An Austrian New Year…

New Year can be a funny old time of year as an Expat – with many friends either travelling or busy with visiting guests.  More often than not it can be – well, quiet…   So after last New Year’s Eve that could only be described as a bit of a damp squib (a little like 2016 itself in places!!), and without any inkling that we would be on the move in less than a week’s time from now, a few months ago we went ahead and booked a New Year’s Eve break in a little tiny alpine village in Kaernten.

I will admit to panicking slightly at the timing of it all before we left – as when we get back we will have two final nights in our beloved Bavarian house before the packers turn up – but sometimes you just have to think sod it, and go for it anyway.  Plus, I wasn’t about to say no to a sojourn in the mountains without having to get on a plane to visit them (as will be the case when we return to our own small island)!

Our home for the week – Das Moerisch has a motto that goes something like ” the guest is king”, and the service is certainly really lovely, but I think their motto should actually be “the guest should put on at least 5 stone during a visit” as the food is actually pretty good too…  There’s also a pool, and a very Germanic spa (it’s completely naked.  No, I am not visiting), and the surrounding countryside is as you might expect for this part of the world is just beautiful (and perfect for little explorers)…

So far we have spent the last few days climbing mountains, exploring alpinehutte’s for lunch (do go to the Pichlhuette if you happen to be in the area, I can’t think of a nicer place for a warming soup and a rewarding beer after a hike or a sledge!), and yesterday was spent sliding across a giant frozen lake at Weissensee – forgetting about all the upheaval there is to come in the next few days…

Whilst there’s a distinct lack of snow on the lower ground (the real stuff is coming over the next couple of weeks apparently!) – there’s plenty higher up, and that’s where you can find the ski nuts of my family today.

Not about to sulk at being “abandoned” for the day, the baby and I have so far spent the entire morning in the pool, where my tactic at taking him for a very long swim has worked – he’s currently having a snooze.   And so I get to write this overlooking the mountains and thinking about the feast the hotel is laying on this evening (and the diet I will start as soon as we move to Cambridge!).

As I probably won’t get the chance to wish each and every one of you a Happy New Year personally, I will just say it here instead.    Thank you for your continued readership and the masses of comments this past year.  I hope you will still follow us as we embark on the next strange chapter that is life in our own country (albeit for a little while!).  A Bavarian Sojourn will carry on as normal (I am not even going to change the name, it took me ages to get over the “loss” of a Scandinavian Sojourn!) and will be the place that I continue to record all of our travel adventures (and with just about all of it sorted for next year already, you won’t find us sat on a sofa in Cambridge for long!)…

So, have a lovely one.  May 2017 be really good to you and yours, and so much better than 2016 has been for so many.  x