Christmas in St Anton

For certain our most glamorous Christmas yet, this year Matt and I had the pleasure of joining 5 of our friends in the posh ski resort St Anton in the Austrian Alps.


St Anton is very near to the Austrian-Swiss borders, so our plan was to fly to Zurich then take a 2.5hr train across the border to St. Anton. We left our apartment on Saturday, Dec 23rd and headed to Schiphol for our 3pm flight. Turns out, this day (of all days) is the busiest day of the year at Schiphol. I should have been suspicious when I tried to check-in for our flight online an hour before we left for the airport and got an error message that check-in was not available for the flight. Things should have clicked yet again when we arrived at the airport and attempted to check in at a kiosk, and got the same message. The computer told us to go to the check-in counter to speak with a representative. There we were told that the flight had been overbooked and that we may not be able to get on this flight. The rep still seemed a bit hopeful though, so we weren't too worried yet. When we arrived at the gate, we sat while everyone else got on our plane. While we were waiting, 2 African ladies come through super-late, with bags (literally) of half-used full-size lotions, creams, hair gels, pomades, and anything you can think off. The new flight regulations do not allow these things, so it turned into a junking fiasco as the security people and the ladies proceeded to take turns dumping all of her belongings into the garbage bin. Some arguments ensued, but they managed to get the 2 ladies on (our) flight. No luck for Matt and I however, and a handful of other unfortunate souls. We were escorted to counter after counter, to airline rep after airline rep. Turns out, all flights to Zurich for that day were over-booked, and we couldn't fly out until the next morning at 7am. To make a long story a tad shorter, we received €350 airline vouchers each, a free sushi dinner, taxi service home and back to the airport the next morning, and postage-paid envelopes in order to write to the airline president and bitch him out. We placed a phone call to the guys already at the apartment in St Anton, and find out that there is no snow anyway. So yeah, it was a pain in the butt, but at least we were spending the night at home, and we didn't have any hard-set plans or connecting flights.

The next morning our cab showed up to pick us up at 5am (blegh). We managed to get on the plane and fly to Zurich, and we arrived a little before 9. We headed to the railway ticket counter and got tickets for the next train to Zurich - which wasn't until 1:40. We then took the train to the downtown Zurich station, since our train to St Anton was leaving from there anyway, in hopes of maybe getting to do some sight-seeing and kill some time. True to our luck, it was Christmas Eve and a Sunday, and everything was closed. We found an austere cafe with overpriced coffee and no food and sat there for nearly 3 hours. Then we headed to back to the train station to find food. We toasted the half-way point of our journey with some teeth-shatteringly-cold beers.


Finally we get on the train and are off! The sights from the train are absolutely beautiful, but also quite brown. There was some snow, but things were looking grim. When we arrived at the St. Anton train station around 4:30, we took an embarrassingly short cab ride to Apartment Daniella - our residence for the next 6 days, which we would be sharing with 5 others.


Our motley crew included another couple from Malaysia (Hilda & Tristan), a Dutch guy (Frits), an Australian (Ross), and a New Zealander (Carl). I will try to briefly explain how we know each other: Hilda, Frits, Ross, Carl and I all work for EY. Hilda and Tristan live in London, but used to live in Australia, and used to work for EY there. That is how they know Ross, who was working for EY in Australia and then transferred to Amsterdam. Frits and Carl also work at EY Amsterdam (as do I). I work directly with Carl. Oh, and I go out with Matt :-)


Christmas Eve started off with Matt and I learning rule #1 of the household: There is to be no talk of work, and such an offense if punishable by a shot of Jagermeister (ugh). I blame my fatigue from the travels on the fact that I violated this rule about 6 times that night (that's as far as I remember). Luckily Matt took some of those shots for me (what a gentleman!). That made for an ugly Christmas morning - our first day of snowboarding. On Christmas Eve, we were also introduced to the "fish slice". This handy tool, known as a spatula to those in North America, is great for opening long-neck beers. We all took turns putting dents on the walls and ceiling. Never was opening beers so fun.


Christmas Day was our first day of snowboarding. Hilda and Tristan were also learning how to snowboard, and had taken a private lesson for a couple of hours the previous day. The resort also has a school that you can join but it started at 9 am (waaaay too early), and for the cost of that, we could get private lessons for the 4 us for about as much. So we opted for the latter, and thus met Austrian Christine. This girl made snowboarding look so easy - she just glided on the snow like a little ballerina, albeit one in much heavier clothing. Still suffering from mild travel exhaustion and a horrible hangover, I must mention that I have never been on snow or ice before, aside from some sledding, which requires no skill. Also, there was very little snow - just ice. That being said, I fell. A lot. But to my defense, even after nasty falls, the ones where people around you have to turn away from, I would get up and go at it again. After 2 hours of beating myself up on the mountain, we headed for an utterly humongous but fabulously delicious Austrian lunch. Sore, hungover, and full to the point of vomiting, we head back out for one more hour of "fun". This was also the first time that we met the J-bar. That was ugly, ugly, ugly. Matt got it with no problem, having been on it before with skis. It must be noted that it is much more difficult to do this J-bar thing on a snowboard, since you essentially have to snowboard up the mountain (something I was not prepared to do). After Hilda, Tristan and I had our share of terrifying falls from the edge of the mountain, we gave up (for the day). Matt had some good runs down the bunny slope and was really starting to improve.

That evening, we headed back to the apartment to get ready for our big Christmas dinner. Another group of friends were staying at the resort nearby, so they came by our place for a little Christmas gift exchange. We decided to do the pull-a-number-out-of-a-hat thing, where you pick a gift and someone can steal it. This was uneventful since nobody stole gifts. Matt ended up with the best gift of all - a small gem of a book called "God's Gift"(which Matt also repeatedly pointed out that the title is also the meaning of the name Matthew), which is just cheesy pictures of "heat-throbs"from the 70s, 80s and 90s. This book brought a lot of laughs during the week.


