The Alps!

So, I'm finally getting around to posting about this.

For one week, the Wenk family and I took a trip to Austria, to a town called Shoppernau. This town is in the "left-bubble" of Austria. We drove there from Neustadt, about 5 hours on the Autobahn.

Shoppernau is a very quiet town, set in the bottom of a valley, flanked by huge mountains, with grassy fields in the low lying areas. The major exports of this town (as I soon learned) are cheeses and milk. Now, alone, these things smell and taste quite good. The process in which these two are made is a different story. This is especially...pungent...when there is a cheese factory in the very same timeshare building that you are staying in for a week. There is also a sharp contrast to the fresh air of Neustadt and to the cow manure infested death-air of Shoppernau. So that's just one aspect of your senses when you come into this small Austrian town, but there are many others. The gigantic peaks rising around you, some of them powedered with snow. I thought (the first time I saw them), oh how pretty, on the hikes we will go on, there will be very good views of them. Ohhh was I wrong.

Throughout the week (yes an entire week), we stayed in the timeshare, a few things stood out to me. The first being my incredibly sore muscles, secondly, the incessant dingdingding of all the bells on the cows necks that were right outside my window, and thirdly, the real movement into fall.

The sore muscles came from the daily treks that we took deep into the mountains. I thought we were going on little small happy hikes, but in actuality, we were doing something much closer to mountain climbing. To recount a few of the things that we did; we went up and over 3 jochs (passes), one sattel (a pass with rounded sides), and we summited twice. On every hike we were above 1700m, gaining at least, 600m every hike. These are vertical distances for anyone who needs to wipe the drool off their face sometimes. The highest point we reached was 1853m on the last day. In total we traveled about 110km throughout the week. It was intense to say the least.

The cows were everywhere. Big, scary, smelly, ding-ing, cows.

Lastly, up in Austria (the hotel that we stayed in was 1000m above sea level), I finally experienced the change over to Fall in Europe. Back in Neustadt, it has been very warm and dry. Finally, there was the crisp night air that I love so much.

Austria was a very exciting experience.

Oh, did I mention that I'm terrified of heights?