22 March: Auf Wiedersehen, Österreich!

It was with some melancholy that we got up this morning and started packing up our things. On the bright side, it was snowing again, so at least we weren’t yearning to get out on the slopes! We had a relaxed breakfast and checked out just after 10 am. We had a nice conversation with Herr Traxl – half in German and half in English – as we waited for the porter to retrieve our car from wherever they’ve been hiding it in the bowels of the hotel for the past four days. I told him how much we had enjoyed our stay and that we would be going back to the U.S. at the end of the year, but hopefully we will return someday, maybe with our children, who will of course need to practice their German. (Who knows, we might even find that it’s cheaper to fly to Austria and ski in the Arlberg than it is to go to Colorado!)

The weather wasn’t getting any better when we hit the road around 10:30. We immediately ran into a long stau because of some maintenance work inside a tunnel, but otherwise our trip went smoothly despite the snow. What a difference a few days make – now there was snow all the way down to the base of the Alps, as far as the German border and even a ways into Germany. It didn’t stop snowing until we neared Ulm. We got home around 2 pm, unloaded and partially unpacked, did a quick grocery trip to Neukauf, and went to pick up the pets at 5:00. Cody didn’t seem to need a walk, so we just heated up a frozen pizza for dinner and had a relaxing evening.