Back in february I traveled to europe…it was the first time I had gone back since I left germany, back in march of 2004…I was super excited to go back, for what was supposed to be a ski trip…I traveled with my friend josh (who, since he is no longer speaking/communicating to me, is no longer my friend) and said that if we're going all the way there, we HAVE to start with a couple days in garmisch, germany…I really wanted to show someone new how awesome that town is, how great the people are, how much i loved my life there…
our trip started with a flight from seoul to hong kong…then hong kong to london…(a really expensive airport, by the way)…then london to munich…when we got to munich, we found out that josh's ski bag didn't make the entire trip with us…after giving an address for the airline to deliver the bag, we took off for the hauptbahnhof (main train station in munich) and from there to garmisch…I'm sure I had the biggest grin on my face as we stepped off the train in garmisch…it's a beautiful town, in a valley in the alps…for those of you who haven't been there, I highly recommend going anywhere to see the alps…gorgeous mountains…go figure, this was one of the worst winters in years, at least for people who are into snow sports…it hardly snowed…we checked into haus lilly, which should sound familiar to all of you gappers…her prices have gone up over the years, but in general, she's still got a good place…
the first night in garmisch, we went to one of the best places in town…(at least, most afrc'ers would say it is)…zirbel…we met up with the girl I'll be traveling with next year, she and I got caught up on all the gossip…I'm sure josh was rather confused most of the time…it was great to see her, and I can't wait for our upcoming trip…josh and I had intended to watch the superbowl at a local bar, but with the time difference/jet lag, ended up crashing at 2200…(which I guess is a perfect time to go to sleep if you are trying to adjust to local time that is 8 hours different from where you started)…the next morning I dragged josh to the px…for most people, going to a regular grocery store isn't an exciting experience…but if you've been living in korea, with no access to many american products, it's quite exciting…do you know how long it's been since I've been in a commissary? ages and ages…and a sports store with clothes that fit me? even longer…we ran into quite a few people I remembered from my time in garmisch, it was great to see them all again…I didn't think I knew that many people still, but I had forgotten that garmisch has a way of sucking people in, and they stick around for far longer than they originally intended…next up was a tour of edelweiss…it was only half built when I left garmisch, so I'd only seen pictures of the completed hotel…we walked over, and walked in…saw more people I hadn't seen in years…I surprised mike beard by running across the lobby to him…of course he proceeded to give me a lecture on informing friends when I plan to come visit…hee hee…anywho, he gave us a tour of the new hotel (I guess it's not that new anymore,) both front of the house and back of the house…it's quite impressive…though I will always refuse to stay there, just out of principal…(anyone who has ever worked for that company will understand)…we set up plans for the evening, and went back to take a nap…we (i) had intended to eat dinner at my favorite place in town, bei marcus, but it was closed…it wasn't the ruhetag, I never did figure out why it was closed…oh well…after dinner (at la baita) we headed up to the cure, and met up with chaffin and beard…soooo good to see the two of them again…lots of stories to rehash, lots of gossip to catch up on…I hadn't seen them for three years, but the conversation never stopped…graham even remembered me, which was shocking…it had been years since he had seen me, and he didn't even know i was in town until i walked in the door and he greeted me by name!!...(a good bartender always remembers his customers, I suppose)…after a few drinks at the cure, we went down to the heisman…(now called the underground, as christof owns it, but I still think of it as the heisman)…more people I was super happy to see…smitty, bobo, jen price, tripp…smitty is awesome, as anyone who has ever known him will agree…he knows how to live life…josh and I were tired, and hadn't intended to stay long, but we left as christop closed the bar at 0100…
the next morning we got a call from the hotel that josh's ski bag had finally been delivered, which made him happy…we walked up to the kaserne to rent a car, and happily discovered that jake worked there part time…as we took care of all the paperwork, he and I caught up on life…drove back to haus lilly to check out and grab our stuff, then over the edelweiss to get josh's skis, then over to the hausberg to rent skis for me…I got to talk to lynne (one of my former bosses) and looked for shred, but he wasn't there…(go figure)…
