European Blog by Maddi Hoffman

GS, Schladming and Stinky Food

Me at the top of the GS

The past two days we have been training GS at Leogang Resort. Mother Nature has been very kind to us over the past few days; the weather has been nice and sunny this whole week. The snow held up very well while we were training but was pretty icy in parts of our course. The training has been really good at Leogang; on Monday we trained with the Netherlands’s Topolino team. We met some of the kids and they we all very nice and friendly. 

While we were in Leogang training, Lexxy was visiting Schladming and Salzburg because she injured her ankle and couldn’t ski. She said Schladming was very cool to visit just after the World Champs. There were posters everywhere with the World Champs logo and  the signage for the races was still up. Getting there was a challenge as the roads where narrow, windy and made of cobblestone, but was still a nice drive.

A view from our accom in Leogang

While we have been staying in the Australia House, dinner has been provided for us down the road. We have tried a large variety of different Austrian delicacies. However, on  Monday night we were served something special. We had a different sort of macaroni and cheese. When the waitress walked in, we all thought someone had let one rip, but it was in fact the cheese. This cheese is a specialty in this region and is developed for a minimum of 200 years. The cheese spelt like dog poo and we found it hard to get over the stink and actually eat
it, but for those who overcame the challenge it was very tasty.

On Tuesday we had lunch at the mid mountain restaurant and we all had something that we hadn’t tried before. We discovered the joys of Kaiserschmaren: chopped up pancakes, covered in icing sugar and raisins, served with plum sauce, is a totally acceptable dish to have as a main meal. It was really yummy. Over this week we have also had some really good schnitzel; not mentioning any names but one of us has had it all 5 days for lunch.

Now we are all packed up and ready to go to Italy tomorrow morning. I’m sure we will make Australia proud this weekend. Good luck to all our competitors.

Signing off for now

Madi Hoffman