Snowboarding In Zell Am See, Austria
/My last adventure was a few months ago. We went in Austria, to Zell am See for snowboarding. We had an amazing instructor called Uvi, which explained the basics. After 3 days of doing this for 6 hours, we realized that we need to do this every single year.
During this holiday, one of my presents for my birthday was to go paragliding, but unfortunately due to weather conditions we postponed this for a later date. If you have any suggestions where I should do this with an amazing view, please let me know.
We also did some sightseeing. We visited Salzburg, which is a cozy city between mountains. After that we went to Hallstatt, this amazing little place near a lake where the view there is breathtaking. Unfortunately for us, the main attractions there are open only early April till late October, which didn't kill our mood as the quiet and relaxing walk between the small houses it was still enough thanks to the amazing landscape. About our accommodation I can recommend the place where we stayed. They cleaned our room every day and the nicer thing was I got a bottle of champagne as a birthday present. Why did I mention this? Well, for past 5 years, I never celebrate my birthday at home, I always decided to go somewhere - sometimes was London, sometimes was Paris, sometimes was a nice place in Romania, but this year was a ski resort in Austria. Until this year, no host ever said Happy Birthday to me. The pension is small, they have 10 rooms tops, the breakfast was different every day, served always with coffee and orange juice. Our host, a very nice and funny man (didn’t speak a word of English), explained us how to take the train which is 100 meters away from the pension, but we never try to see how it is. We had a transportation schedule from the pension, but as the parking was free all day, we preferred to go by car. We found on booking.com Pension Alpentraum for accommodation and it was literally 4 minutes away by car from the cable-car station, but in a different town called Zellermosee, our favorite word from this trip. We had a second favorite word which got stuck into our heads, because our instructor was a German and instead of saying "into position!" he was keep saying "into positionen!". In terms of food, I can say that the après-ski restaurants have the menu quite similar, but the food is not great. We went to a few places, the best one was the Bio Burger Factory near the train station. Their web page is under construction for now, but still you can find them on Facebook - Bio Burger Factory Page.
If you go in the city center you can find a lot of nice restaurants and après-ski. I would advise to try the Jagger tea and the apfel strudel, the best things ever.
In the last day, in the morning we went to Kitzsteinhorn highest point 3029 meters. It was very foggy and -16 degrees, therefore this is my only picture. After that we went to Tauern Spa, where I got my last present - hot stone massage, after a very intense week of snowboarding. Vlad went for swimming in their pools and sauna. From different perspectives, of course we both recommend to go here if you are in the area. It's not cheap, everything is perfect, so every cent spent there is well spend.
I was mentioning our instructor earlier; he works as a snowboard instructor in the winter and waterboard instructor in the summer. In case you don't know Zell am See has a big amazing lake, which gives him the opportunity to do whatever he wants, all year long. Isn't that cool?
You probably wonder how we found him. We did our online research of course for a few days sending emails and asking around about what each school offers. There are a lot of schools in the area, depends on what you want to achieve, in our case the most important thing was to convince Vlad that this sport is awesome. He approved by the end of the week, he was already planning to go again next year. We decided to go for this ski school, with the headquarters right in front of the parking. We order the equipment for Vlad and we had to pick it up from a warehouse, where the person spent a lot of time with Vlad in order to have the right pair of boots. The price was acceptable, especially if you take into consideration how expensive winter sports are.
I recommend going to them especially if you are a beginner and you want just to see if this sport fits you. The beginner classes start in the weekend and Mondays. I would recommend to plan your days, so you can start Monday, as most people will go on the weekend which will make the class more crowded. This makes a big difference in the individual attention you get from the instructor. If you don't need to attend the courses, beginner, intermediary or advance, still I suggest renting the equipment from them instead of going to the big chains like Intersport.
Let's all help the local communities instead of making the rich ones even richer.
Overall, I suggest to go to Austria for ski or snowboard. Zell am See is a nice place, with a lot of possibilities.
