The Hausberg

The American Hausberg Lodge in Garmisch (Last Winter)

I have spent the past few days devoted to getting this place ready to open.  It is the base camp for any skiing that happens associated with my hotel.

The picture is an old one, as the caption states.  Right now there is no snow.  At least not all the way down the valley yet.  It has managed to creep half way down the surrounding mountains.  To look at the peaks, you would think it hasn't stopped snowing for years.

The Hausberg is the third of the three retail outlets operated by the ELR.  It is seasonal, as one might have guessed.  It has been my task this past week to get everything into that building that needs to be there to open our ski shop as well as the retail sales end.  I've brought over everything from skis to beer.  I am happy to say though that we look to be on track for our soft opening next week.

The town has a special feel to it the last few weeks.  I couldn't place what it was exactly for a time, but I think I've nailed it.  It's the calm before the storm.  At the hotel everyone is preparing for the coming winter/ holiday season.  Around town at retail outlets, they are doing the same.  This part I understand and is old hat for anyone that has grown up in a Westernized country.  What has been different for me is the old fashioned practices going on around town.

On the was to work in the morning, I have been able to hear very regular if not somewhat strange noises.  I wasn't quite sure what it was until they were accompanied with a smell, and then it hit me what it was.  People here are stockpiling firewood for the winter.  It seems a bit odd to me that in Germany, people still relied on wood for heat, but I suppose it makes as much sense as anything.  And when I say stock piling, I mean exactly that.  They painstakingly pile precisely cut pieces of wood in perfectly even stacks.  These things are all over town, and I suppose I had taken them for granted, as part of the landscape of a tourist town.  There are farming families here that have been here for what seems like forever.  What I would give to have dinner with one of them and just get an hour or two of local family history out of them.  There is so much corporate farming back home, and elsewhere in the world, it is bizarre and yet very settling to be in a place that is so locally oriented.