Skiing in the Alps (Lech, Austria)

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So this weekend I had the opportunity to join a couple guys from Reutlingen to a skiing trip to the Alps. It was originally supposed to be in Ischgl, but a small admin error brought us to Lech in the Arlberg.

We didn’t have a particularly nice drive there or back. The roads were fairly busy and snow was falling almost throughout. Fortunately our Finnish driver handled our Mercedes Vito and the roads well getting us there and back again safely. Although a bit of a push was required up the final hill in Lech to get to our accommodation :)

We stayed at the Pension Juliana, a large building with several spacious apartments, we had two 4 bed apartments. Each has a lounge and kitchen area with separate bathroom and two bedrooms. The building also houses a sauna which enjoyed after our first day of skiing. It’s located 50m from a bus stop which makes getting into town and onto the slopes fairly painless.

I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never skied on snow before, and had only seen pictures and movies before, but I really had a great time. I was firstly surprised at how many different routes one could take. Lech lies in a valley along with a few other small towns, but on both sides of the valley stretching the length of the towns there are routes everywhere. Ski-lifts of varying design and size to get you to the top, and your choice of blue/red/black routes to get down.

Three of our group were snowboarders and the other three skiiers. I had done neither but decided to choose the alleged easier of the two, skiing. I also opted out of taking any lessons and decided to jump right in to some skiing, the other three skiiers in the group were a great help giving me some tips to get going. Going however wasn’t my problem, slowing down being my biggest problem, especially when losing my balance a bit. A couple falls occurred but my confidence gradually grew.

We hired gear from a rental company in Lech and spent most of Saturday and Sunday going up and down the various slopes around Lech and neighbouring Zeurs. It was a rather expensive trip, but well worth it. I’d love to give snowboarding a go some time, maybe I can find a slope back home some where.

I took my camera with me on the slopes, but had one or two issues. Apparently my Canon 350D and my Sigma 18-200 don’t like the cold weather too much. Under normal temperatures everything works fine. But with cold temperatures, the moment that I zoom in a bit I get an Error 99 and no photo. At 18mm however I can still take photos, so I got one or two at least. I experienced the same thing the previous weekend when I climbed the Achalm in Reutlingen.

A few more photos can be seen here.

Snowy Achalm

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So a couple of plans unfortunately fell through the last few weeks. But last weekend we had just had a nice foot of snow in some places and Saturday was a beautiful clear day so I decided to go for a short walk. I started off walking towards one of the hills near to us but halfway there decided to go climb the Achalm.

We climbed it once previously with the international group and I had wanted to climb it in the snow, so this seemed like the opportune moment. I walked all the way from the Hochschule and up to the top, took a few photos along the way before heading back down and grabbing the bus back the rest of the way.

Nothing specifically exciting, just a beautiful view over Eningen. The view over Reutlignen was unfortunately quite smoggy.

A bunch of pics can be seen here.

Wilhelma Zoo – Stuttgart

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Photo gallery can be seen here.

With not much happening this weekend, and a beautiful slightly sunny day ahead we decided to spend the afternoon in Stuttgart and take a stroll through the Wilehelma Zoo.

The zoo had quite a nice selection of different animals, including a small aquarium and insectarium. During wintermonths entrance is down to 8 Euro from 12, half of that on student discount meant a very reasonable 4 euro entrance.

The biggest complaint from the group was the lack of Lion. It didn’t bother me much, I was quite happy with the Cheetah, Tiger, Jaguar, Leopard, Polar Bear and other animals :)

he didn’t seem to enjoy the attention much

Porsche & Mercedes Museums – Stuttgart

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Collection of photos can be seen here.

On Saturday a small group of us went to Stuttgart for the day to spend some time at the Porsche and Meredes-Benz museums located in the city. We took the train from Reutlingen through to Stuttgart Hbf and then the S-Bahn to Neuwirtshaus (Porscheplatz). As you climb off the train you’re straight into the road surrounded by Porsche buildings. The large, white, imposing and windowless building to one’s right is the museum, with a dealership and service centre off to the left and other corporate buildings off in front.

Tickets for students were only 4 Euros which covers the entire exhibition and an audio guide available in a variety of languages. A baggage and coat check was available and a long escalator ride takes you to the start of the exhibition. The exhibition has a nice suggested spiralling route which takes you through pretty much everything in a progressive order. Starting with some of their first vehicles, a look at the VW Beetle and going through a variety of sports and publicly available cars covering the last 60 years.

Most of the exhibits have numbers printed on which when typed into your audio guide give you quite a lot of information. Some other displays have engines made for boats and planes. One exhibit demonstrates different stages of design and production with cross-sections of a specific model allowing you to see all the internals.

We were there for between an hour and a half and two hours. If one were to listen to all the audio information one could probably easily be there for over 3 hours. It’s a lovely display of Porsche heritage. The museum is beautiful, well laid out and worth the visit. Included downstairs is a restaurant, coffee bar and merchandise shop.

After a look around the Porsche dealership we hopped back on the S-Bahn back to Hbf where we went into town to grab some lunch. I ate my first beef steak since having arrived in Germany, and although not the best steak ever was a good meal. Back on the S-Bahn and off at the Neckarpark (Mercedes-Benz) station.

First thing we notice is that there’s a 1km walk from the station up to the museum. Not the end of the world, but just something to note. Once again as you head towards the museum you’ll notice all the surrounding Mercedes branded buildings including the Mercedes-Benz Arena.

Entering the building it’s the same 4 Euro student ticket, bag and jacket check and free audio guide for the exhibits. We climbed into an elevator shuttle which takes one up to the 8th floor to start the tour. The Mercedes museum covers the full progression of the motor car and the internal combustion engine, with displays on the founders Benz, Daimler and Maybach. each floor is separated into to two separate displays. Usually one with a selection of cars of a specific era or design styling and the other displaying Mercs seen in pop culture, racing or public service vehicles.

Most displays would have a marker indicating that audio guide information is available. One is supposed to point your guide at the marker press a button and then select between several different options relating to the display, technology, culture, and one or two other options. The point and click worked to varying degrees of success on different occasions. Quite often there are some small interactive displays explaining steering, braking, superchargers or some other technology developed by Mercedes.

The building has a kind of flow to it from floor to floor, but we found that if you follow the flow for a floor you end up on the wrong side of the building to get down to the next floor, generally just taking a set of stairs down to the next floor then crossing and rejoining the flow. Nothing major but just irritating at times.

One can spend hours and hours in the Museum. After taking half an hour to get through the first floor we were advised to speed it up a bit if we want to see everything as one can spend a long time looking at all the exhibits and the museum was set to close in two hours (18h00). So after that we hurried through the rest of the floors, finishing with several minutes to spare strolling through the gift shop and sales floor. Restaurant facilities are also contained in the building.

The building is huge and one can definitely spend many hours there. We also got to keep our Mercedes Museum branded lanyards which we used for our Audio Guides, a nice souvenir. A quick walk back to the train station and we were on our way back to Reutlingen.