Schladming

We've had a busy couple weeks with visitors, first Peter's mother and then my parents. In the middle of my parents' visit, we went away for the weekend to Schladming, a small town about an hour south east of Salzburg in the home state of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schladming is on the edge of the Dachstein mountain region, so we were looking forward to beautiful scenery and a quiet get away at a small farm hotel. It was an absolutely amazing weekend.

The family hotel is alive and well in Europe - small hotels run by families for families. Unless you are in a city, or near a big city, hotel chains don't really exist. We stayed at the Alpenhotel Neuwirt, a lovely hotel with 29 rooms that offered half board (breakfast and dinner), a swimming pool, a spa area, indoor and outdoor play areas for kids, as well as farm animals and scenic views for less than we've paid at non-descript motels on busy strips outside Cleveland, Ohio, and Danbury, Connecticut. The rooms were pretty and exquisitely clean, and made me start to dislike our own grey, ugly bath/wash -rooms back in Salzburg!

There were so many highlights for the weekend, and I'll only go into three of them here. Definitely, one highlight of the weekend was the pool and spa area. My parents had done some traveling in Southern Germany before coming our way, and had stayed in a few other hotels with similar facilities: pools with bubbles and jets and currents and fountains. The pool at the Neuwirt also had a waterfall. The first night we were the only people staying at the hotel (October is low season for the area, quiet time between summer hiking and winter skiing), and so we had the pool completely to ourselves. How could we have been the only people in the whole world to be there???

In addition to the pool, there was also a Tepidarium, Calderium, and Sauna. Huh? With roots in ancient Rome, these three rooms were/are part of the real spa experience. The Tepidarium is simply a very warm room with warm mosaic benches. Once you get used to that level of heat, you move on to the Calderium which is a steamy hot room, again with hot benches. It was hot, really hot. From there, if you haven't had enough, you move on to the Sauna, dry heat in a very hot cedar room. There was a wooden bucket with water that you could ladle onto the rocks in the sauna oven. That was a bit too much for us, so we'd skip the sauna and head to the shower room which had an alcove with seven shower heads, another with a gushing river showerhead, a couple misting shower head, and a shower on a wand.

We had been hoping Nikolas would be able to have a pony ride on one of the family's ponies, but their ponies had been taken out to pasture up the mountain. A phone call to the neighbors (a sheep and horse farm), and they had arranged a pony ride for us. It was a truly magical experience. We arrived next door to be greeted by a twelve year old girl, Stephanie, (and her friend) who was in charge of the pony ride. Off we went to the field where we met a goat who thought she was a horse(!) and collected Funky, Nikolas' pony. After Nikolas helped brush Funky, the girls saddled him up, got Nikolas fitted with a riding helmet, and they were off down the valley to the riding ring. The pony ride turned into a full blown lesson, and before we knew it, Nikolas was riding Funky by himself while Stephanie called out tips and commands. Towards the end, Stephanie wanted to speed Funky up, so she hopped up behind Nikolas and the two of them trotted back to the barn. There we found the rest of the family busy with sheep shearing, something that is done in the fall and the spring, with the help of sheep shearing friend. The friend is the fastest sheep shearer in the state and can shear a sheep in thirty seconds in competition!

One final highlight was the mountains. Even though it was October, we were given free 'Summer Cards' when we checked in which give all sorts of discounts and free entries into attractions and mountain cable cars. We took advantage of the card, trying out two different cable cars in two different areas. The first took us to the summit of the Planai mountain (1894 meters), the mountain directly above Schladming. The mountain bike world cup was held in Schladming last month, and there is a 4.5 kilometer mountain bike path down the mountain. It was crazy to watch the bikers hang their bikes on hooks on the outside of the cable cars to go up, and then see them riding down the mountain as we sailed over them.

We also went to the Dachstein (2996 meters), the eighth highest peak in the Alps and home to a glacier where skiing was in full force. In our gondola heading up the mountain, we rode with the Polish Biathlon Association as well as a few athletes from Russia and the Czech Republic (all decked out in their uniforms, skis in hand). Being at the summit was like entering another planet, with snow and skiers everywhere, people bundled up but basking out in the sun, and incredible views all around. Nikolas asked, "Can we do this every day?!"

For more photos from the weekend, click here or go to the link in the Photo Albums section of the sidebar. Nikolas also took some artistic shots, which you can check out here.