December 22-30

Saturday, December 22nd

Travel day! My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. We finished loading the car and hit the road by 5:45 a.m. We used the onboard Navi (GPS system) to enter in our destination: Bettmeralp, Switzerland. There were three different routes possible, according to our Google Maps searches, but we weren't sure which way the vehicle Navi would take us... Adventure! I packed breakfast and lunch and we made stops as short and sweet as possible. The weather was cloudy and misty, but we still got glimpses of the mountains as we passed through a corner of Austria and then into Switzerland. Bettmeralp is in the Valais Canton on the far southwest side, so we had a fair ways to drive...

Good morning, Östereich!

Hmm... shortly after lunch the Navi started telling us to "Please enter the ferry." What?! Why is there a ferry in the middle of the Alps?! Turns out it's a "train ferry" (ME's coinage)! The Goppenstein "ferry" is a train that takes cars, packed in bumper to bumper, single file, through a mountain tunnel. Quite the unexpected adventure!

See the train car with cars on it? We'd seen this image on some other signs, but now it all makes sense!

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Off we go!

Brig! Almost there!

After we exited the train-ferry, we drove down a steep switch back road and made our way through the valley to Brig and then further to the Bettmeralp Gondola station parking area. We unloaded all our stuff onto two luggage carts and paid for round-trip gondola tickets for 3 adults (MK is 18!!), 2 students, one child, and 2 luggage carts. Then we had a 10 minute ride up the mountain to the resort village (at the tree line!). It's a ski-in/out village with a central Hauptstrasse, 2 groceries stores, an Apotheke, a couple of gift shops, one bar, and several restaurants. The ski school and Intersport/Derby Shop for ski rentals are also on the main street. The rest of the village is made up of single and multi-apartment Chalets and a few hotels. All of it is laid out so you can ski in to where you're staying and ski out to the lifts. Our vacation rental was the ground floor of Chalet Beauvoir on the upper-west side along the Trainer slope. It was perfect for us! Our friends were just "down the street" and the kids could easily access the bunny slope with T-lift.

From the Gondola station we took a snowmobile "taxi" to Chalet Beauvoir. We had time to unload and then hustled down to the Derby Sport shop to get fitted for our ski rentals: helmet, boots, skis, poles. By the time we finished, it was after 4 p.m. and the lifts were closing at 4:30, so the girls and J walked the gear back up to the Chalet while I went to the Coop for groceries. Frozen pizza and crudités for dinner!

As the sun went down, the clouds moved in and it started to snow!

Sunday, December 23rd

First thing in the morning, we all went to the central lift, Blausee, where we could get our 7-day passes (all told, cheaper for 1 week here than 4 days at Snowshoe in WV!). We spent most of the morning skiing the easy slopes, getting warmed up. After lunch I walked down to the center to the Coop for groceries. Our friends from Köln, CN and VM, stopped by for tea and cookies after the lifts closed.

For just a while in the morning the conditions were decent--clouds but no snow. We skied until the afternoon when we couldn't see well anymore from the fog and snow.

Monday, December 24th

The morning dawned grey with wet snow mixed with freezing rain. YUCK! But as the day progressed, it changed back to snow as temps dropped again. The storm cleared off by mid-afternoon, so I picked up groceries in the morning for our traditional Christmas Eve Raclette supper and then skied in the afternoon as the weather improved. 

ME on the path to our Chalet "Beauvoir."

I found J and skied some with him. The girls had private lessons after lunch--2 hours in pairs: HR and GE went with Nadine and MK and ME went with Maria. They had fun and learned a fair bit which they could practice the rest of the week. J went to ski school, level 3, with our friend CN in the a.m. and then skied on his own in the p.m.

Storm clouds moving off and blue sky peaking through!

J in the foreground and HR and GE just beyond him holding poles with both hands in front of themselves to practice their turns.

From Monday evening on the weather was *perfect*! Sunny, clear, cool temps, but not too cold or windy. The slopes were a bit icy on Tuesday morning but after the overnight slope groomers came through it was decent. The snow on the mountain tops was powdery and perfect.

We opened a few gifts on Christmas Eve (German tradition) and the rest Christmas morning. It was a "light" gift giving year since the big present was this week in Bettmeralp.

Heiligabend Raclette meal

Christmas candles to create the right mood...

Some of the girls' gifts--Christmas candle holders with pictures of Munich.

J's present: a Bayerische smoking man (you put incense inside and the smoke comes out of his mouth!

Our makeshift "tree" for Christmas morning.

Bettmeralp is where I really learned to ski as a kid. My family came here in 1986 for two weeks with our family friends from Düsseldorf. They still come every winter, so we lined up our stay to coincide with theirs.

Tuesday, December 25th

We opened the rest of the presents early in the morning and enjoyed the sweet rolls I'd baked with my mom and frozen. Then we hit the slopes!

Merry Christmas Morning!! (from the window of our apartment)

Presents from ME.

ME loves her new lambswool and rabbit fur earmuffs.

Fuzzy lined hats for these two.

MK in black and teal, getting her skis on and ready to go!

The "trainer" slope beside our Chalet.

