Ski Club members recently had a great time skiing and exploring in Innsbruck, Austria. We flew into Munich, Germany and got a short city tour before the beautiful drive down to Innsbruck. We checked into the Hotel Gauer Baer and started to look around in the old town with its colorful pedestrian streets next door to our hotel. Innsbruck is hundreds of years old and has lots of historical sights.
Trey Sophy skied every day with his high school buddy Matt Hatley. Matt actually lives in Portland, Oregon and he made a great addition to our group. Dave Dennis also mostly skied. One day he walked across Innsbruck to see the Olympic ski jump. It’s quite a sight, but he wisely decided not to try it. Roy Sensintaffar and Kim Dillard also skied most days but joined my family for some of the touring. Roy’s friend Janyce Duncan did a lot of exploring on her own but her favorite experience was taking a ski lesson the last day. The lesson, rental gear and lift ticket were less than half the cost of the US, and she loved her Austrian instructor and being up above the clouds in the Alps. You could actually take a funicular train up the mountain just a block from the hotel, then change to a gondola halfway up (also the stop for the Innsbruck zoo!). You wind up at the top of the mountain with the whole Innsbruck valley spread out below.
This trip was sort of a family reunion and birthday celebration with my daughter, Hannah Sieler, who grew up in the Ski Club but now lives in Seattle. My wife Erla and I were happy to explore in different directions every day with Hannah. One day Janyce joined us on the train and we went up to Salzburg for the day and saw Mozart’s house. Another day Roy, Janyce and Kim joined us for the train ride across the Brenner Pass down to Bolzano Italy. Just the train ride was spectacular, but then we toured the museum with Otzi, an ancient hunter who was frozen in the ice about 5,000 years ago. Amazing! After lunch we went up to a castle that was more than a thousand years old.
On other days, Hannah, Erla and I toured a castle in Innsbruck with lots of suits of armor, several churches that were breathtaking, the zoo, and we went up to the Swarovski Crystal factory.
The week went by far too quickly. We all loved meeting for dinner every night and hearing about each other's adventures. The breakfasts and dinners were wonderful, with lots of local cheese, breads, pastries, wine and other goodies.
The Tulsa Ski Club went to Innsbruck at least 7 times back in the 80’s, and this trip reminded me of why everybody loves it!