Skier, geek, thinker & dad. I also like beer.
Motor skills can take a while to learn. Our house mates in St Anton, Al & Daniela spent the last few months trying to teach Silje how to do the thumbs up. She could 'claim' but the thumbs up always turned into index fingers. She finally got it this week, in her typical cheeky style.
Jubii! Our prayers have finally been answered as Thor & Odin granted us a single day of glorious, Scandinavian sunshine. I'd forgotten how fantastic this little country can be when the weather gets its shit together. Summer here is beautiful - all 13.25 days of it!
By the way, these photos were taken at 8pm. For all those Queenslanders still against daylight saving, you are clearly a pickled herring & bottle of schnapps short of a Scandinavian picnic.To end the season, we decided to spend a couple of weeks in Denmark in order to catch up with the family, and give Tina's mum plenty of time with Silje.
While we may have unlucky with the snow in Austria, we certainly got plenty of sunshine. That is one of the amazing things about living in the Alps - while the rest of Europe suffocates under a thick blanket of perpetual winter cloud, the Alps are normally bathed in sun thanks to the mountain's micro-climate. Despite the cold, it was still possible to wear t-shirt, shorts or even sunback in minus 0 temps - provided you were in direct sunlight. Back in Scandinavia, I now remember why I found my first winter here so hard. We left 24C sunburn days in the Tirol and arrived to 7C Danish spring. There might be 'day'light until 9pm already, but the wet, 40kt winds do tend to put a damper on things. Which brings us to our walk along the beach. Our cottage is only 400m from the Baltic Sea so we try to walk along the beach every morning. Some days are not as nice as others however.
We decided to take the long way home. Why drive north to Denmark when you can head the opposite way to Süd Tirol and experience the Dolomites? I'm pretty sure that we wont do another season in St Anton so there was need for some reconnaissance of our next escape. Superlatives in any language fail to describe the magnitude of their beauty. Limestone monoliths erupting from the forest below, up to 2km high. Depending on the time of day, they are either, yellow, grey or pink and provide an amazing contrast to their sky blue background and spring forest foreground. Some of the towns here are equally enchanting - a unique combination of Tirolean architecture, Italian food and local Laddish authenticity. We spend a couple of nights in Canazei which was lovely & so friendly. A large park in the centre of town with a number of play sets meant Silje had a ball, especially around 4-7pm when all the families come out to socialise before diner. The only negative point for me was the ski terrain seemed lacked any runs back to town. Wolkenstein in the neighbouring Val Gardina was a little gem we discovered. A village of about 1700 people spread through the valley in beautiful Tirolean houses, it had access to the same area as Canazei with the added bonus of 3 runs back to the centre of town plus a few nice looking side country possibilities. Before heading back north, we also stopped by Cortina d'Amprezza. Much bigger than most resort towns, this place was truly gorgeous. Full of espresso & wine bars, Gucci & Armarni shops lined the pedestrian only centre. The pistes seems seemed pretty sedate but I'd heard that there were some nice freeride possibilities there. If so, this could be the place we move to - if only we could afford it!.
