Garmisch Part 2: Skiing, Hiking & Yodeling

As I have said before, this was my first time to attempt skiing. How did it go? Hmm, let me dig up a phrase from my last post: nicht sehr gut.

I don’t know what I expected, but skiing was not like I thought it would be. It was much faster and scarier. Before I really get to that, let me back track to the beginning of the day. We wanted to get private ski lessons for me, but even though we checked in advance, they were booked up. They told us to check back the morning we wanted to ski, and when we did, they told us to check back at 9:30. We took a little extra time getting ready, and then decided that John should just teach me. We had heard that you shouldn’t try to teach your spouse to ski, so we were determined to prove everyone wrong. The good news is that we didn’t get on each other’s nerves…I did, however, decide that this is how I feel about skiing:

We started at the bottom of the mountain. John showed me how to put my skis on and how to stop. I practiced that a few times, and then he said it was time to go to the lift. I was a little scared, because I didn’t feel anywhere near ready to go flying down a mountain, but what do I know? I’d never been skiing before. I’m really glad the lift was a gondola, so I didn’t have to worry about pushing off from the chair and getting away from the lift ASAP.

When we got to the top, we decided to go down a medium-level run (in retrospect, that was a bad idea, but we didn’t know!). John showed me again how to stop and started to show me how to turn a little (to make the mountain slopes less steep). At this point, I lost control and went flying down the first slope. I was terrified that I couldn’t stop, and then I realized I hadn’t fallen yet, nor had my skis come off, which only served to freak me out more. I could just see the injury coming. Luckily, right after that, I finally fell, and my legs went up in the air, my right ski came off and I started to laugh. I think I was laughing out of fear. When I realized I had stopped, I started crying, because up until then, skiing wasn’t scary to me. Now it had become pretty scary.

I got up (after some difficulty) and tried again. We practiced weaving back and forth for quite awhile. As I got closer to the next big drop, I started to freak out. Eventually, I lost control again and made myself fall (I didn’t want to be out of control and wait for it to happen this time). After that, I was too scared to try again. I probably would have given it another go had it not been so steep where we were, but I was terrified by the area where we were and ended up walking down to the next lift. (Yes, I admit, I scooted down some of the way on my rear end, too.) It was hard to walk down the icy patches, and there were several of them.

While we waited for a ski patrol to come take me back to the main lift to get me down (this one only took us up), another girl from Michigan named Emily came over and asked if we, too, were trying to walk down the mountain. She had realized she had gotten in over her head on this path, too. She had skiing in Michigan, but she said they were more hills than mountains.

Eventually, the ski patrol came and took us on a snow mobile back to the top so we could ride the gondolas back down. John skied the rest of the way down the mountain by himself and met me at the bottom. After that, he took another stab at the run while I waited.

I’m still getting a little panicky when I think about going down the mountain, but I think I’d be willing to give skiing another shot under different circumstances and on much easier slopes.

After skiing, we got cleaned up and went for a drive around the 1936 Olympic ski jump in Garmisch. It’s SO freaking steep! I cannot imagine flying down that thing and then going up in the air and traveling hundreds of meters forward. Yikes!

We then decided to get a late lunch at this little pizza place I really enjoyed when we were in Garmisch in November 2007. It got fairly comical, because we’re sure we ended up retracing the same steps we took on our previous journey to this restaurant. We couldn’t quite remember where it was, so we got in the mindset of “year ago John & Sarah” and apparently did a great job, since we found it and even remembered some of the conversation that “year ago us” had. Unfortunately, the restaurant, Antica Roma, was closed for mid day and wouldn’t be open again until 5:30 (it was about 4:30 at the time). We were cold, so we got a cup of coffee up the street and waited. It was well worth the wait! We even got to sit at the same table and in the same places as we did last year. The pizza was just as I remembered it, and now I’m sure — it’s the best pizza in the whole world. I wish it wasn’t a 4.5 hour drive from where we live!

That night (Saturday), we signed up for a night walking tour with our hotel of Partnach Gorge. The gorge has a lot of ice formations this time of year, and so the tour takes the group about half a mile through the gorge to get a view of it all. They equipped us with torches to light the way; unfortunately, John didn’t like having it. It provided so much light that it kept him from being able to see beyond the light, and thus, the ice formations. He ditched the torch at the turn around point, and enjoyed the darker walk on the way back.

When we were done, the tour group stopped in a little restaurant for hot cocoa, drinks, dessert, etc. We just had hot chocolate, but a lot of people ordered the cream puff, which was huge. Seriously. It was probably the size of a volleyball. Eesh! After dinner, a German man came out and yodeled a bit. I think that was my favorite part of the night. His yodeling sounded like he was saying “hold a radio” over and over. I will try to post the video of that in the coming days. My computer has had issues importing videos lately. I’ll try to finally get that fixed so I can post videos again.

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