Koch-Mathews Family Blog: Winter Vacation in Austria

Passing the time during the ride

For the kids’ winter break, we went on a ski vacation in Wagrain, Austria (just like a lot of other Danish families). On Friday the 8^th of February, Cherian came home from his business trip in Las Vegas at 8 AM and Selina and Frej took off school and we set out for our trip at 8:30 AM. Kiran went to school that day and after school, he met up with his afterschool program “Multi Idræt” that took a bus down to Obertraun, a 1.5 hour drive from Wagrain.

A big building in Leipzig

While the entire trip is about a 12 hour drive from Denmark, we decided to sleep over in Leipzig, Germany to break up the trip. The kids were enthralled by the budget hotel we stayed at, and we arrived in good time so that we could eat out at a vegetarian restaurant nearby. On Saturday, we drove to Wagrain, and while we didn’t want to listen to the GPS lady who was trying to force us off the highway, we ran into traffic and eventually had to listen to her.

Castle outside of Salzburg

So, due to the traffic, we had to go around Munich and we came 3 hours later than we planned. Meanwhile, we got a SMS from Kiran’s group leader that although their bus drove through the night, they had to sit in traffic for 8 hours, making his trip a 24 hour bus ride!

Playing in the apartment

In Wagrain, we rented a modern 2-bedroom apartment owned by a Danish family. It was snowy upon our arrival, and the apartment was up a hill, so our Ford S-Max (snow tires, no chains) kept skidding out before we got to the parking garage. Finally, after the 8th attempt, we made it up the hill to much relief.

Ready for the first day!

On Sunday, we started skiing and snowboarding. Selina started her ski lessons in a group of 10 kids (8 Danes & 2 Germans) with an instructor named Johannes. Frej got into a good snowboarding group for 2 days, where all the kids were really good.

One happy snow racer (and her mommy)!

Ski school goes from 10 AM – 12 PM and then again from 1 PM – 3 PM. We thought that it would be easy to eat lunch together between 12 and 1, but each teacher stopped at a different “alm” (a traditional wooden hut with a restaurant) for lunch, making it impossible to gather together. So, after the first day, we gave the kids meal tickets to get food from wherever they stopped.

So proud to win first place!!

Selina had a great time at ski school. She made new friends and they mostly went down the red slopes and practiced parallel turns and she improved a lot. She had a great time going over bumps and into all the small trails in the woods. On Thursday, the ski school put everyone through a (very small) slalom race course and she won first place in her group.

Frej also had a good time, going “off-pist” and getting stuck in waist-deep snow. They went to the snow park on the second day and Frej reached his goal to do a 180 off a jump.

On Tuesday morning, Cherian drove Frej to the town of Zell om See (40 min from Wagrain) to meet up with his after school program “Cassiopeia” to go skiing for the rest of the week. They also have a blog and we read they went picnicking on the mountain sitting onbenches made of snow. Frej will take the bus home with the Cassiopeia crew and actually get home before us.

The view over Wagrain

On Thursday, Cherian drove to Obertraun and picked up Kiran under much, much better circumstances than last year! We were all excited to see Kiran (in one piece) and happy that he had a great time with Multi.

On Friday, most families took their kids out of ski school or started their journey back, but we put Kiran and Selina in ski school for the morning. Unfortunately, there weren’t many kids at Kiran’s level, so he went with Selina’s class for the morning (and was kind of bored).

You first... No, you first...

While the kids are at ski school, Sofie and Cherian snowboarded down the red slope taking it easy and enjoying the view. We had a lesson on Wednesday where we had to do different exercises to practice carving, fast short turns, riding switch, and even nollies (yeah, that wasn’t so successful).

Enjoying the warmth of the alm

We started out bringing our lunch and eating at a waiting room at the top of the mountain, but it seemed like we were definitely the minority and most everyone else ate at one of the “alms” (traditional wooden hut with a restaurant and optionally lodging) on the mountain, where each one had a different specialty.

For skiers without fear of heart attacks

Krapfen mit sauerkraut

So, we made it to Krapfen Alm whose specialty was making fresh homemade “Krapfen” (donuts). It looked like a family run business with the grandmother making the donuts and the grandfather as a waiter (who only spoke Austrian, so he had to send his granddaughter to take our order). One day, we stopped just for a dessert donut with ice cream and chocolate sauce. On Friday, we stopped for lunch and had a donut with sour cabbage and donuts topped with potatoes, fried eggs and bacon!

Kasnocken - YUM!!

Wondered by the unique Austrian cuisine, we went out for dinner to find some “Kasnocken” (a pasta unique to the Salzburg area with cheese topped with fried onions – probably the original mac and cheese) and got enticed into getting some “Topfen Knudel” (cheesecake-like dumplings stuffed with chocolate or jam) for dessert.

Topfen Knudel - YUMMY YUM!

After ski school, there was an hour where we got to ski/board with the kids. It was tough to keep up with them! So much so, that Selina wants to teach her parents to ski so that they can go faster. They loved going into the small, bumpy trails in the forest. Around 4 PM, we would normally take the gondola back down the mountain.