traveldiary.stracke.us

We spend Saturday in Munich, where we know our way around the city. We buy our usual food, Marzipan and “Frankenwein” supplies to take back to Clifton Park. In the evening, we meet Ditta and Uwe in our hotel, and have a good dinner and very nice conversations together. The last time we saw each other was on their sailboat “Venus” in July of 2005, when we sailed around the island of “Elba”.
On Sunday we check in at the Lufthansa counter in Munich for our flight to Chicago and Albany. Chicago has a snowstorm and we are told that our flight Chicago-Albany has been cancelled.

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For the remainder of the week, we ski in the area “Alta Badia” above Corvara. It is much more relaxing with fewer crowds, no lift lines and good slopes. The whole Dolomiti Superski area has more than 460 lifts. We are happy with about 25 lifts in our immediate area between San Cassiano and Cherz. We have plenty of runs and don’t have to sit in cable cars or fight the crowds. We have lunch at one of the numerous mountain huts . We like “Uetia Bioch” with a panoramic view from our beach chairs.The skies are blue all week and the food in our Hotel Gran Ciasa is fabulous. On Mardi Gras, we get spoiled with an 8 course Gala Dinner in our hotel ( all inclusive). We have a very relaxing week: skiing, sun tanning, sitting in the sauna and steambath before dinner.

It is Monday, the sun is shining and we have our skis! After a fortifying buffet breakfast ( with great tasting dark bread),we head from the hotel Gran Ciasa to the next lift, about a 300 meter run down the ski slope. We have to learn the Italian lift ticket system. The ticket has no hole or wicket, but waving the electronic card in front of the turnstiles will let you enter the lift. We see that the ticket even works when inside the ski jacket, by leaning against the sensors at the lift gates. We end up doing the whole tour around the Sella mountain group, taking 15 cable cars, gondolas or chairlifts which connect the different villages : Colfosco,Groedner Joch, Wolkenstein,Plan de Gralba, Sella Joch, Citta dei Sassi, Sas Bece, Pordoi Pass, Arabba, Col Burz, Campolongo Pass, Corvara and back to Colfosco. It is a lot of work!
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On Sunday, we woke up admiring the blue sky and panoramic view of the Dolomites. We had a room with south-facing balcony and a great view of the Sella Gruppo. After a nice breakfast buffet in our Hotel Gran Ciasa, the owner came to our table and made some suggestions for activities that did not require skis. We explored Corvara and La Villa and ended up watching big,horse-drawn wooden sleds racing against the clock around a snow-covered track. The drivers were dressed in traditional costumes of the area(Ladinia) and the horses and sleds were decorated, creating a very colorful scene, with a World Cup Ski run as a backdrop.
The only problem was that the horses were not racehorses.
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It is a sunny, picture-perfect day, as we leave the Munich Airport and drive on the A 8 to Kiefersfelden and enter Austria at Kufstein. We continue up the valley of the river “Inn”, with views of the “Karwendel” mountain chain on our right. Near Innsbruck, the autobahn climbs into the mountains toward the Brenner Pass. There are many fortresses and ruins along this crossing of the Alps, a few wars have been fought here over the centuries. We enter Italy at the Brenner-, now Brennero-Pass. The last time, we had traveled here by car, was with Sonja and Carsten and that was before the creation of the European Union. In those days we had to stop at the Austrian and Italian border checkpoint and by now would have changed German Marks into Austrian Schilling and Italian Lira.
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At 11 o’clock this morning, we had arrived in Munich with an empty stomach, courtesy of US Airways. Our skis did not show up and we had to wait for 2 hours at the Lufthansa baggage service counter, while the agents helped approximately 80 other passengers with lost luggage from different airlines. There was no food in this part of the airport! We finally filed our report with the forwarding address of our hotel in Colfosco,Italy, made it through customs and headed for the next restaurant in the airport.
Gabi had had the mental image of “Muenchener Weisswuerste” in her brain for the longest time. We were tired and hungry. After sitting down in the restaurant,the waitress informed us with a smile: “we are out of Weisswuerste today!”. Gabi just about lost her composure. How could they run out of this Bavarian food staple?
I had no choice, but to get up and follow Gabi, who was making her way back to Terminal 2. The “Erdinger Sportsbar” came to the rescue.

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Our ski trip to Italy began with a 2.5 hour delay. We were sitting in the great Albany International Airport, waiting for our plane to arrive from Philadelphia. Something about frozen equipment in Phili, causing the delay. As usual with US Airways, not even a cup of water was served on our one hour trip to Philadelphia. Once we arrived, I made a beeline for the US Airways Business Class Lounge.
From our around-the-world trip, I remembered soda, beer, wine, champagne, computer terminals, tasty food, newspapers, magazines, all provided free of charge by the foreign airlines. Big disappointment in Philadelphia! The lounge had free water plus crackers and small pieces of processed cheese. That was it, nothing else! Why would any Business traveler pay for these amenities and become a US Airways Club member?
US Airways flight 14 took us across the Atlantic to Munich, Germany. The service on board was not any better. No individual movie screens on their Boeing 767, freezing cold temperature, paper-thin blanket (I traveled in my ski jacket), headphones and beer now cost $5 each ( free on other airlines), the dinner was not meant for human consumption, the “breakfast” consisted of one greasy doughnut roll. The attitude of the very mature flight attendants was generally non-caring. I did not see them once during the night, such as coming through the aisles and maybe offering the passengers some water to drink!
I am glad that the captain brought us safely to Germany, but given the choice, I will be looking at other airlines for future travel.