After swapping a couple of my flights I was able to join my parents on their annual January ski trip to Austria. Landing from Birmingham just after midnight, I whizzed straight over to the airport hoping to catch the very full looking 3:30am flight to Munich. I managed to squeeze the last seat on the flight, landing into Franz Josef Strauss Munich International Airport at 7am. I then took the train across to Salzburg and then met my parents at the airport when they landed at lunchtime. We then picked up the hire car and drove across to Rauris where our ski place is.

It was late afternoon by the time we arrived, and all I wanted to do was take the make up off that I’d had on since I left Birmingham and cosy up on the sofa watching a bit of UK tv. So after a couple of hours of lounging around, we got ready and went into the village and out into the snow (that had not stopped since we arrived) for a bite to eat.

The first five places we tried were full up, and we eventually settled somewhere where we ordered wine and I went for the chicken stuffed with cheese and Parma ham, and finished it off with sharing Nutella filled crepes for pudding.

A glorious meal, but I was absolutely shattered now and couldn’t wait to fall asleep back in the warmth.

Waking up the next morning I felt absolutely dreadful, and even though my mum coaxed me out of bed with a cup of tea and some porridge. The conditions weren’t great, it was super foggy and the snow had not stopped all night, nor was it showing any signs off stopping.

I took some medicine and fell back to sleep on the sofa as I felt awful and told my parents I would meet them up the mountain for lunch. Yet, at 11:30 my mum woke me up to say they’d waited for me too as the conditions weren’t meant to get better til after lunch time.

Grabbing our ski gear we bought lift passes at the foot of the mountain and ventured right up to the top. It was so misty at the top you could barely see your hand in front of your face and with the winds so harsh, the snow was hitting you thick and fast causing fogged up goggles, so when we got to one of our favourite lunch spots we decided it was already time for lunch after just one run.

Ordering three bowls of piping hot goulash soup with some chips to share, I warmed up with a hot chocolate whilst I waited for my food to arrive.

Me and my dad also shared a dampfnudeln afterwards which went down a treat!

Wrapping up warm again, we went out onto the windy mountain side and strapped those skis back on, slowly making our way down into the fog.

As we got further down towards the bottom the conditions for a little better, but we decided to call it a day with me not feeling 100% and the weather just not making it that fun!

We called at the supermarket on the way back and picked up some fillet steaks for dinner, and spent the evening relaxing away.

The next morning my mum didn’t wake me up again til 11 as this time my dad was poorly and she told me I needed my rest as I’d been doing too much (this is true, I should listen to my mum) and the weather was still pretty abysmal. Not seeing much point paying for a lift pass for half a day for rubbish conditions, and not being able to get a lift back to Salzburg the following morning, I decided I’d set off late afternoon to Munich to head back to Dubai and be rested up for my next operating flight.

And it’s a good job I did, when I did. Avalanche warnings hit, I struggled to get trains, I was pulled off trains and put on replacement bus services for part of my journey where the snow was as high as the coach windows!! The next day, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the village due to the insane amount of snow that had fallen, so despite being sad to leave early and it feeling like a bit of a wasted trip, in hindsight it was a wise move.

Sad I didn’t get to do much more skiing but it was nice to spend a couple of days with my family. Fingers crossed I get some time off in March to join them when it’s better weather!

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