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 After
a skiing vacation in Zell am See we would recommend the place
to everyone. The town is located in a picturesque valley beside a big lake.
The essential advantage of the place is that it consists of two separate
ski areas, unified in one region called Europa
Sport Region. This offers you a vast variety of slopes and
guarantees snow in any winter. The first area is called Schmittenh?he.
Its upper level is about 2000 m. Cable cars to this zone start from several
points, one of them being right in the city center. The pistes vary from
blue to black. In lower parts they come through fir forest. The total
capacity of 29 lifts and cable cars is about 40,000 persons/hour, so the
lines are usually quite symbolic even when the place is crowded. On some
upper stations there are big signs, indicating the waiting time at
the starting level, enabling you to plan where to go next. The period before
we arrived to Zell am See had been rather warm. The lake was free from
ice and the streets were clean and dry. Still there was plenty of snow
in the upper zones, but down from midpoint snow cannons were actively
used, so that we could ski down to the base.
The other zone is called Kaprun (by the name of the nearest town) or Kitzsteinhorn (by the name of the 3200-m peak). The skiing area is also referred to as gletscher (glacier). The highest point here is 3029 m. The snow is guaranteed even in the worst years. For a few weeks before our arrival Kaprun had been holding 1-2 places for snow depth (320 cm)! You can get to the skiing area by two lifts, one of which is cable-car with cabins for 8 people, and the other looks like TGV train. Starting at 35 degrees angle it dives into a tunnel and gets out only at 2750 m amidst the giant rocky circus with other lifts and runs going in all directions. The ski-pass system is rather flexible. We bought passes for 10 days out of 14 for $240 which covered both areas and unlimited ski bus + discounts to swimming pool and sauna. As it came out later that was a great bargain! |
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 On the second day
of skiing at Kitzsteinhorn, just on the finishing run as I was escaping
a dangerously nearing guy, I made a wrong movement and felt
a suspicious pain in my right knee. Bad premonitions grew stronger by night.
In the morning I was hardly able to come downstairs for breakfast.
That was an old injury I first got 10 years ago in Terskol.
But for the last 2 years I almost forgot about it particularly as I used
to keep myself in some kind of shape by running each morning upstairs to
the 17th floor of our house. I bought an ointment in a drugstore and
bandaged the joint but next morning the pain was almost as strong as before.
A local orthopedist asked me some questions and then it became clear
that the diagnosis I had had back in Moscow was utterly wrong. There were
no problems with 'meniscus' but just stretched side ligament. The
Austrian brought a model of a knee joint and showed me the faulty detail.
After that I felt immediate relief, particularly when he told me that I
could go on skiing. Then we went to Salzburg, the city of Mozart,
for a sightseeing tour. The next days I was skiing just as
if nothing had happened. But going downstairs was still a difficult event. |
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 We
took a discounted weekend package from Hertz (about $90 for a Fiat
Punto from 12 a.m. Friday till 9 a.m. Monday) and started Saturday morning
to Munich. To the delight of us Russians Austria is now a Shengen state
so we were facing no problems with our passports. All the way to Munich
the weather was sunny but quite near the city the sky went cloudy and then
the heavy snowfall began. We were lucky to find a small hotel with a parking
not far from the center. The city is nice but surely it does not come into
the list of world's most beautiful places. But its famous Pinakothek is
definitely worth visiting. Unfortunately the Old Pinakothek was closed
till July but part of its collection was being shown in the New Pinakothek.
There are magnificent works by Bosch, Cranach, Durer, Leonardo Da Vinci,
Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, as well as Turner, Murillo,
Gainsborough, Manet, Degas and many others. The building itself has
a very good design in terms of lighting and artworks arrangement.
Next morning we started southwest to the city of Fussen, more particularly to the fairy castle of Neuschwanstein built by the renowned Bavarian King Ludwig II. The King was famous for his passion for German mythology and Wagner operas. The murals and paintings in the castle halls depict scenes from Lohengrin, Tannh?user, Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal. |
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In the steam room
the temperature was not too high – the modest 90 o C. It was empty, so
we got in and began to accumulate the heat. Other people gathered one by
one. Suddenly a man flung the door wide open. It became almost cold. We
were bewildered. Just before we were about to leave the room a saunameister
appeared with kind of a dipper full of water which he put besides the heater
and left having shut the door and posted up a sign “No entrance”. Half
a minute passed and then a woman came in. It seemed like materialization
of what we had earlier saw in the Pinakothek. Her grand-grand-grand (…)
mother must have certainly been posing for Rubens when he painted “