Cabin

Upon arriving in Austria I realized that a) lacking a host family and b) taking classes in English meant that if I wanted to get better at German I would need to actually take the initiative and work on it outside of school. Luckily, the universities in Vienna have a tandem learning buddy system, where you get a list of people and what languages they offer/want to learn. Then you just e-mail them and work out when to meet and what to learn. I signed up for this before realizing that actual schoolwork would be occupying most of my time, but regardless, it allowed me to meet Gernot, an Austrian. We only met a few times and both those times I helped him with his English since he had to take a huge insane English test to go on exchange to Australia.
Anyways, since Gernot is a native he suggested going to a cabin sometime and we finally worked out the details so on December 5th a group of about 10 of us piled into three cars and drove for a few hours to St. Anna's. Before getting there though, we stopped off at Gernot's place and met his dad. Although I've only really met two Austrians on their home turf (i.e Gernot's parents) I have determined this. If you're hungry or thirsty, you will be given food and drink. If you're not hungry or thirsty, you will be given food and drink. I was almost stifling my laughter as we all sat down and Gernot's dad put out some apple juice and water, despite us all saying we weren't thirsty. Oh well, it was delicious and natural and tasted a bit like cider.
Once we got to the cabin area we first went into this kind of house/restaurant (I think it's called a Gasthaus) where hikers/skiers will stop by after conquering the mountain.

Inside the Haus
It was very....rusticAnd they had a mop with legs, I mean a dog!!!

I suppose I should have mentioned before that this post is yet again going to be super photo heavy, but that's the price to be paid when I go to places that have views like this.And there was snow, glorious, glorious snow.

We stayed in the building on the left.
Now, before the next pictures, allow me to spin you a tale. In Austria there is this tradition that on the 5th of December a curious pair of figures goes house to house to scare/reward the children residing there. The first "person" that comes is the Krampus, which looks like a sort of furry human with horns and pointed teeth, the Austrian version of a devil. The Krampus asks what the children did that were naughty and threaten to beat them with bunches of twigs but normally the parents intervene by offering the Krampus something to eat or drink. At the end of it the child promises to be good and then the second person arrives, or he arrives earlier to chase off the Krampus (I didn't really get a full understanding of what goes down). This second person is St. Nickolas, not to be confused with Kris Kringle, the gent that brings gifts on Christmas Day. St. Nick brings small gifts like chocolates or bags of peanuts. This normally happens in smaller cities but in the bigger cities it's apparently possible to rent a Krampus and St. Nick to come terrify your child. So, in the family that lived in the gasthaus has a young daughter (maybe more children, she's the only one I saw) so when the Krampus and St. Nick went there, the owner told them that there were some people occupying the cabin that had probably been very bad. :-P

The two Krampuses de-masked (sorry for the bad quality, didn't use flash)

Ana decides to Krampus it up a bitSt. Nick to save the day!!

After St. Nick and one of the Krampuses departed (the other one stayed with us for the rest of the weekend, strange, but fun) it was decided that the time for consuming food should commence. So we banished a few people to the kitchen to make dinner.

Sam chopping up the onions for pastaThe rest of the evening consisted of: Puzzle timeMidnight romps in the snowRocking mandolin and guitar duosFine ArtInjuries (Rose lost her balance and grabbed the stove)Onion juggling (this was actually the next morning)

The next morning, I surprised myself and I think the world in general by being the first one up, at 11:00. Sitting in the main room just drinking some tea and looking out the window was one of the nicest things I've done here. All the snow just looked right and the mountains were amazing. In case I haven't mentioned yet, there is no snow in Vienna (it rained today) and rumor has it that snow in the city proper is a rare thing, so I took the opportunity to get in all my snow cravings. Once everyone else woke up and had coffee at the gasthaus a few of us decided to hike up the mountain. Unfortunately the rest of the people woke up too late so we couldn't make it to the top before it got dark. We did get above the timberline though, and between the really steep slope, high altitude, and a bit of a cough, I was kinda glad that we ended when we did.
By the time we all re-assembled back at the cabin quite a few people were really regretting leaving so, they didn't. And by a few people I mean everyone but Gernot and I (he had to work and I had a class I couldn't miss). But, Gernot wasn't going back to Vienna so I had to take the train, which I feel would have been nicer if I could have seen the scenery, but it all worked out ok.
Despite having tons more pictures I'm not gonna post them here because it's kind of an annoying process. I might be doing something wrong, but when I add a picture it shows up at the top of the post so I have to draaaaaaag it all the way to the bottom, meh. But I will be putting up all the rest of the mountain majesty on my photobucket account. Here's one picture to whet your appetite for the rest of the awesome awesome scenery.