anywho, after collecting everything, we hopped back in the car, on our way to kaprun, austria…we drove through the fernpass, which is absolutely beautiful…josh must be a halfway decent driver, cause I didn't end up carsick, despite all the windy roads…at some point I fell asleep, and while I was asleep josh missed the turnoff…whoops…so basically we went a wee bit farther than we wanted, but oh well, it's a beautiful area, we didn't mind too much…we finally made it where we wanted to go, and after quite a bit of searching found a hotel…too expensive, but we decided we'd suck it up for a night, then find somewhere else the next morning…josh spent the evening waxing his skis…the next morning we put all our stuff in the car, checked into a different hotel, then put on all our ski gear, hopped onto the ski bus (free)…it'd been ages since I had worn ski boots, so I was definitely feeling it and my balance was awful…(not that that is anything out of the ordinary)…josh had never skied a glacier before, so that was where we went the first day…kitzsteinhorn glacier…I'm not experienced enough to notice, but josh noticed a difference in the quality of the snow between korea and austria…hee hee…josh is a much more experienced/qualified skier than I am, so I was surprised when he stayed with me most of the day…I wiped out numerous times, but that was expected, and I didn't get hurt, so it didn't matter…a totally excellent first day on the slopes in three years…I was dead tired, but had that high you get at the end of a great day…the hotel we had checked into included half board, so we didn't have to go anywhere for dinner…great food…the first night was fondue, and there was a bayerisch band playing traditional music…our room was split into two areas, a living room and bedroom, and the bathroom had heated floors…and a bathtub!!! I know that for most of you that doesn't sound exciting, but most apartments/houses in korea don't have bathtubs, and you don't realize how much you like them until you don't have them…
the second day of skiing was the most adventurous day…we went to a different lift area, in a town just outside kaprun, called zell am see…our ski pass covered this area as well, it was an area with runs all the way down to the valley…(though with the crappy winter, the bottoms of the runs were crap)…it was the first time I had skied two days in a row in I don't know how long…I realized how out of shape I was when I had trouble making easy turns right from the start…but I kept going…we took a few pictures, and then halfway down the fourth run, I fell…at first I thought it was just like any of my other falls, and started checking my body as I slid to a stop…my face was okay, as were my arms and legs…or so I thought…I realized that my left wrist wasn't feeling quite right, and that closing my left hand didn't feel so good…then the pain hit…I lost both of my skis in the fall (don't ask how I fell, because I have no memory of the fall itself, other than i know i was by myself, no one else was involved) so those had to be found and brought to me…fortunately, josh wasn't too far ahead of me when I fell, and he happened to look back up for me not too long after I fell…he told me later he realized that something really bad had happened when he saw me sitting there with my gloves off…(I hadn't taken anything off in my previous falls)…then he saw my wrist which was at a bit of a funny angle, with a large bump in a place bumps aren't supposed to be…a ski instructor got to me before josh, and balled up some snow to put on the wrist…josh got there and helped me get all my stuff, then we pizza wedged all the way down to the lift…all I had to do was show the lifties my wrist (I was crying too hard to be very coherent) and they knew I needed to go to the hospital, so they called an ambulance to meet us at the bottom…the ambulance ride was only 25€!!! waayyyy cheaper than in the states!! I arrived at the hospital, then the waiting began…quickly enough they ushered me into an exam room, and there I sat for what seemed like foreva…I really don't know how long it was, as I didn't have a watch…and since my wrist was in constant pain, time seemed interminable…they took x-rays, which (surprise surprise) said that I had a broken wrist, as well as a dislocation…fun fun fun…after the x-rays, there was more waiting…a whole lot of it…yet again, my ability to tell time wasn't so good at that point…they moved me into another room, put my arm into some sort of contraption, shot me up with a very nice painkiller (it didn't just kill the pain, I felt absolutely NOTHING, I couldn't even tell I had a wrist) and proceeded to pull until the dislocation popped back into place…then they set the broken bone, and put me into an open cast…gave me a prescription for painkillers (which didn't do anything, as I unhappily found out later that evening,) had me sit around some more just for good measure, then finally let me go…paying for all of this wasn't so fun, but I'm too much of a goody two shoes to skip out on such things…while I was going through all of this, josh had taken a cab back to the hotel, gotten shoes for me (we were both in ski boots) and driven back to the hospital…I felt bad for him, as it was basically a lost day of skiing…drove back to the hotel, and I started whining…(at that point, I was a big baby, and felt I was entirely justified in whining about anything)…I was mad that my wrist was broken, in a lot of pain, and mad that I wasn't going to be able to do much of anything for the rest of the trip…zipping my coat ended up being a huge challenge, there was no way skiing was going to happen again…dinner that night introduced me to the fact that being one armed SUCKS…I couldn't hold my plate and put food on it at the same time…I couldn't cut my food…getting dressed before dinner was awful…tying my shoes, putting on my pants, brushing my hair, putting on a shirt, you get the idea…try doing all of this w/out using one arm, and you'll know how I felt…I don't like being helpless…josh had to do everything for me…and to his eternal credit, he was a total gentleman about all of it…(he teased me, but it was funny, not mean)…for the rest of the trip, wheneva we ate in a restaurant, people around us would ask what happened, and I would tell them I fell while skiing, and they'd feel sorry for me, while laughing and applauding josh for cutting my food…
