I didn't have much time to blog here after my holidays in the US, since I went skiing in Switzerland a few days later. Now, I finally managed to get some short vlogs online onto my blip.tv channel (http://maljaysia.blip.tv). Also have a look at the skiing pictures from Laax!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life, Media at 01:35 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Getting up this morning was a little harder.. some of us who celebrated up into the morning didn’t make it at all… The weather didn’t seem to be very promising. Very cloudy.. but we were actually inside the clouds. So we targeted some higher points of the skiing area, with the hope the weather would be better there. I still remember us sitting at the La Siala chair lift, and suddenly we were in bright sunshine above the clouds! You are enjoying this few for quite a while now – it is my current header picture (which will be replaced very soon by something more adequate for springtime).

We then took the fastest way over to the Vorab-Glacier. Up there we had the same beautiful view over the mountains (not without taking a few impressive photographs on the way). Since the slope down there was still halfway stuck into clouds we had a long break (I think I stayed almost three hours there;)) on the top of the Vorab. Since we were quite well equipped with all kind of stuff, we didn’t miss a thing up there. We had beer, music played out of our mobile phones, lunch out of our lunch boxes, sweets, and we had our lovely group which was also good for some snowy action. Luckily I was the photographer, and so no snow was rubbed in my face. Our birthday child who was a little late this day did get a special treatment… It was also a great pleasure to have Christian and Bianca joining us up there!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 18:12 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

It was one of the very few days, when there was bad weather in the morning. We got up and were a little disappointed because the lack of sunshine. So we had our lunch inside at the Berghaus Nagens. But since the sun didn’t have a chance to melt the snow we had real good conditions on the piste. In the afternoon it the clouds faded away a little bit and we got at least some sunshine.

But the spectacular issue on this day was of course the party for Martin’s birthday on the following day. I got to admit, that I for myself spent quite a lot of time away from our main group at the kitchen, but inside the main room the party was already growing. Finally at midnight Martin got his birthday cake and everyone was up congratulating him. But of course this was not the end of both party and evening. While at the main room some of us went for a little dance we got some scientific findings on different shoe sizes at the kitchen. Also some of the equipment was tested for its durability.

Btw, did you that Austrians found out that woolly hats have a better durability than regular ski helmets? They threw both a woolly hat and a ski helmet down a big bridge. At the bottom they noticed that the ski helmet was broken – while the woolly hat was unharmed!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 20:28 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

After a good rest, the start into our third day on the piste was very smooth, once again Jack Johnson’s Upside Down accompanied us on our way to Laax, and because of the bright sunshine we started our way into the mountains with a very good mood. After reaching the first mountain top we took a few very good and funny shots. Taking the slope down to Plaun we had a little break, and my mood was a little darkened. A friend from university called me, to tell me that results would be available online. So I would be tempted to look them up… After entering the area of Nagens/Mutta we found a really nice block slope, and Markus and I separated from the rest of the group to do our runs a little faster. What a pleasure to take the slope without a stop!.

We then decided to head for Alp Ruschein to have lunch break there once more. Since the glacier was open we took the long run down to Alp Ruschein. Down there we had our lunch and some beer and it was really relaxed once more. Our boarder friends were not up to such a long break like Annika, Markus and I did, so we were on our own for the last downhill runs. At the Crap Sogn Gion we missed the others, since we had some beers at the terrace upside the closed Rockbar. So we had to take the last downhill run alone. Markus and Annika were not too pleased, since the warm weather had transformed most of the snow into a slushy mass.

In the evening we went for some diversion and watched a movie. Unluckily I already knew “I, Robot” and since I prefer the original story by Isaac Assimov, I spend the time in the kitchen having a few beers. I don’t recall how late it was, when I went to bed, but I was the last one to cuddle into his sleeping bag in my room at that night.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 14:21 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The first thing that comes into my mind remembering day two would be “nothing special” but thinking a little deeper there are still a few issues to write a review about:
For the start we headed down to a T-bar lift and afterwards had a long slope down to Plaun. At this run all of the skiing pictures at the image series were shot by Paul. Down at Plaun we waited for Stefan, whose board was accidentally left at the quarters. While waiting there Berit and Lulu had a little snow fight The weather was cloudy at the morning but it cleared up after noon and I decided to wear a woolly hat in order to protect my ears from the sun.

