This exact time last year we were in Lermoos, Austria, as we had been each year this time for five years running. It's a small village near the Zugspitze, a couple hours south of Munich into Tirol. I learned to snowboard there. Last year I learned to ski there. Both boys have learned to ski there. We couldn't go this year for a few reasons, which is fine, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it.
My ski instructor last year was a man who also runs a mountain hut/restaurant (an "alm", although technically this just means the mountain pasture) in the summer and has a small herd of cows. He was just into yogurt and cheese making in addition to milk. Every morning in our hotel we ate the yogurt he'd made by hand from his small herd of cows on the mountain. The girlfriend of the gent who taught me to snowboard a couple of years earlier works, in the summer, as a waitress in my ski instructor's alm. I met my instructor's father, who is (still) an instructor himself, and at the time was instructing a woman in her 70s, who'd been coming for decades, and had outlived her husband by a few years, but was still spry on the skis.
I've always found the Tiroleans friendly, hearty, and filled with rosy-cheeked good humor. It is a seductive place. And the mountains.... I'm a city guy through and through, but there's something about the snowy Alps in the winter sunshine....
This exact time last year we were in Lermoos, Austria, as we had been each year this time for five years running. It's a small village near the Zugspitze, a couple hours south of Munich into Tirol. I learned to snowboard there. Last year I learned to ski there. Both boys have learned to ski there. We couldn't go this year for a few reasons, which is fine, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it.
My ski instructor last year was a man who also runs a mountain hut/restaurant (an "alm", although technically this just means the mountain pasture) in the summer and has a small herd of cows. He was just into yogurt and cheese making in addition to milk. Every morning in our hotel we ate the yogurt he'd made by hand from his small herd of cows on the mountain. The girlfriend of the gent who taught me to snowboard a couple of years earlier works, in the summer, as a waitress in my ski instructor's alm. I met my instructor's father, who is (still) an instructor himself, and at the time was instructing a woman in her 70s, who'd been coming for decades, and had outlived her husband by a few years, but was still spry on the skis.
I've always found the Tiroleans friendly, hearty, and filled with rosy-cheeked good humor. It is a seductive place. And the mountains.... I'm a city guy through and through, but there's something about the snowy Alps in the winter sunshine....
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