After the gift exchange, we took some shady cabs (they said "Dirty Harry" on them) all the way to the top of a mountain outside of our resort. At the top of this mountain was a traditional Austrian restaurant, where we all boozed up and ate deer steaks. The rule of no work talk was still in place, and some people were thoroughly punished.

The next day was more snowboarding and falling, eating and drinking. This night Matt made his famous penne with vodka sauce. As we were feeding 6 normal people and one Kiwi (Carl), we had to make the pasta in a pot large enough to cook a human head in. This was our first battle with the garlic - the whole house reeked of it, and would continue to reek of it for the rest of the week. But it was a delicious meal! Afterwards we settled in for a fun game of Kings. This is a drinking game you play with cards. Everyone became quite hammered. The most fun part of this game is the "rule" card. Everytime one pulls this card, he/she can create a rule for which the offense is punishable by a gulp of beer - so that night we had to make sure we made little taps on the table every time we took a sip of a drink, that we did not point at people with our fingers but rather with elbows, that we did not use any words that start with "w", and everytime someone violated a rule (rule #1 regarding work references was still in place) you had to call them out by telling them to "consume!" because we could not say the word "drink". Fun. No, really. It was.

On Wednesday, I decided to take a day off from snowboarding, since all of my limbs ached and I felt defeated both physically and emotional. Coincidentally, Matt decided to try out the real-people run (that is, something other than the bunny slope). Ross would accompany him. So the 3 of us go went gondola number 1. I hung out in the not-so-fun cafeteria, and Ross and Matt hit the slope. I learned that the ski lodges in Europe are not as cozy as the places they show in the movies. They are more like cafeterias here. The tables are huge, so you can't cozy up to a fire on a big love seat (no fire, no love seats, no cozy corners). So I read my book in a big cafeteria, drinking an overpriced (and lukewarm) coffee, while being continuosly interrupted by either people asking me if they can share the table with me or people having conversations with each other at my table. Also, people smoke like chimneys in these places.


Finally, Matt retuns, a broken man. He had a really bad fall down the mountain and was in so much pain that he was pallid. We met Ross, Carl and Frits outside and took 2 more gondolas up to the very top of the mountain. I think we were 2700 meters up. Matt says 2900 - so let's compromise and say about 2800 meters. This is incredibly high. You really feel small up there. And you can definetely notice that the air is quite thin. After some time up there, my feet got dumb and we headed down one gondola to a little café for another massive Austrian meal. When we met up later with Tristan and Hilda, they tell us that they had a great day on the bunny slope, made some real snowboarding progress, and even mastered the J-bar!

Wednesday night we decided to try out another Austrian tradition - fondue! The 7 of us headed to a fondue restaurant in the town. We had so much food that we coudn't even fit everything on the table, and everything was fantastic. After dinner, we headed back to Daniella to chill out. The 2 boring couples stayed in, and the 3 single dudes went out. With their walkie-talkies. They apparently had a lot of fun with these that night, and I think many bar-frequenters at St. Anton that evening were displeased as a result. Matt and I were woken with a jolt in the wee hours of the morning when Carl stormed into our room to "clear" it. They had decided to ensure the apartment was safe by clearing every room FBI-style. We were a bit frightened and confused at first, until we heard Carl scream into his walkie-talkie - "Are there eggs in the bulding? Repeat! Are there eggs in the building? Over!" and Ross respond "I confirm that there are eggs in the building! Repeat - there are eggs in the building!" Then we felt safe and went back to sleep. When we awoke the next morning, inevitably the kitchen counters, sink, floor and ceiling were covered with scrambled eggs.


Thursday - this is the day I vowed to master the J-bar. And master it I did. Matt was so proud he even took a video - whilst on the J-bar himself, mind you (what a showoff). This was quite an emotional feat. Not only did I feel energized for having accomplished it, I also was able to get quite a few good runs down the bunny slope. It is much easier to learn how to snowboard if you have enough mountain to practice on, and when you don't have to expend all of your energy walking up the mountain.

Thursday night was another night of fish-slicing and drinking games. Hilda and Tristan prepared a hearty stew on our giant pot, and we once again stunk up the apartment with garlic overload, and then our 4 friends from the resort close-by come over and we all head out to the St Anton bars. We bar-hopped a bit, and danced to cheesy 80's music (the Austrians really do love the 80s). When we decided to go home, Hilda realized she didn't have her purse anymore, so it was a mass frenzy to find it. Luckily, we were able to locate it (sans the walkie-talkies) and also locate some very New Zealand-style meatpies. Carl was especially excited about these. When we got back to Daniella, we took videos of Carl eating his meat-pie. We were expecting him to finish it in about 27 seconds, but instead it took him a good 2 minutes. He was really in another world while eating it, b/c he managed to ignore our taunting cries for him to eat faster. Kiwis and their meat pies...

Friday was our last day of snowboarding. Matt had improved a lot during the week - he really looked almost professional. But he's skiied all his life, so he started out pretty well on the snowboard. So I can say that perhaps I improved even more, since I was a retard on ice on that first day! Now I can say that I am able to get down on a mountain on a snowboard. I even enjoyed myself doing this after a few days. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks, eh?

Hopefully Matt and I will take another snowboarding trip before we completely forget what we've learned. We're thinking of maybe doing a similar trip to France next year, with the same group of people, since we all got along so splendidly. St Anton truly was a lovely place, and the views from the top were amazing. Though there was no real snow (all was man-made), it was still a fun time, and the weather was amazing - sunny and pretty warm in the sun every day. We are still beach people at heart though!