In travelling, a companion

Editor's note: I've arrived back home by now but am tired, so you will get these last two entries on a one-day delay. I hope to post up the last one early tomorrow.

I got up at 0800 to get ready, pack up the last of my things, and have breakfast early. I took the gummy bear off the mirror but it was a struggle: a licked gummy bear becomes a powerful glue on a smooth surface. The Swedes arrived late at breakfast and the lady who boils the eggs firmly asked them to come earlier tomorrow, which is their last day, so they could check out early. They need to anyway as they have a 10:00 train. I returned my key, ethernet cable, and Thai power adapter after breakfast. They had me put my suitcase under the stairs in front of the front door. I might as well have left it out on the doorstep for all the security that offered. They have a little room by the door but wouldn't let me put my suitcase there. I put all my important documents, including my passports and my money, in the inside pocket of my jacket rather than leave anything there. I didn't even bother to ask if they had any place I could shower after skiing, but considered breaking into a room and showering.

Bjorn happened to have a ski tuner, like mine only with a coarser file. On my way to the bus stop I found him sharpening his skis outside the hotel door. Seeing that the bus would be a while longer, I came back and asked to borrow it briefly. I sharpened only the sides of my edges, and only about half: from well below the tips to before the brakes, which I had no way of tying down. It was only to give me some grip on the icy lower runs, but it made some difference in carving turns. I only took five minutes but we still all just missed the bus and had to wait 15 minutes longer, to my embarrassment.

For my last day I decided to briefly visit some of my favorite spots and say goodbye to the mountains. We had "snow showers" today which means there were clouds everywhere, and low to no visibility. In some places there were driving clumps of icy snow that stuck to goggles and chairlift frames. The old chopped-up snow from this week was partially frozen and coated by a dusting of new snow. It was hard to know what to expect and most slopes were what we called "variable terrain" in ski instructor training. Even wiping my goggles with the goggle-wiper built into my glove, I had no senses to work with, and couldn't even detect changes in the shape or texture of the snow under my own feet until it was almost too late to respond to them. It made for a unique challenge, not entirely without its charm.

At the top of Schindler I skied into what I remembered as a gentle rise in the side of the slope and was in fact a wall of soft snow about chest high. I slammed right into it with a "hork!", leaving a cartoonish impression in the shape of my body. All I could see was solid white anyway: at least this time it wasn't a cliff or a roof. I laughed jovially.

There were good and poor regions. Many of the places that used to be powder were now windswept and frozen solid. Some of the higher-traffic areas had sugary new snow because people feared to stray too far from the piste markers. I want to say that I found some of the nicer spots of new powder, but it was more luck than skill. I did not stray out of sight of any marked runs, meaning I didn't go more than a few meters off the markers and often not even that.

I skied from Schindler over to Stuben and had lunch down there at noon, in the restaurant behind the church. I had a Wiener schnitzel, and the butter knife they gave me was insufficient to cut through the large piece of tough, rubbery pork.

My powder bowl over there was the highlight of my day. There was a hole in the clouds exactly over it so the sun could light up my clean, virgin powder enough to ski it. Hardly anyone had been there before me, today. It was beautiful. I did two runs and didn't want to push my luck trying a third, lest the clouds decide to close over it and tarnish the experience.

From there I returned directly to my bus stop, and even remembered to return my ski pass for the deposit, at 1400. I took the bus to the hotel and hastily changed my boots and stuffed all my stuff into my bags in 15 minutes, and returned to the bus stop. I needn't have hurried, as there wasn't a bus again until 1445, and it arrived in St. Anton at 1500. There was supposed to be a train at 1459, but it got delayed. I didn't know that until later.

After a long haul of my things from the bus station to the train station, I found an oriental restaurant, "Skiing Buddha", right by it. There was a long flight of stairs up so I took my most valuable items (Pixy) and left the rest by the bottom. I went up there and saw many people sitting alone using their laptops. I figured I might as well order something and have a look online, so I had a Tom Yam soup but it was filled with tomatoes. The restaurant is next to a climbing wall so I got to see people climbing too, but didn't think I had time to try it myself.

Soon I went down to the train station, not wanting to leave my things unattended any longer than necessary. I bought a ticket and discovered then that the 1459 train to Innsbruck was delayed until about 1630, so I might as well take that one and wait longer in Innsbruck instead of taking the same line half an hour later.

I accidentally sat in First Class again. On the train I was given a "welcome gift" of a mini Kit Kat bar and a mini box of juice. The old usher fellow even helped me get my skis on board. On that ride, they didn't check my ticket but let me type up my journal in peace. There was nobody else in the first class car.

I had about 45 minutes to kill in Innsbruck so I went down from the platfom and found they have a supermarket in the station. I couldn't move too far because I was bound to my heavy bags, and I found on a board below that I actually needed to depart from the same platform I arrived at, so I needn't have carried my bags down the stairs at all. In any case I quickly bought some sweets that were on sale, or as quickly as a long queue allowed.

On the second train - the EuroCity to Munich that originated in Italy - they have enclosed compartments, and I boarded the comfortable "business class" or something. Soon they did check my ticket there and kick me out, but at least I found a seat in the normal compartments after hauling my suitcases and my skis through the restaurant car in two trips. During that trip two Polizei burst into the compartment I ended up in demanding to see our passports (though not in English right away.) I showed them my American one and they went away but it was odd. A fellow sitting across from me said that didn't seem very official, and I noted they at least had a badge. That guy was from the Netherlands and was also on his way to an airport hotel - not the same one, however. We chatted when I finished reading my book, and he was pretty interesting: he works in agricultural sustainability but is also a ski instructor, and his mother is Polish. He seemed knowledgeable about many topics, and he kept asking me questions I didn't know the answers to. When I munched Haribo Goldbaren and offered him some, he declined but remarked those were what he would use to bribe the kids. We changed trains together in Munich and then talked about the security/political situation in Israel some. I didn't get his name.

As I suspected the bus schedules I had were out of date. At the airport information desk I got a new one and directions to the bus stop. My bus was at 2113 after I'd arrived at 2055. If I had been asked to choose the time myself, I would not have picked anything different, it was so convenient. I hadn't even finish my hard-boiled egg when the bus pulled up. The driver assured me he'd tell me when we got to Holiday Inn, but the big neon sign on the building gave it away before the stop.

My skis got heavy from hauling them around all day, so it was nice to get to the hotel, strip and shower. My room is large, and ideally located right in front of the elevator. Internet here costs 6 euros a night but they have slow free terminals you can use for a short time. Both were in use so I waited until after 2300 for one to clear up and wrote that I was here.