Austria
Having a bit of a problem sourcing internet that is cheap enough to blog more often but should be getting it sorted!! Here is some blogs we’ve been saving up!
Well we’re not in France anymore Toe toe!
Austria is a hell of a lot different. We arrived at a modern, purpose built chalet that has been cleaned before we got here by the owner. The chalet is in mint condition and is very tidy and well decorated. The kitchen is big enough for a commercial restaurant and has all the required stuff (we have a chef so all I need to know is that it has stuff!). Were as the French seemed to do the bare minimum and charge top dollar the Austrians seem to go out of there way to produce the goods. The other wonderful thing here is that the Austrians are genuinely keen for the British to be here! Both the tour companies and the clients. A welcome change from France. The resort is a small, pretty alpine village with some amazing facilities and a heap of bars! The company here has that always looked for attitude that staff are part of the product and that happy staff make happy clients. They look after us! The first week here has been spent doing inventory of the chalet, getting our bearings and enjoying the service of other chalets as we practice the meals. All in all a very pleasurable time. Our Chalet is thirty minutes walk up hill from the main village centre so a couple of trips to the village a day is pretty good exercise at this altitude. The only thing stopping this place being perfect is that there is only about ten cm of snow. Karen and Ben strike again!!!!!!!!!
Pray for snow!
Well I sit here after a long day and a nice glass of port mulling over the season so far. The season started off a bit disappointedly. The first group we had were from Zimbabwe and were a large group of friends who had booked our entire chalet. As such they seemed to feel they could treat the place as they pleased and promptly trashed it. There was a bit of a culture clash as these families were all ex farmers who had been moved off there farms and forced into the cities. Unlike most of the white farmers they had stayed and were making a lot of money from ”importing” foreign goods and money. They are used to having five servants in there homes for each family not four staff for five families. It took about a week for them to work out that we did not pick up after them and would not clean there bathrooms if they were covered in damp ski clothing, that the ten am rule for being out of your room for it to be cleaned was strictly adhered to, and no we were not interested in being at there beck and call. They asked if the ten children could have the same five course meal as the adults but an hour earlier. Since the chef starts at five thirty to get the meal on the tables for eight it would mean starting an hour earlier with two separate productions going in the same kitchen and still finishing at ten at night after clean up. They seemed a bit put out when he said a flat NO! The deal with chalet holidays is that the staff are working for a euro and hour (about two New Zealand dollars) plus free board and keep and lift passes, etc. But its still rather poor money when it comes down to financing the recreation side of a ski season in the alps. So if you make more work for the staff (the money stays the same) then the staff get pissed off. Which in turn means that they will be less willing to do anything but the bare minimum requirements for you. But if you make life easy for the staff, and especially if you can help facilitate a faster get a way on a powder skiing day then the staff will encourage this by doing the extra bit for you. Its a two way street! So the zimbos took about ten days to work this out. Add to all of this the huge lack of snow and things were looking pretty grim!!!!!!! Then on the 31st of Dec the zimbos left and a new bunch arrived. Some great folks from England and a kiwi family from Little River. All of whom had been on chalet holidays and new the score! There were also a group of seven young Italians who had never been on a English chalet holiday before and never seemed to get how the whole thing worked, but they were few in number and more naive than inconsiderate and generally stayed out of the way. On top of all this pleasant change of guest it has finally snowed and snowed with three to four foot around the chalet in the last two days with another two days forecast. So things are looking up heaps! Oh and we have found a 30m high frozen waterfall ten minutes from our house and have been climbing it a bit. Its not super steep but its great for a weekly spot of ice climbing in the afternoon.
This last day off we the staff nicked off with the company van and went to a small ski area (same size as Mt Hutt) up the valley. With no real accommodation at the resort and it still un-linked to the rest of the Alberg region its usually less crowded. We were hoping to get some less tracked lines in the new powder. What we got was a ski field more or less to ourselves and four foot of powder. We skied first tracks all day in deep deep dry powder! In trees, bowels, ridge lines, faces and even next to the lifts. Karen did one run down a steep section with the snow bow waving up her chest on every turn. We charged hard and were utterly wrecked at the end of the day. Not a bad first day introduction to powder skiing on alpine skis!!!!!!!