the next day josh went skiing, I stayed in the hotel room (what else was I going to do??) watching tv and reading and trying to keep my mind off the pain…(it didn't work well, I'm glad I was alone, as I was a complete baby)…fortunately, the world ski championships were going on in are, Sweden at the time, so there was something for me to watch on eurosport…the welsh open for snooker was also taking place…lets just say I watched a whole lot of both of those for the rest of the trip…josh had fun skiing, I did a lot of reading…after josh's day on the slopes w/out me, we decided to drive back to garmisch and drop off my equipment, since I obviously wasn't about to be using it again…saw more people, they all said "don't you know you aren't supposed to fall?"…hee hee…we had dinner that night with helmut and Jamie, two more fabulous people…the following morning at breakfast, someone asked us in the breakfast room where we were planning to go…we didn't really know where we should go, so we asked him what he thought…(turned out he was a guy who was a volunteer each weekend in garmisch)…he suggested corvara, italy, so off we went…first to an internet café to get directions…guess what, there are four towns named corvara in italy…and go figure, we printed off directions to the smallest (and wrong) one…after going over the windiest mountain pass ever, we arrived in corvara (the wrong one) only to realize our mistake…apparently this mistake has been made before, b/c a lady in a guesthouse knew where we really wanted to go, and quickly gave us directions…after more driving through some beautiful vineyards and such, we finally arrived in corvara (the right one)…walked into information about 5 minutes before it closed, and were able to get info on where we could find a room…corvara is a ski town…nothing but guesthouses, restaurants, and a few sport shops…nothing else…we found a guesthouse, got dinner somewhere, and settled in for the night…the next three days, josh went skiing during the day, while I watched tv…(snooker and skiing anyone??)…at some point during each day I made my way through town, checking the daily menus for many of the restaurants, and deciding where we'd eat each night…corvara is in northern italy, german is still used as much as Italian and ladin, so I had no problem being understood…it was great for me to discover throughout the trip that I remembered more german than I thought I would, and was actually able to communicate w/out much English…corvara was cute, josh had fun skiing for 3 days…
on josh's last day on the slopes, I went to the doctor in town to have my wrist x-rayed to make sure everything was okay…(the doctors at the hospital told me I needed to do this)…go figure, everything was NOT okay…according to the x-rays, my wrist hadn't been set properly…the doctor told me that I'd have to have it reset if I wanted to be sure to have my full range of motion when it healed…definitely NOT what I wanted to hear…howeva, he said that I would be flying very soon, he didn't think it would be a good idea for me to have it done that day…or at all before I flew back to korea…ugh…so he wrote a note saying that I was okay to travel (apparently some airports don't want you getting on a plane with a hard cast) and put it in all the paperwork I was collecting…
the next day we drove out of town, all the way up to Frankfurt germany, from which we were flying home…flew out a day and a half later…a couple layovers, and there we were, back in the land of the "not quite right"…
okay, that's the end of the trip…despite the broken wrist, I loved it…I loved being back in Europe, I loved speaking german again, I loved seeing some of my old friends again…I like my life in korea, but I loved it in Europe…
we arrived back in korea during the lunar new year, which means that just about everything is closed…only the emergency rooms of hospitals would be open…so I had to wait two days to get to a doctor…I went to an international clinic, and they took x-rays again…told me that yes, it should be reset, but they were afraid it might have already started to fuse again…I said I'd have them attempt the reset anywho…they gave me a painkiller, but it did nothing…as soon as they started working on the wrist (two doctors) I started kicking…IT HURT…the volunteer translator guy held down my legs while the nurse held my head and other hand…I have never screamed that loudly…it was the worst four minutes of my life…horrible horrible horrible…I yelled/screamed/cried the entire time, and it was another two solid hours of crying before the pain subsided enough to be tolerable…I'm pretty sure I've never been that miserable…
to make a long story only a wee bit shorter, the cast came off two months later, and I'm totally fine now…I want to go skiing again, but I'm still a wee bit scared, ya know?
