The main event today was skiing the Stubai Glacier.  This is one of nine ski resorts the City of Innsbruck offers free shuttles to for tourists.  Axamer Lizum, the resort we went to on Saturday is another.  This resort is actually on a glacier.  It peaks to 3.2 km (roughly 2 miles) above sea level.  The ski resort guarantees snow from October through June!  This seems impressive, especially since there are places in Colorado that boast peaks just as high, yet cannot boast snow for this large a part of the year.  In fact, I think most of the resorts there close by mid-April, if not earlier.

It took us a lot longer to get there from Innsbruck (about an hour), but I enjoyed the skiing here a lot more than Axamer Lizum.  First of all, Axamer Lizum is not for beginners.  Abby and I felt like the worst skiers there.  At Stubai Glacier I saw people of all ability levels.  Also, here I was able to do some trails at the intermediate level (Red).  In fact, that is what I mostly did.  So, I felt much more legit.  This was possibly related to the better snow conditions at higher altitudes.  The snow conditions did, however, deteriorate in mid-afternoon, as temperatures were well above freezing on most of the hill.  It got close to 70 in town, and I felt overheated on the ride home.

Overall, the whole experience was fun.  After skiing, we had 45 minutes to spare before the bus came to take us back to town.  We went to a bar to buy some soda, as we were thirsty.  As was the case at the other ski resort, there were people partying, having a good time, and listening to techno.  Then, they played a techno remix of Manfred Man’s hit song For You (from 1984).  It reminded me of Eric Pryd’s Call on Me, from several years back, which was a remix of the Steve Winwood song Valerie.  My trusted sources tell me that that song was quite huge in the London Club scene in the middle 2000s.

I thoroughly enjoyed this remix.  I think the Europeans do a good job of remixing old American music.  They periodically seem to do it with songs you would never think of making into a remix.  I mean, Steve Winwood, Manfred Mann.  Who thought of taking this song and turning it into a techno remix?  I mean, I could ponder a way to throw Metallica and Lady Gaga onto a Yanni track before I could ponder a remix of Steve Winwood or Manfred Mann.  But, they were good, real good, along with most of the other music I heard, both on this ski resort and the other one.

I could definitely see myself coming back here.  There really is no place in America like this.  It’s like the fictitious town in Hot Tub Time Machine.  We have ski resort towns in America, like Vail, Breckenridge, Steamboat, and Park City, but they are not nearly the size of Innsbruck, which has about 120,000 people.  Denver, Fort Collins, and Salt Lake City are bigger, but they are not nearly as close in proximity to the skiing, they are not ski towns.

Thinking of all of this European techno, specifically their producing quality remixed of American songs, naturally leads me to think of Flo-Rida.  A year and change ago (sometime in 2010), he released Sugar, which takes the tune from Eiffel 65’s 1999 hit song Blue (Ba ba di ba ba da).  Flo-Rida managed to spin this whole thing around.  Finally, an American creates a hit from a European track (Eiffel 65 is Italian), and Flo-Rida becomes a National Hero, well, at least to me.

We went out for Indian food tonight.  Abby found a place across the Inn River, meaning we got to see another part of town, kinda.  In the grand scheme of things, German food and Austrian food are similar.  So, it is probably a good idea to get something else as to not get burned out on this food before Munich.  I have no interest in trying Mexican food in Europe.  Maybe there are some places that are decent.  But, with Mexico borders the United States, and the US is currently experiencing a great migration of immigrants from Mexico.  So, I don’t see how the Mexican food here can be as good as it is in the US.  In fact, I imagine it to be a lot worse.  However, India is really nowhere near either county (USA or Austria), so it’s more worth a shot.  I did the Indian food here, but not as much as the Indian food in the U.S.  This could be due to the fact that the Indian food in the United States caters to our tastes.

As the day draws to a close, our last in Innsbruck, tow things are on my mind.

1.   What am I to expect from Munich, our next and final destination?  Tyroleans and Bavarians have to have some major cultural differences.  They fought each other repeatedly in the past, and have been declared part of two different countries fairly consistently throughout history.  What are these differences?  Will I end up experiencing them on this trip, or will I only be visiting places where these differences do not show up?

2.  Why the %&!# do I still have a lot of energy?  The story of my life.