More to come soon......
Well we’re not in France anymore Toe toe!
Austria is a hell of a lot different. We arrived at a modern, purpose built chalet that has been cleaned before we got here by the owner. The chalet is in mint condition and is very tidy and well decorated. The kitchen is big enough for a commercial restaurant and has all the required stuff (we have a chef so all I need to know is that it has stuff!). Were as the French seemed to do the bare minimum and charge top dollar the Austrians seem to go out of there way to produce the goods. The other wonderful thing here is that the Austrians are genuinely keen for the British to be here! Both the tour companies and the clients. A welcome change from France. The resort is a small, pretty alpine village with some amazing facilities and a heap of bars! The company here has that always looked for attitude that staff are part of the product and that happy staff make happy clients. They look after us! The first week here has been spent doing inventory of the chalet, getting our bearings and enjoying the service of other chalets as we practice the meals. All in all a very pleasurable time. Our Chalet is thirty minutes walk up hill from the main village centre so a couple of trips to the village a day is pretty good exercise at this altitude. The only thing stopping this place being perfect is that there is only about ten cm of snow. Karen and Ben strike again!!!!!!!!!
Pray for snow!
Well I sit here after a long day and a nice glass of port mulling over the season so far. The season started off a bit disappointedly. The first group we had were from Zimbabwe and were a large group of friends who had booked our entire chalet. As such they seemed to feel they could treat the place as they pleased and promptly trashed it. There was a bit of a culture clash as these families were all ex farmers who had been moved off there farms and forced into the cities. Unlike most of the white farmers they had stayed and were making a lot of money from ”importing” foreign goods and money. They are used to having five servants in there homes for each family not four staff for five families. It took about a week for them to work out that we did not pick up after them and would not clean there bathrooms if they were covered in damp ski clothing, that the ten am rule for being out of your room for it to be cleaned was strictly adhered to, and no we were not interested in being at there beck and call. They asked if the ten children could have the same five course meal as the adults but an hour earlier. Since the chef starts at five thirty to get the meal on the tables for eight it would mean starting an hour earlier with two separate productions going in the same kitchen and still finishing at ten at night after clean up. They seemed a bit put out when he said a flat NO! The deal with chalet holidays is that the staff are working for a euro and hour (about two New Zealand dollars) plus free board and keep and lift passes, etc. But its still rather poor money when it comes down to financing the recreation side of a ski season in the alps. So if you make more work for the staff (the money stays the same) then the staff get pissed off. Which in turn means that they will be less willing to do anything but the bare minimum requirements for you. But if you make life easy for the staff, and especially if you can help facilitate a faster get a way on a powder skiing day then the staff will encourage this by doing the extra bit for you. Its a two way street! So the zimbos took about ten days to work this out. Add to all of this the huge lack of snow and things were looking pretty grim!!!!!!! Then on the 31st of Dec the zimbos left and a new bunch arrived. Some great folks from England and a kiwi family from Little River. All of whom had been on chalet holidays and new the score! There were also a group of seven young Italians who had never been on a English chalet holiday before and never seemed to get how the whole thing worked, but they were few in number and more naive than inconsiderate and generally stayed out of the way. On top of all this pleasant change of guest it has finally snowed and snowed with three to four foot around the chalet in the last two days with another two days forecast. So things are looking up heaps! Oh and we have found a 30m high frozen waterfall ten minutes from our house and have been climbing it a bit. Its not super steep but its great for a weekly spot of ice climbing in the afternoon.
This last day off we the staff nicked off with the company van and went to a small ski area (same size as Mt Hutt) up the valley. With no real accommodation at the resort and it still un-linked to the rest of the Alberg region its usually less crowded. We were hoping to get some less tracked lines in the new powder. What we got was a ski field more or less to ourselves and four foot of powder. We skied first tracks all day in deep deep dry powder! In trees, bowels, ridge lines, faces and even next to the lifts. Karen did one run down a steep section with the snow bow waving up her chest on every turn. We charged hard and were utterly wrecked at the end of the day. Not a bad first day introduction to powder skiing on alpine skis!!!!!!!
More to come soon......
posted by thekarenandbenshow at 3:37 AM
