Happy new year everyone! As usual I’m a little behind here, but I’ll start with a hike I did at the beginning of December near Salzburg with a Munich hiking group. There was surprisingly little snow and we managed to do pretty well without any fancy gear.
The entire day there was fog in the valley which created some beautiful effects from above:
I’d have to say the most disappointing part of the day was cresting the top just before lunch time, coming up over the last hill to see….. a parking lot. All that work and people can just drive up! The good news is because it’s possible to drive there, there was a well-stocked alpine hut with BEvErages and hot cider.
On the way back down we saw this funny sign. “Warning! Tame wild animals!”.
We were also treated to a fiery pink sunset. And to warm ourselves up before heading on the train home we stopped off at the Christmas market for some mulled wine and did a little window shopping. Christmas markets are probably my favourite thing in Germany in December. They are what all those North American malls try to unsuccessfully emulate.
While at the Christmas market we also caught sight of Krampus, Santa’s nasty counterpart in the Alps. Kids in Austria who are bad don’t just get coal in their stockings. They get threatened with being shoved in a bag and carted off by these scary guys (according to some...wikipedia has other versions as well). A whole gang of them were out in force on that evening. They remain totally silent but have big heavy chains which rattle when they walk. If I were six years old I’d be pretty freaked out. Heck, I was scared when I saw them milling around before the parade on the other side of some police tape.
