of Lindas hiking friends and the next day we had to make our way in the direction of Innsbruck to pick up Marie.
Marie and Lindas know each other from teaching at the same school and it is hard to explain Marie to others if you are not able to experience her. She is so full of energy 24/7 that you could feel that she needs to do something with that energy and since she had been working like crazy the weeks before she was even fuller of energy. It was her clear goal to be active and we wanted to provide that to her. At the same time she is very positive…. not in a way that she TRIES to see the positive in everything, she actually DOES see the positive in EVERYTHING. She has enough positive energy for many people at the same time. We picked her up at the train station in Innsbruck and drove directly to the AirBnB that Linda had „accidentally“ booked (No joke she booked by accident a wrong apartment), but it turned out to be amazingly huge and with an incredibly cool view.
We checked in, cooked together and started to play boardgames. I don’t know if we mentioned it before, but Linda and me love board games, the new one we got in Berlin (it is called Radlands) we have been playing a lot in the last weeks. But Marie brought more board games with her and we played EVERY night while Marie visited us.
The next morning we made our way again top the Kaunertaler Glacier and were skiing again there. What Marie is lacking in skill, she is making up in speed, so we had another really long day with a lot of slopes and drove until Marie was done…. so pretty much until the end. The next day the wind was too strong on the glacier, so we went hiking, and to not get stuck in the snow like last time, we just started hiking from the flat, where everything was green and flowers were blossoming. We hiked along the valley from Fließ to Landeck and back on the other side…. It was beautiful! The weather was amazing and the full valley had a real spring feeling to it.
From there we drove through Switzerland to Italy. We had booked a flat in Cervinia on the south side of Zermatt, because they said that a lot of snow would fall there and we wanted to get a few more good days of skiing. On the way we had to take some detours of the flooding that was big in the news, which delayed our arrival by about two hours, but apart from that everything worked fine. Already at a hight of less that 1000m we saw the first snow. Cervinia is at about 2000m of elevation and when we arrived, we arrived in a winter wonderland. There was snow everywhere and the cars were buried in snow. We were lucky to get a parking spot in front of the apartment building.
The apartment building is hard to describe…. From the outside it looks pretty much like the Boomerang Hotel from the cardboard game Hotel. From the inside it gives a weird 50s charm and the hallways look like straight from the shining movie. Our appartment was tiny and the walls inside the apartment all leave a 50cm gap to the ceiling and we had to lock the bathroom door by pushing the bin in front of of it…so almost no privacy. It looked weird, with a way too big couch on the cost of a way to small dining table, but it was not uncomfortable… just the bed.. that was the worst we have slept in on all our trip. But the view from the balcony was breathtaking.
The next morning it was Lindas birthday and we wanted to celebrate it all together on the slopes in all the new fresh snow. But since all the fresh snow the last days, the ski resort has already been fully closed the last days. The forecast for the day was blue sky and no more snow so we had hoped for an open resort again, but when we were already fully closed and ready to go to the lift to get our lift passes we found out online that the ski resort was closed again…. Linda was visibly sad and that was hard for me to see… So I looked for alternatives and found the option of snowshoe hiking. In a friendly shop we rented a pair of snowshoes for each of us and asked at the tourist information were we could hike…. They were not helpful at all and only said that there was a high risk of avalanches everywhere so snowshoe hiking was forbidden… unless we would book a tour with them, but the tour was already full and the argumentation did not make sense to me anyway. So we just started to walk ourself towards a little lake that the rental shop had recommended us. After some initial challenges in getting in the snow shoes we were ready to explore the winter wonderland walking wise and the endless positivity from Marie helped to raise the overall mood. Linda and me thought that the snowshoes were exactly what we had needed on the hike a few days ago, but now we could fully enjoy it. After a while we really entered into a beautiful winter wonderland, that was only interrupted by the roaring and hammering deep sound that we heard every now and than . After a while we saw another group of snowshoe hikers, that were with a guide and knew that we were in the right and a safe area. On the other side of the valley we could see now where the sounds where coming from. Huge avalanches were going down. They looked almost like snow and ice waterfalls and you could hear and feel the immense power of these avalanches. They were the first avalanches that I saw live and I was deeply impressed and we all agreed that we are happy to hike today and not ski in a ski resort with the risk of avalanches going down. Also Linda had said before we went to Cervinia that she wanted to see the Matterhorn (or Cervino how it is called here), and on that hike we saw it soooo good, covered in snow and the wind on the top blowing off the snow. It looked beautiful.
After an Aperol Spritz break in a little hut we hiked all the way back to Rosi, returned the snow shoes and all agreed that this was the best sportive activity we could have done that day. Driven by Maries hunger we went for a really really really good Italian Pizza right at the bottom of where normally the slope ended.
The next morning we were ready to explore this ski area, but only very few lifts were opened and the visibility was not very good. Actually we were lucky because the swiss side of the ski resort remained closed all the time we were there. The snow was amazing and very grippy but the view was soo bad that it was pretty hard. At times we had to ride from post to post to see where the slope was. Combined with the fact that it was easter holidays and only a few lifts open, the slopes were full and the lift lines were long. At the end we stayed a little deeper in the valley where the view was a little better and we all had good fun. We ended the day again with cooking and a long night of playing cardboard games. The next morning we had to check out, packed everything and drove again to the lift. It had snowed again over night, but this time it was easter sunday and all the religious Italians stayed with their family, so there were hardly any lift lines. The view was not really good, but by now we knew the slopes and when we dropped into the first deeper part I couldn’t stop screaming for joy. There were about 20 cm of fresh powder snow on the groomed slopes it was INSANE…..We were laughing and giggling like little kids, but stayed on the slopes, because of the still bad visibility. But at one point, while we were in the lift, all of a sudden everything cleared up and we could see a clear white ocean of snow below us in the sun and now it became even INSANER. Marie had never been next to the slopes in deep snow and we started easy with a small patch between two slopes, but the smile in her face showed that she enjoyed it…. It was perfectly untouched powder snow… There were not many people on the slopes so now the race for the powder patches next to slopes was open and we got as many of them as possible. It was perfect… a perfect day on the mountain. Since most of the people were stuck somewhere in the deep snow ,the slopes were almost untouched, so we used the afternoon for the still really good slopes. At the end of this day, we arrived in the valley with shaking knees, and a smile from cheek to cheek. It was the perfect ski day….(because of that we also hardly took any pictures…. we were too busy enjoying the experience)
and at the same time the last day of the ski season for us. A ski season that was so intense and so perfect. Coming to Europe we had hoped for a few days on snow and had expectations to be happy in slushy snow, but we got really lucky.
From Cervinia we drove directly to Geneva through France, where Maries Flixbus would leave the next morning at around 2 AM. Until that time we ate and played more cardboard games before we brought Marie to the bus and thanked this incredibly active human full of positivity for her visit. Happily we fell asleep in front of the ice hockey stadium, for the first time in a week again in Rosi.
höme 
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