Hausberg, again

I woke up again with the stuffy head and cough, and again doped up with Sudafed so I could get out on the mountain for my last day here. The high winds that had blown on the Zugspitze yesterday had brought with them a bit of a storm, with a light cloud cover thickening up as the morning wore into noon and the afternoon wore into the evening.

I caught the bus to Hausberg and stood in line again to get up the main gondola. Between the two days of skiing and that annoyingly persistent cold, I wasn't up for a very adventurous day, so I took a lot of small runs over on the Hausberg side of the mountain. These particular resorts allow something that we don't really see in the US: hikers can take the gondola up and wander around on foot, mostly on winding trails that are probably jeep roads in the summer time. Since I was on the flatter runs, I spent alot of time dodging these pedestrians, though I have to agree that it would make a nice walk if I weren't more enthusiastic about skiing than hiking when the snow is right. Stranger than that, from the low altitude of one particular phigh-speed chair, I watched as a long train of people, armed with telemark skis and backpacks, huffed their way up the hill I had just come down. I was wondering what would possess a bunch of tourists to volunteer to put themselves through that particular exercise, until I got a closer look and realized that they were all in army fatigues, and that in all likelihood, the whole lot of them were probably wishing that they were not having to ski uphill on this day or any other.

I stopped for lunch in the mid-afternoon, and from inside the lodge I watched as the clouds burst out into a shower of big fluffy snowflakes. I dawdled around inside until the blizzarding conditions let up a bit, flipping through the German dictionary I carried, looking up a few words I had been scrambling for over the last few days. At one time I did speak a fair amount of German, enough to get by anyhow, but that was many years ago. Now when I go to say something, I have to sift through several layers of languages that I know bits and pieces of to find the right phrase, with the German phrase usually coming somewhere after the French and slightly before the Russian version. The one thing that makes it all harder is that I've lost the facility in German to figure words out, even if they are written in front of me. My fair command of Spanish allows me to get the gist of other romance languages, but German is an entity all to itself. But then there are moments in which, for no reason at all, I understand everything. I was waiting in line in for the restroom on the hill when the gal in front of me, instead of entering the stall, walked up and inspected it from floor to ceiling, glanced behind the toilet, shrugged a few quick words to the woman behind her in line, and left. I must have looked mystified, because the woman turned to me and said in German, "Oh, she just lost her ski pass." Even though I didn't know that I would know those words, it made perfect sense, and it took me a minute to realize that it had been spoken in German. And with that, I should also note that I have become very accustomed to simply walking up to people and asking (in German) if they speak English. I figured this just cut to the chase, since I had started many conversational moments in German only to have the waiter/ticket seller/lift attendant answer in English without skipping a beat. Oh my, is it that obvious?!

After lunch I skied out from the lodge and took a few short runs, though with the snow still coming down I realized I probably needed goggles to keep going safely, since the falling flakes were so thick that they were sneaking in through the sides of my glasses. I thought I'd take the long run down to the base of the mountain and call it a day, since it would easily be three o'clock by that time anyhow. Only, I was on the far side of the ski area, and I was fairly sure if I didn't catch just the right turns I would end up at the base of the Alpspitze - which would have been fine, except that I had to return the skis at the bottom of Hausberg. So of course I took the straight course right to the bottom of the Alpspitze. I got off my skis and hopped on the smaller gondola, back up the mountain. I got it right on the second try, when I realized that I had to take a turn onto an uphill trail in order to traverse back over to the right side. I came down to the base just as the lifts were starting to close up, making it a full day on the hill. From there I trudged the distance (a little longer than I though it might be) back to the ski shop to turn the gear back in, and from there back to the hotel. After a quick snack I retraced my steps to the Alspitze Wellenbad and once again soaked in the warm water to undo some of knotted muscles in my neck, and from there went to get a last dinner in Garmisch. Tomorrow I leave for Salzburg.