A Californian in Austria


Stan is a bum. Being from California, that makes him a Californian bum.

IMO though he has a better grasp of what life is about than most do. I'm glad to have gotten to know him a little bit better.
Last time we met in person was back in 1999, during my road trip. So when I got an email from him saying that he would be coming over to Europe to teach skiing for 3 months in Austria I figured that if he'd fly all across the world in my direction, I could travel some 1000km in his. And that's what I did.

So in early March I started my Van and pointed it in the direction of Austria. Only some 8˝ hours later I was actually there, enjoying the sunny weather and looking for the room & board a nice lady form the local travel office had arranged for me the day before.

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Night Driving
(Bit fast :)
On the road to sunshine
and pleasure

During my own search for a place to stay, the week before, I'd gotten to talk to Annie from the Hotel zur Post who just happened to know Stan and also the region I live in. After arriving in Fuegen (this is the place Stan was hanging out) I went over there, said hi to Annie  and had some coffee there. She directed me to my place for the next week (which was just around the corner). I checked in what turned out to be a huge room, for a ridiculously low rate, with a very nice lady who acted a bit like a mom to me the rest of the week :)

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Fügen View of a Room Other View

Although Stan had been 'warned' about my coming by Annie, we hadn't made any special arrangements, so I went up the local mountain to see if I could find him. This turned out to be no problem at all; one of the first people I spotted when coming out of the gondola was a guy who looked a  lot, and turned out to be, Stan the Man.

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Going up Stan the Man Apres ski (3min :) The Bar
Mr Li, Stan, Annie

Now I could write a blow-by-blow description of the rest of the week here, but I won't :)
Some of the highlights were; hanging out and talking with Stan, snowboarding, hanging out at the bar of Hotel zur Post, various sorts of hard liquor, hanging out with the other ski-instructors (anything you've heard about ski-instructors is true btw :), watching them drive karts around, getting a tad sick the 4th day there. The latter was a bit unfortunate, but as a result I got a lot of rest, which didn't harm me :)

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The Van... ...in the mountains Van & Snowboard

 

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Stan leading not anymore Round 3 Still going strong Close to the finish The aftermath

 

So after a week of fun, excitement, sports and rest I went up the mountain a last time on Saturday and said my good-bye's to Stan.
Apart from some small traffic-jams and the odd speeding-ticket the drive back was pretty uneventful, but fun nonetheless (hey; I drive a Mini ! Driving is always fun :)

I was a good idea to go an meet Stan again; he's the kind of guy you don't meet to often.