putting the win in winter: Christmas in the snow

For Christmas this year, we went to St. Anton in Austria (yes, based heavily on the movie Chalet Girl - where a chick from the wrong side of the tracks goes to St. Anton and has a rad time, making Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl fall in love with her AND becoming a pro snowboarder. oh it's so good. so good.) for a week of snowboarding and festivities.

yep. i promise. aweeeesome.

Despite the fact that I didn't become a pro boarder nor make Chuck Bass realise he loves me (... yet.) St. Anton was awesome. I ate schnitzels, went snowboarding and drank beers on the slopes. what fun.

Some of the highlights were:

1. Minority Group Membership. On our first day on the slopes, we were sworn at by an American skiing lady for having to sit down to strap into our boards. wow. Secretly, i've always wanted to belong to a minority group where i can rally some troops, drink big beers in frosty mugs and complain loudly about how people should acknowledge how cool we are and then make up secret handshakes and get nicknames (sadly, these last two never eventuated despite my keenness for such things...) Being a snowboarder in St. Anton was like being in a minority group! weeeeee! (admittedly without the need for civil wars and such unpleasantries - which i do appreciate may make minority group membership less than awesome... but... ), i relished it. relished.

2. There were 17 of us on the trip (yes... 17. wow) and before we arrived, i'd only ever met about 6 of them (!) so it was lucky that everyone was awesome. so awesome. The big motley crew gave the whole thing a really kewl school camp type vibe which was so lovely and sort of made up for the fact that i wasn't at home, at the beach, with my family this year. My favourite part was during one of the daily 'hallway drinks' in our giant house, someone played a recording of his room mate's snoring. yep, it was that type of school camp. LOVE.

3. Christmas. I LOVE christmas. This year i really got into the festive spirit, to the point that i downloaded the Justin Bieber song about Mistletoe just so we could sing it on the train from Zurich to St Anton (as it played out, Christy distracted me with beers in the bar carriage so i never got to... oh. well played christy...) it was so great to be in a cold, festive cute town for Christmas... we had a big dinner where Santa gave out gifts and then yelled at me for only bringing 12 hats instead of 17 (oh. sorry santa. oh) everyone wore festive jumpers and drank expensive wine (but Euros don't count, right.... too soon?) and felt super Christmas-y. sweet as.

This poorly wrapped gift (i actually think it's held together with bandage tape??!) was a snuggie. jealous.

One of the gifts given were balloon animals "suitable for ages 6+"... turns out balloon animals are harder than expected to make. yep.

4. Apres Ski. Its the best part about the snow i think, and St. Anton does it well. There are two bars about 400m from the bottom of the mountain where everyone starts drinking and dancing and singing jealous-y inducing german songs from about 4pm, which means you can dance in your thermals and snowboard boots for a few hours and then try and ride down to the bottom when you're done. woah. such an awesome-ly deadly game. love. love.

I read somewhere, that even though it closes at 8pm the MooserWirt sells more beer than any other bar in Austria. woah.