For our Apres Ski unluckily the rock bar was closed. But at least this gave us the chance to occupy the wicker beach chairs for a rest. Before returning home to our quarters we took a small detour and visited a local super market. Markus and me got us some supplies for the next days, in case that the Rock bar would also be closed. There is nothing spectacular to report about the evening. Tired of the preceding days I went to bed at around 11pm.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 19:43 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The first day is always a kind of a challenge – travelling with a huge group, there are sooo many things that might go wrong... For example people forgetting part of his Ski-gear, or just people who are oversleeping the departure time. A lot of those weird things are possible if you are not yet in a certain routine of getting your stuff ready for the piste. Luckily this time our group wasn’t that big, and none of the described problems occurred. So the only issue was that hardly anyone was ready for departure at 9pm… I got up last at 8:30 and hit the car first at 9:00 at the dot. But the fifteen additional minutes it took to get everyone ready were bearable, which was quite astonishing since everyone was celebrating into the small hours the day before.

After getting the ski gear ready, everyone had to buy a ticket for the ski lifts. Remarkable that Laax has completely switched to contactless smart cards, so accessing the mountain railways would be a child’s play for all of us. It was also no longer necessary to hand in passport photos for the ticket – this was taken by a digital camera automatically (The procedure reminded my a little bit to the Thai immigration). We wanted to take a relaxed start, and took the first slope down to Plaun to enter the area around Nagens. The mountain railway up to Nagens was a very good chance for me to catch up on my left out breakfast. We found out that the ski lift to alp Ruschein was running, so we decided to have our lunch break there, and started heading from Nagens to Ruschein. Our way led us through the new lift up to Mutta, La Siala, Fuorcla, the Vorab Glacier and then down the black slope to Alp Ruschein. Down at Alp Ruschein we were rewarded with bright sunshine and about 15°C –what a nice place to relax! To finish our skiing day, we took the slope from Crap Masegn to Plaun, had a beer at Crap Sogn Gion's Rock Bar.

Since it was Sunday our chef prepared us a really delicious pork roast with savoy. But we didn’t have another exuberant party… everyone was quite tired. But our host and Martin had to wait for our guests from Coburg, which were supposed to arrive around 1am at the Boardercamp. I joined them waiting, and we waited… our friends were just a little late and arrived after 2pm. They also managed to inform almost everyone of there arrival due to the amount of noise they made moving into their room… I only asked them once to be quiet, and used my mp3-player to filter out the rest of the noise… So I finally got to sleep around 3am.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 18:57 | Comments (2) | Trackback (1)

I decided to split my posting about the skiing trip into some smaller postings. So I hope I won’t get you bored with a giant posting, which nobody reads… So you will get a story to each of my already published image galleries. Today it’s for Day 1.

Luckily I had a wrong meeting time in my mind (12:00pm instead of 12:30pm), so I reached the meeting point at the university some 20 minutes early. Since we had a big Ford minibus, with a huge loading space, we didn’t have any problems in loading the luggage. I only had to take five pairs of skiers into my roof carrier. Departure time was planned for 1pm, but since Jochen was little late we started at 1:15pm. Driving convoy got a little boring after some time, we took a little breakfast break at some Burger King restaurant near the highway. We reached Hard (AT) by 5:35pm to fill our tanks with cheap Austrian fuel. Another 90 minutes later we reached our target in Rueun. The second of April is Annika’s birthday, so there was a little party planned for the evening. So this was a very good time for the first get-together with our other travel colleagues. Some of us already showed there skills they have: singing, dancing, partying  or simply drinking. So you bet it went late… I hit my bed around 3am..

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 11:51 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)