Beer! and Skiing! (mostly beer)

So I decided to be Swiss this week and take some vacation. Of course, I only took 1 day compared to the weeks that everyone around here takes at a time but I'm sure I'll work up to that.

So on my great big vacation day, Andre and I hit the slopes with Andy. We went back to Flumserberg. We were feeling more confident so we headed up the mountain to the intermediate slopes. We made it down once and decided to head down again and make a different turn at the end. Second time down, this was the result:

Judging by the length and shape of the bruise, I'm guessing I fell on my pole???

So after that, we decided the ski runs were overrated and it would be way more fun to be "off piste" and in the deep snow. It was harder to control my skis off piste but it was much softer when I fell. As you see by the snow in my hair and all over my jacket, I fell plenty. I had a blast though!




Andre off piste






Today, we headed to the Rappi Bier Factory and spent the whole day learning all about how to brew beer! The group was very interesting. Hosted by a Brew Master from New Zealand, the participants were from the good ol' US, Iceland, Wales, Spain, Panama and France. We started with coffee and snack, learned some about beer and then tried some beers. Somehow we fit lunch into our brewing and that's where the serious beer drinking began.

Best I can tell, you have about 8 main steps to brew beer.
1. Measure out the Malts (malt is a product created through drying of barley)
2. Run the malts through the miller machine thingy (we used a roller miller)
3. Create Mash (it involves a lot of stirring, reaching certain temperatures, waiting, stirring some more, reaching more temperatures, waiting some more)
4. Lautering (aka siphoning off the liquid from the super gross semi oatmeal texture stuff left - also involves some more hot water)
5. Boiling & Addition of Hops (self explanatory)
6. Whirlpool (spin the water round and round so that all the particles meet in the middle and settle at the bottom)
7. Cooling (involves a contraption that looks like someone hooked up a car radiator to a pressure washer)
8. Fermentation & Conditioning (this part takes forever - boo hiss)

After all that excitement, we should receive our very own beer from our brew in about six weeks!

For some reason, we took more pictures during our beer brewing experience than we have during the rest of our time here. Wonder what that says about us!?!?! :) Anyway, a link to the pictures are below with captions for your educational and entertainment purposes.

Beer Brewing Workshop!

Skiing! (and Singing!)

Today we got all adventurous and went by ourselves to Flumserberg. It was a gorgeous day here. We're having a regular heat wave. It got up past 40 today. Wooooo!

I believe if I have my facts straight that Carneval started yesterday. There was all kinds of strangeness going on on the slopes today.


Exhibit A: A giant green human caterpillar



Exhibit B: I don't even know....


And Exhibit C - We're just sitting there enjoying our lunch when this huge group of dudes comes in, they order some drinks and then they bust into song (chant? moan?):



We took a bunch of pictures today. Here are a few of the best. The rest are in an album below.


Question: What happens when you wake Melanie up early, don't feed her and make her carry ski equipment halfway across the country?
Answer: This

At least we got an awesome reflection of the mountains on Andre's snowboard
















Here comes Andre!




real mature Andre, real mature...

Picture Album:

Flumersberg February 18 2012

Skiing!

We hit the slopes today! We went with 8 other people to Engelberg. According to the Engelberg website: the ski terrain is largely designed for advanced skiers.....

We went straight to the top of the mountain which involved first a gondola ride, second a ride on something called the Titlis (???) and then a third ride up on a circular gondola thingy that spun around. Finally arrived at the top (10,000 ft) and almost instantly died from frostbite. Seriously. It was FREEEEEEEEZING. We took a few pics and then headed over to put on our equipment. About the time I got my skis on, a huge gust of wind came through and almost knocked me flat on my bum. Once recovered, we headed down the slopes. Pretty sure it would be the equivalent of a double black in the states. It wasn't pretty but we survived.

Overall we had a fantastic time. We are super sore already so I'm sure tomorrow will be rough!

Pictures!








Holy Crap! Take the Picture. I'm freezing!



Me in the center. Check out that form!



Rumor is, that's a lake in the summer.