Ski run above the clouds
Skiing this morning:
[i-skiing]
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Too busy doing important things
[i-Kronplatz]
[i-Kronplatz]
2,200m high. Clear and crips air with a small layer of new snow every night. If you want to catch up with me, you'll have to hurry and be fast:
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Look mum, without hands!
A quick and dirty shot I took while skiing this morning... Trying to maneuver with sticks in one hand, and the mobile phone in the other ;-)
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2,550 m and climbing
This turns into a photoblog ;-)
Anyways, The Road reflects things in my life, and currently, my life focuses on my girls, sun, snow and skiing.
Today, we went up 2,550m to a place called Sport Gastein in Austria. Cloudless blue sky just as the previous days.
[i-Gastein skiing]
The tracks were frozen up to 10 am, when the top layer turned into two inches of fine powderdust. After 2 pm, all became 'pap', slush.. So we try to be on the slopes at 8:30 am, and cut the afternoon short.
[i-Sport Gastein this morning]
Here are my three girls:
[i-Gastein skiing]
Lana and yours truly on an anchor lift:
[i-Gastein skiing]
Our view at 8:30 in the morning...
[i-Bad Gastein 8:30 in the morning]
Snapped this morning.
The contrast between the snow and the clearest, cloudless, dark blue sky. There are worst views to have at 8:30 in the morning...
Sun and snow
[i-Bad Gastein - The ski slopes this morning]
A view on the ski slopes this morning..
On holiday...
[i-high and dry]
I am on holiday with the family, in Austria for the next week. Five star hotel, but no Internet. You can follow short updates via my Twitter account.
Occasional pictures on this blog.
Anyways, good weather and loads of snow, so fun will be.
Rumble: Back on the road...
Yesterday, we drove the 1000 km from South Tyrol back home. It took us 12 hours, instead of the usual 10. Loads of traffic but a scenery to be enjoyed. Even though it was pretty dark and gloomy, it gives a 'happy kick' driving through the mountains in the snow.
It also gives me a knot in the throat driving through the Fernpass bordering Austria and Germany, knowing it will take one more year before you see the snow and the mountains of this part of the world again... And who knows what will happen in that year.
This evening, I am flying back to Rome. Back to work.
gloomy ride[i-gloomy ride]
Rumble: Last ski pictures
Two days ago, we went up to Cortina, one hours drive from our hotel. The scenery and ski slopes were great, but it was windy and bloody cold, as you can see from the pictures:
cortina[i-cortina]
The family:
family in snow 2[i-family in snow 2]
Tine and Lana on the lift:
tine and lana on lift[i-tine and lana on lift]
Hannah on the lift:
hannah on lift[i-hannah on lift]
Is there anything else but pride a father can feel when seeing his daughters growing up, and becoming independent, adventurous, happy? Here are our two girls trying to jump higher than dad... :-)
lana jump[i-lana jump]
hannah jump[i-hannah jump]
Rumble: The Sellaronda
sella ronda 2[i-sella ronda 2]
Remember the local legend of King Laurin and his rose garden I posted last year? Well, today we went skiing very close to those mountains. We did a tour around the Sella mountain where connecting ski lifts and slopes form a circuit called the "Sellaronda". The weather was perfect, the skiing was just great. It took us just over five hours to finish the Sellaronda, including a one hour lunch.
group at sella ronda[i-group at sella ronda]
sella ronda[i-sella ronda]
Rumble: Lana on the slopes
lana jumps[i-lana jumps]
Meet Lana, 13, our oldest. A picture from this morning on the slopes of the Kronplatz, in the North of Italy.
The girls enjoy the adventure of jumping, going off the main ski piste, in between the trees...
Nuts as their dad.
Rumble: Hannah on the slopes
Hannah on the Kronplatz[i-Hannah on the Kronplatz]
This is Hannah, 10, our youngest. A picture taken this morning, on the slopes of the Kronplatz, here in South Tyrol.
Hannah learned to ski when she was two and a half. The first day she went skiing, I will never forget: We picked her up from the ski school in the afternoon, where we found her (and her ski instructor), covered with blood. She had just ran into a wooden barn on the slope, and pierced her lip. We had to rush her down the mountain, into the car, and onto the operating table of the nearest hospital where they sewed her lip under full anesthesia. Two days later, she was back on her skis.
Nuts like her dad, she is.
Rumble: A Father's Pride
link[i-link]Just by seeing the other kids coming in with broken legs in the emergency room yesterday, Hannah healed miraculously....
My two angels.... Old dad already has to do an effort to keep up with them on the ski slopes. And I used to be a ski instructor in my younger years...
Another 18 days and my sabbatical is over. I will miss my angels.
Just after I wrote this, I read this news article about an Iraqi father who lost his children in the war. I have to admit, as a relief worker, I could handle other people's misery much better before I had kids. Now, each time I look a suffering child in the eyes, I think "This could be my kid"...
Rumble: You Meet People in the Strangest Places
link[i-link] No skiing today... Hannah hurt her leg yesterday. We thought it was safer to have a doctor take a look at it. So off we went to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. A depressing place. You would get sick just sitting there... They were bringing in, one after the other, people with broken legs, dislocated shoulders, bruised lips... Hannah was feeling better in five minutes already...
Rumble: South Tyrol. Wars and Skiing...
link[i-link]The area we are visiting now, is South Tyrol. In German: Südtirol. In Italian: Alto Adige, Sudtirolo or Sud Tirolo. Officially, it is called the "Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen".
It lays south of the Alps, and is a part of Italy, even though everyone here has German as their mother tongue. They must be the only Italians who greet you, not with "Buongiorno", but with "Gruessgott" (translated:"Greet God"), just like in Austria.
It is a piece of land which the Italians nicked from Austria during World War I. This makes interesting history.
When Austria-Hungary, in 1914, declared war against Serbia, thus starting World War I, Italy remained neutral at first, but was soon dragged into the turmoil. The front line followed mostly the then Austrian-Italian border, which ran right through the highest mountains of the Alps. The ensuing front became known as the "War in ice and snow", as troops occupied the highest mountains and glaciers all year long. Twelve metres (40 feet) of snow were a usual occurrence during the winter of 1915–1916 and tens of thousands of soldiers disappeared in avalanches. The remains of these soldiers are still being uncovered today. The Italian "Alpinis", as well as their Austrian counterparts ("Kaiserjäger", "Standschützen" and "Landesschützen") occupied every hill and mountain top and began to carve whole cities out of the rocks. They even drilled tunnels and living quarters deep into the ice of glaciers. Guns were dragged by hundreds of troops on mountains up to 3 890 m (12,760 feet) high. Streets, cable cars, mountain railways and walkways through the steepest of walls were built.
Whoever had occupied the higher ground first was almost impossible to dislodge, so both sides turned to drilling tunnels under mountain peaks, filling them up with explosives and then detonating the whole mountain to pieces, including its defenders.
After the Austrian defeat in 1918, the Southern part of the Austrian province of Tyrol was attached to Italy, even though it was mostly inhabited by ethnic Germans, Ladins (that is Ladins, not Latins nor Latinos!) and only had a small Italian minority: South Tyrol.
link[i-link]Today, we did not mind the violent history. We just... skied! With the hope of not tripping over a frozen body of a soldier from the first World War. Or worse: being chased by a guy who did not know the first World War was over yet! Here are my girls this morning:
