Austria: go for the landscape, leave because of the politics

Team Biggs is looking to relocate to a calmer city with easy access to skiing. We ruled out Konstanz this fall break. As we rolled into the station, our chatty seat mate said, "Look mountains! Don't expect to see those between November and February." Turns out Konstanz is the Monterey of Germany - beautiful when you can see a few feet in-front of your face. We also learned that night trains are not a reasonable means of transportation for travelers over 25 years of age nor old souls like Crosby. 

Cozy

We had two Austrian cities on our list: Innsbruck and Salzburg. Both of these cities are beautiful. 

Exhibit A: View from Fortress Hohensalzburg

German friends would often remark, "Austria is very conservative" when I'd mention our plans to move. I would respond, "everywhere is conservative compared to Berlin." But then after months of continuing to dismiss friends who are better informed than me, I did some googling and was horrified. 

"Conservative" is not the word I would use to describe the recently elected political party founded in the 1950s by a senior officer in Hitler’s elite paramilitary SS. We didn't leave the US' flavor of racism to move to a country whose leader is, like Hitler once was, referred to as “the people’s chancellor” by his party. Hard pass.

This is when everyone says, "Switzerland". But it's not part of the EU. So, our current short list is Freiburg and Munich. Freiburg is where all the cool kids hang out, which is to say it's even harder to find an apartment there than Berlin. Munich is uncertain as we were hoping for a smaller university town. We'll be checking out both in April.

Back to Austria, this year's ski trip was double duty - skiing in Leogang for a week and then scouting-out Salzburg for a night. We did this trip right, which is to say, it actually felt like a vacation. The most important part of any vacation is childcare. We learned our lesson from Lermoos, and stayed on the mountain right in-front of the ski school meet-up.  This is the first time we had three kids who could do all day ski school without needing to nap*. 

But if they did nap, the reward was pre-dinner swimming in our hotel's infinity pool. 

The kids really wanted to try night skiing but without any new snow, we told them it wouldn't be worth it. But one night we convinced them to nap to have energy for one of the most epic sledding adventures of all time.

        Gondola ride up and then 4 km/ 2.5 mile ride down. 

This being Europe, the ride down was super dangerous with guardrails only half the piste. Paul got some Gopro video evidence that he'll be posting to insta. Carmen and I crashed a few times and weren't nearly as fast as the boys, so they went into a bar for hot chocolate while waiting for us. 

Kids at Apres Ski = European. Your mom horrifying you with her dance moves = international.

Hugo's lungs still hadn't recovered from the most recent Kita virus and I was fighting a head headcold, so we head back to the room to snuggle while these brave souls went for another lap.

Another key component to a vacation is having a break from cooking. Breakfast and dinner were taken care of at our half pension hotel. The 5:30 dinner start time was a much welcome change from last year's Italian schedule. The kids had lunch with ski school while Paul and I enjoyed date lunches of Austrian cuisine with a view. 

We traveled to Leogang via train and then just a five minute taxi to the hotel. Sure, we had 13 bags to shuffle on three train connections but I'd say it's worth it for no airport security nor traffic.

Families who melt their brains together stay together.

We made it back to Berlin healthy-ish with some ski bragging rights.

Second place race time for Hugo in his ski group. Small victories.