Thursday, 22nd December, 2005I'm back. I'm back.
I'm back.
Okay so about Austria. Basically we flew
12 hours to
Zurich, Switzerland, and then drove in a van for
2 hours to
Lech. From there, we took a cablecar to
Oberlech, which is where our hotel is. But first. Background info.
Lech: This is where
Princess Diana used to go on
ski vacations, and it's this quaint little town above Zurs. Anyways.
Oberlech: Means
over Lech. The
Queen of the Netherlands spends her winter skiing here. We stayed in a hotel called the
Burg Vital (say
vee-taal) and it's all wooden and
log house-esque. Oberlech is a
beautiful beautiful place. It's like living in a
perpetual painting - the snow is
feather-light and powdery; the sky is always
blue and the sun is always
shining. Except in this utopia, the
perfect snow does occasionally fall off the
perfect pinetrees and when you fall on the
perfect slopes it actually hurts. Which I happen to have alot of experience of, thank you very much. But it was such fun cos before we came there was a heavy snowfall, and so the snow was hard and
kinda crunchy, so you've got grip for skiing, but not
wet like it always is in Whistler, so you don't get cold. Oh, and it gets really hot when the sun shines, especially when you ski and it gets to the point you're just about
dying to take of your fleece.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So on Friday the 9th, we (Aunty Leng, Uncle Kah, Jin, Mei and Di) went to the airport. Basic procedure, first class check in where the kids stuffed their mouths with
fox mints as usual, and then the
first class lounge where I had 2
ben and jerry's chocolate fudge brownie and 5 sticks of satay and felt
really guilty afterwards. And then there we met Uncle Rob, Auntie Eddie, Bet and Annelieke. So it was a 12 hour journey, and on the way I watched
40 year-old Virgin and
Sky High. Oh, and I took medication and went to sleep.
So. About the actual trip. The skiing was
fantastic and I went from nearly-parallel skiing to
parallel skiing and I couldn't be happier. Mmm next year I think I'm gonna try
snowboarding. Our coach (we had a private class) was called
Tibor, he's the same guy we had last year, and he's
blond and green eyed and an all round
pretty boy, except that he smokes and has a tattoo of a
dragon lady. Heh but he's really really nice even though he forced us off piece down a black slope and that was evil. Oh, and did I mention he's so totally
gorgeous? (Don't get the wrong idea. He's 24 and has a sweet girlfriend called Johannah who works in a ski shop down in Lech. We saw them on Austrian TV on a chatshow about this calender the ski instructors made. Johannah is really nice too, fyi. She gave me a good discount when I went to get goggles, at any rate.)
And then on Friday, one week into the trip, we were joined by Aunty Eddie's sister Aunty Chris, and her boyfriend Uncle Chris, her sons Frank (Francesco) and Edo (Eduardo), and his son Luke. Frank and Edo and are actually her sons from a previous marriage to some
Italian Count, which kinda in a way makes Frank and Edo
Counts too and Aunty Chris a
Countess by association. Wow. Either way, it's a
fascinating but fairly complicated story which I suggest you remind me to tell you if ever the occasion arises that we're stuck alone and bored with
alot of time to kill. And so. Aunty Chris works in
Joseph's, the clothing supplier, and it's way way cool. She brought along this entire suitcase of clothes for Aunty Eddie, Aunty Leng and I to pick and choose from, and we got them at
a third the retail price. And the best part was that they hadn't even
hit the rack. How
mind-blowingly awesome is that?! Aunty Chris also styles for the London Fashion Week, and she says her models get paid
300 pounds a day. Ooooh wee. LMAO she says she'll call when I'm 16 and
assign me a show during the holidays. Omgosh, I am SO gonna go to London for my university, moonlight as a model and make
900 friggin dollars a day. (Detect the sarcasm.) But it would be cool.
So anyways. I've got tons and tons of pictures of the
gorgeous mountain ranges you can see from the top of the slopes, but I'm too lazy to upload them now, so keep waiting David. Oh, and I suppose I should say that on the way back I didn't sleep at all, and I watched
Hitch,
50 First Dates and the
spring 2005 runway shows of Sebastian Pons, Vivienne Tam, Cacherel and Guy Laroche. Oh yeah, and guess who I saw back in Singapore, coming out of the plane from Zurich.
Diviya Menon!
And that's it for my Austrian Ski Holiday. I'm going again next year, by the way!
