On New Year’s Day, we woke up with the goal of eventually ending up at the Natural History Museum. But first, we needed coffee. Rebecca had identified the oldest coffee in Vienna, a place called Cafe Frauenhuber. We trekked there and enjoyed good coffee, so good in fact that I apparently left a very generous tip.

“You really started his new year off right,” Johannes said afterwards.

From there, we walked to Stephansplatz to climb up the 343 winding, spiral steps leading to the top of the South Tower of Stephansdom, which was a narrow, somewhat tiring climb but rewarding with beautiful views of Vienna’s rooftops.

“Imagine getting up there and realizing you forgot your keys,” said Dan, once we’d successfully descended.

We spent the afternoon making our way down Vienna’s cobbled streets, passing horse-drawn carriages, ornate doorways with doorknobs placed well above one’s head, and several restaurants and cafes who promised to be open (on GoogleMaps) but were understandably shuttered for New Year’s.

We ate lunch at a place we found open, and then headed for the Museum of Natural History. It was closed. The Museum quarter was beautiful nonetheless, so we took several photos and explored the quarter before making our way slowly back towards our hotel.

It was getting later in the day, and we were all a little concerned about dinner – what would be open on New Year’s Day? We emerged from the subway station near our hotel and prepared to cross a major street, with signs overhead advertising directions to nearby cities.

“Look at that,” Rebecca said. “Prague, Bratislava, Budapest. We’re so close to everything.”

“Maybe we can go to one of those places for dinner,” I said, half-jokingly. We were near a train station, after all.

“Well, Prague is 6 hours,” Rebecca said, checking her phone. “Budapest is two and a half.”

“What about Bratislava?”

“That’s an hour by train.”

We looked at the clock. It was just past 4pm. It was not unreasonable. And so, we dashed to the hotel, got changed, grabbed passports, and headed back to the main train station via underground. Soon we were on a train bound for Bratislava, Slovakia, a country none of us had been to.

Rebecca purchased tickets for the last train back from Bratislava, which was at 10:30pm, so we could make the most of our time there. I Googled restaurants near the train station and found one, Bratislava Flagship, which wasn’t too far of a ride. Rebecca called to confirm they were open, and we were off.

The Bratislava train station could not be more different from Vienna’s. In just an hour, we’d crossed geographical and cultural borders and found ourselves in a small train station with several bus stops out front. We managed to hop on a bus – our train tickets covered the cost of transportation – and jumped off a short walk from Bratislava Flagship.

Labeling itself “one of the largest restaurants” in the area, the place was not wrong. The ground floor was huge with a U-shaped bar at the back and offered plenty of seating space, but then there was a grand staircase that led upstairs to even more seating. We got our own table in a back corner and ordered several Slovakian specialties, from dumplings to cabbage spatzle.

After dinner, we wandered the extremely quiet streets of Bratislava, which were still twinkling with Christmas lights and whose alleys still contained the wooden stalls leftover from Christmas markets. At one point, we wandered a long cobblestone street with no other people on it. We all felt like we were walking through some kind of movie scene set in the olden days or post-apocalyptic. We caught an early bus back to the train station, where we waited for the train to pull in. There was nowhere to eat or sit down, so we stood in the center of the station and examined a socialist mural on the wall above the announcement board.

We didn’t get back to our hotel beds until nearly midnight, but it was worth the side quest to a new country!

On January 2, we packed the car – like, really, packed the car…Rebecca and I were squished in the back half on each other’s laps – and headed 3 hours west to Flachau ski resort. After a stop at the most crowded McDonalds I’ve ever been to, we drove another hour to our hotel, just 30 minutes outside Flachau. The Burgblick only has two stars on their website, which I think is a bit unfair. It delivers on the promise of its name – you do get a beautiful view (blick) of the castle (burg) on the hill across the valley. It’s also adults-only, which was a plus for our group. And after the Budget Ibis, this was a luxury place.

We dropped our things and headed straight to Flachau so Dan and I could rent ski gear for the next day and J could get lift passes. (A perk of traveling with J and Rebecca: they also want to be on the first lift up the mountain in the morning.)

Passes and gear secured, we made our way to a nearby thermal bath that Rebecca knew from her days of coming to Flachau on a ski week. We bought passes for 4 hours, got changed into our bathing suits, and headed in. This place was incredible. We swam outside into a heated thermal pool where steam rose up into the cold night air, reminding me of Iceland’s Blue Lagoon.

Then, it was back inside to warm up in one of two jacuzzis or slide down the craziest water slides or swim in the wave pool and feel like an extra on the set of Titanic. There was also a climbing wall next to a swimming pool, but that was closed when I wanted to climb it.

We ate dinner in the on-site restaurant, which was vegetarian schnitzel and pretty good, and then a laser show began. A waterfall of mist rained down from the ceiling, and laser lights projected words and light against the water. Everyone gathered in the pool to watch the show, which began with an advertisement for the thermal bath itself. We found this entertaining, as people held up their phones and recorded the words. At one point, to great musical fanfare, the lasers boasted that the thermal baths offered “the largest funnel slide in Western Austria.” Not Western Europe, or Austria in general, but just western Austria.

Afterwards, it was more of a dance party, so we floated in the jacuzzi again while Dan and J went down several slides.

We got to bed early that night in order to be up by 7 and at the gondola by 8, which we were. J was happy to announce that we were on the third gondola up that morning.

Flachau is a huge ski resort. We spent the first hour or so gondola/chair lifting across the valley to a different, less-crowded slope. The conditions were pretty good, the visibility was amazing, and the sun was shining all day. We played on some reds, but also some fantastic windy blues that helped me get my snow-legs back for the rest of the season.

Lunch was at one of the many lodges on the mountain, and for the first time since I can remember, I stayed out the whole day. At one point, my knee hurt, so Dan and I went back to the lunch place and I sat outside in the sunshine, sipping a coffee and enjoying the cold wind on my face and the hot sun.

We gondola’d back to our resort, boarded down the mountain, and returned the rental gear. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned the day too well, and my boots were in the trunk of J’s car, which was parked a good walk from the rental shop. Dan’s suggestion was to carry me there on his back, which I was not enthusiastic about; a slippery walk across the parking lot in snowboard boots with me riding piggy back did not sound safe, but as I padded around the rental place in socks that were growing increasingly soaked, I didn’t feel like a shoeless walk across the lot was a great idea.

So we went on, me on Dan’s back, lifting up dividing ropes so we could both duck under or Dan could step over. We finally made it to the car, and J, upon seeing us, called out, “But Rebecca has both of your shoes – she’s walking to the rental place now!”

A comedy of errors indeed.

Dinner that night was at a tasty pizzeria in town, followed by an early night to bed. It was perfect. I love those evenings after a day on the mountain where you feel tired, hungry, and ready to go to sleep feeling like you achieved something.

The next morning was our 5-hour drive back to Zurich, and Rebecca was determined to pack the car in a way that did not require the two of us to share one seat in the back. She called it the “Re-Jig”, and it only took 20 minutes of experimenting, shifting seats and suitcases, and reconfiguring before she managed to make it work with a triumphant cheer. Thankfully, we each got our own seat in the back on the ride home, each of us sitting with a suitcase between us and a ski between us and the car window.

All of our trips are full of adventure and I’m always sad when they end, but there’s usually something coming up to look forward to again…