From the middle of the Blausee slope and top of the Moosfluh, looking back over Bettmeralp village.

Headed down Moosfluh towards Riederalp.

Top of the Moosfluh lift (Matterhorn peak in the distance).

Looking down from the top of Blausee, Bettermalp village along the treeline below..

After lunch we met up with our friends, CN and VM with their little boy, FN and CN's dad and took the gondola up to Bettmerhorn for Kaffee and Heisse Schokolade. Gorgeous views of the mountains and the Aletsch glacier.

Riding in the Bettmerhorn gondola with this cutie!

Our friends from Köln... they skied back down from Bettmerhorn while we took the gondola again (kids aren't quite ready for the red slopes coming down from the peak).

Aletschgletscher in the background.

These two prefered to stay away from the edge (scared of heights).

Aletschgletscher valley

The single peak in the distant center is the Matterhorn.

Aletschgletscher valley (down and right)

Bettmerhorn Panorama Restaurant.

After we got back to the bottom, we went skiing...

Wednesday, December 26th

More skiing! In the evening we went to our friends' apartment and enjoyed supper together.

Lunch at the Bättmer Hitta

Playing FN's new game that he got from Christmas (with his Opa B, CN's dad)

Little FN told his mom after playing with GE that she is his new best friend. :) We are looking forward to visiting them in early March at their home in Köln.

Conversation is always good when we're with CN and VM!

Walking home in the dark... but it's not! The lights of the buildings and the narrow, snow-covered streets make it seem cozy and inviting.

Thursday, December 27th

That fateful day...

I made two successful runs down Schoenbiel and then got cocky... I took a red slope a little too fast, caught my left ski in a pile of snow and went headlong down the slope, catching myself with my right arm up and slamming my face (goggles and helmet) on the slope, skis going up behind me. I knew pretty quickly that my right shoulder/arm was not right, but also had whiplash (neck from bouncing my head on the slope and lower back from my skis flying up behind me). ME was behind me, as well as several other skiers who immediately stopped to check on me. A man offered his foil blanket to lie on while others set their skis on ends to mark off the accident scene and a woman called the Retungsdienst (slope rescue patrol). By that time J had made his way up to me too. (I crashed just before the intersection with the blue slope that he was on with the other girls.)

MK took the little girls back to the Chalet to wait for news. I was taken down into the village on a sled (ouch!) pulled by slope patrol, then transferred to the back of a snowmobile and then to the Notarzt (ER doctor) who, of course, sees a lot of typical ski injuries... A quick X-ray and some IV Fentanyl and they readjusted my shoulder back into its socket. They sent me off with some pain meds and an immobilizing sling which I'm to wear 24-hrs for 10 days, then during the day for 30 more days. Oh what a pain! But I am thankful that it wasn't worse, nothing is torn, and I'll just need to follow through on PT to strengthen my shoulder as it heals.

Before I hit the slope, literally, I got a great pic of us all together on a 6-seater lift...

Riding the Schoenbiel lift together (GE, J, HR, ME, MK, and me)

Bummed!

I slept most of the afternoon and felt pretty good, although sore, when I got up. So after dinner, we walked to the Knipe in the village for drinks with CN and VM. Nice to get out, even if it's not on skis!

Friday, December 28th

I slept decently, then met up with VM in the village to watch her little guy in his last day of ski school They had a little "race" down the slope at the end. After his turn I walked over to the Coop for a few last groceries to see us through tomorrow. VM stopped by in the afternoon to help clean up the kitchen and hang out. Little FN played his new game with GE.

Saturday, December 29th

The girls and J helped clean the apartment and finished packing all our stuff into suitcases, bags, and baskets. Then they hit the slopes to ski while I did the last little bits of tidying up (with one hand/arm) and met with the landlady to settle the bill. A little before 11 a.m., J returned to help carry the luggage out to the street where a snowmobile taxi met us and ferried us down to the gondola station. After we loaded all the luggage back onto carts, J took off to meet the girls for lunch at Chüestall slope-side restaurant. I took my packed lunch to the Imhof Café near the village center and enjoyed one last coffee looking out at the valley and beautiful mountain peaks. At 2 p.m. I met them at the Derby Sport shop where they returned their rentals and I had their regular boots in bags. Then we took the gondola back down to the car, loaded up, and hit the road. We got back to Munich around 10:30 p.m., unloaded, found a parking spot on the street, and went to bed!

The "Snowli" kids' zone in the village center.

Inside the café.

Beautiful Bettmeralp!

Waiting for the gondola ride down to the car.

Sharing some fries at a rest stop somewhere middle-of-nowhere Switzerland on the way home.

Sunday, December 30th

J and took the rental van back to the airport and then the S-Bahn back home. The girls slept late, then played video games, and watched a Netflix movie. We are wiped! I scrounged meals together from a near-barren kitchen (grocery stores aren't open on Sundays!) and we all just took it easy. My shoulder is feeling OK--my neck and lower back muscles are more sore than the shoulder--nothing some ibuprofen and a hot bath doesn't fix. I'm being careful though. Definitely don't want to repeat the experience. It'll be a few weeks before I do any biking or running, that's for sure!