I think I'll best start this post off by saying that I really love the the holiday system in Germany. Along with Christmas Break and Spring Break (both totally normal for me), here there are also two weeks for fall break and one week for...Mid-Winter Break! I must say that I do not entirely understand the logic of this one, as it comes less than a month after Christmas Break, but I'm definitely not going to argue against it - extra vacation time is always a good idea in my opinion :)
Anyways, every year for Mid-Winter Break, my host family travels to the Italian Dolomites for a week of skiing. Since first hearing about this, I had been SO excited - after all, skiing in the European Alps has always been very high on my bucket list - so of course the last week of January just could not come quickly enough. Then finally it did come, and so my host family and I loaded our ski gear into a Volkswagen van and drove the ten-ish hours to the beautiful Sud-Tirol area of Italy, which is extremely close to the border of Austria (as you can see in the map).
The mountains were simply incredible. We first arrived really late in the night, so it was pretty difficult to see, but when I woke up the next morning and simply looked out my bedroom window, I was completely in awe. The view was unlike anything I had ever seen in my entire life.
The place where my host family stays each year would be best described as a "chalet". It had so much cozy, perfect Alpine charm, and was located right next to the ski hill, so we could practically just ski out the door every morning. At the same time there were also a couple of other families staying in the chalet, and we all shared a kitchen and dining room where we would eat meals together and just hang out.
The seven days there were seven of the best days of my life (which I know I say quite often, but here I mean it especially). Waking up every morning around 8am, having a hearty breakfast of eggs and bread rolls and fruit salad, skiing for hours and hours in fresh snow (only pausing to have hot chocolate, Germknödel, or Kaiserschmarm in warm, picturesque wooden huts on the side of the mountain), skiing some more (or until the lifts would close around 4pm), returning back to the chalet to drink tea and talk, and then sharing a delicious homemade dinner with family and new friends before finally collapsing into the beds in our warm rooms. And then repeating all of this for the entire week. It was simply perfect.
Additionally, the skiing was unlike anything I had ever done in my life. Growing up in a family of avid skiers, I have naturally been on the slopes since I could walk, but sadly our good ole Wintergreen Mountain does not even begin to compare to the Alps. The snow in Sud-Tirol was deep and powdery and not at all icy, and there were so many different slopes that we could go the entire week without ever doing the same one twice (and even then we wouldn't have been able to cover them all!). Plus, thanks to our electronic ski passes, when we were back in Berlin, we were able to go online and look at a map of which runs we did and how far we went -- I skied 135 kilometers (84 miles) over the course of the week!
In the evenings, there was a lot of time just to enjoy each other's company, go for walks into the little village, read, and watch the Alpenglühen ("glow of the Alps" -- the mountains illuminating the sunset, making for an incredible view). In addition we had a few very unique experiences: attending a Ladinish wedding and having a dinner cooked for us in the old house of a traditional Italian chef! This all happened on Tuesday evening; after thawing ourselves after a long day of skiing, we drove to the house of a woman, who cooked a traditional dinner for us at her old house. There were approximately fifteen people sitting around the table (my host family plus the three other families they have this dinner with each year as tradition), and the dinner table was actually in a bedroom, which just added to the uniqueness of the evening.
After the delicious dinner (which included beef from the cooks very own cow), we followed a large amount of traffic heading in the direction of a wedding taking place in the small village. But it was not just any wedding...it was a traditional Ladinish wedding (don't worry - before this vacation I had never heard of Ladinia either. Turns out it's a 460 sq. mile Alpine region in Italy, not very widely known, but full of interesting culture). Despite the fact it was late at night and well into the negative degrees (just thinking of it now makes me shiver), the entire wedding was taking place outside. First there was a parade, with horse drawn carriages, TV cameras, large ribbon-y hats, and long rows of young men and women wearing traditional very traditional Ladinish clothing (slightly reminiscent of American Pilgrim style). Finally the bride and groom arrived and sat down at an outdoor table (in perfect view of about every single person from the village, and maybe also the neighboring villages too, plus all of us random spectators). The entire wedding party also sat at this long table, where they all drank wine and ate cake together (I didn't even want to imagine how cold they must have been with the metal forks in their bare hands; even with my ski jacket on, I could feel my limbs starting to turn into ice). Next there was lots of dancing and singing and celebration, and then finally it was time to go.
Overall, the entire trip went by way too quickly - before we knew it, we were back on the Autobahn towards Berlin, watching the impossibly beautiful mountains fade away in the distance. But I decided that would not be my last time there...it may be a long time before it happens again, but someday I'll go back to the Italian Alps :)