Okay I admit that title is a total lie but I had to get you to start reading. What really happened was I went skiing in a place where James Bond, Spectre was filmed. Almost the same thing right?

I got to Frankfurt hbf Friday night. I saw Lena waiting for me through the train window, jumped down the steps and hugged her for a solid five minutes almost in tears. Here would begin one of the best weeks ever.

Little back story...who is Lena? Well depending on your connection to me as a human being you may already know. But if not then you should know she is a 16 year old girl from Frankfurt who lived in Portland last year. My family and I hosted her in our house for three months so we're really close. You could even say we're sisters.

Now anyways, I went home with Lena and we stayed up really late talking and packing for skiing the next day. If you have to get up at 3:30 in the morning to drive to Austria why not stay up until 1!? The nonexistent sleep was no problem because we slept the six hours to Sölden. Oh and it was New Years! We rented our skis and got our passes for the next day and then rested for the long night ahead. Lena and I were going clubbinggg. Which is legal in Europe by the way. We watched fireworks in the streets and had an all together fun night in our little snow town.

The next morning we slept in and got onto the slopes around noon. We had no new snow so I discovered how not fun skiing on ice is. We got new snow on the third ski day and after that all was good. After six days of skiing I can say I improved a ton. I had a lot of fun skiing. We were always doing different runs so everything was always new.

We ate lunch every day in a new hut we found on the many slopes. I tried so much typical German/Austrian food! For example leberknödelsuppe, apfelstrudel, wiener schnitzel, kaiserschmarrn, and zwetschgenknödel. The first one literally translates to"liver dumpling soup." Sounds really delicious right? Haha okay maybe not but it really did taste good. To really explain what it was like it was a large meatball in a chicken broth with parsley on top. You break the meatball apart and eat it with the broth. It's good I promise.

The next one is more of a dessert but when you're skiing normal health rules do not apply. If you want to eat an apple pastry for lunch then do it. The apple strudel was very similar to an apple pie but it's served with a hot vanilla sauce over it. I found the sauce a little weird but the pastry itself was good.

Wiener Schnitzel is breaded veal (fried) served with lemon juice on top and usually accompanied by potatoes in some form. For me that form was fries. Like I said skiing food is healthy.

Kaiserschmarrn is a shredded pancake that you eat with apple sauce or a fruit compote like plum or lingonberry. German pancakes are the thickness between a crepe and an American pancake but these were like American pancakes, thick and fluffy and sooooo incredible. I didn't have my maple syrup but apple sauce and powdered sugar were almost as good.

I was not a big fan of zwetschgenknödel. It's another dessert that consists of a potato dumpling (knödel) with a plum filling served with hot vanilla sauce over. The dumpling itself was okay but I didn't like the plum filling. When I first saw it I thought it was a chocolate filling so I got really excited and ended up being unpleasantly surprised.

I hope you're hungry now. Head on over to Sölden, Austria and experience some killer skiing, meet James Bond, and eat some awesome food. Below I included a map of the many trails plus the awesome pictures I took throughout the week. I couldn't have asked for a better trip with my best friend/sister and I can't wait to spend more time with her.

 

p.s. Europeans who read this if I got any of the food names wrong don't judge me, thanks

p.s.s. before taking the train home I went to the one Chipotle in all of Germany and died of happiness, it was worth any amount of money

much love, kale salad