Holiday Vital Statistics

Back from a rather lovely two weeks in the Austrian Tyrol where I came over a bit Julie Andrews-

Some Holiday Statistics: 

1. Different ways we took ourselves up hills: funicular railway, cable car, chair lift, or even (with Haribo help) on foot.

2. Different ways we hurtled down hills: slide, waterslide, waterslide on a rubber tube, waterslide with whirlpool rapids, grass toboggan, chair lift, cable car, paraglider, zipwire, rolling on our tummies, on foot.

Bill demonstrates hurtling

3. Different schnitzels eaten: pork, chicken, turkey, with added cheese, with added ham, with added mushrooms.

4. Different cakes eaten: sachertorte, grape sponge, pineapple sponge, apple and almond sponge, strawberry mousse sponge, apple strudel, nut strudel, pear strudel, apple and nut strudel, pear and nut strudel, unidentifiable but still delicious strudel.

5. Number of Traditional Tyrol Parades of random motor vehicles, traditional crafts, sundry animals, and marching lederhosen-clad Brass Bands seen: 3

a goat with impressively long horns

6. Number of Traditional Tyrol Parades which did not also throw sweets and therefore were too many for Bill: 2

7. Conversational Topics which preoccupied my children: Electric fences. Electric Shocks. Electric Chairs. Cannibalism. Foreign Crisps. German Spongebob. The possible Housing Arrangements of the Singer Gary Numan. The order of all Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson songs and the life, times and changing skin colour of Mr. Jackson generally. Foreign Haribo. Foreign Sausages. Foreign Ice cream.

8. Number of sticks that Bill wanted to bring home: 8

9. Number of sticks actually brought home: 4

10. Number of stones that Bill wanted to bring home: 15

11. Number of stones actually brought home: 4

12. Souvenirs chosen: Bill- an authentic bearded and uniformed nutcracker named 'Colonel Nut', Eddie- a snowglobe featuring mountain, climber, alpine chalet, goat, cow, bell and marmosets with 'Wildschonau' written on in black felt tip a bit bunched up at the end.

13. Books read: Some. Mainly more Percy Jackson for Bill, David Sedaris for me and Alice in Wonderland for Eddie.

14. Games played: More. endless Uno. Top Trumps and the best discoveries of this holiday- Forbidden Island and Dweebies. These games made by Gamewright are as close to a review as this post is going to get. They were a nightly treat. Forbidden Island is a co-operative game where you either all win together or lose together. It takes some mastering but I highly recommend it. Eddie won't play any game where he might lose- he's not a bad loser- he's a total game refusenik who generally just chooses to spectate. He was persuaded to play some Forbidden Island and got quite into it. It has mini plastic trophies with mystical powers to collect which always helps. 

The only other review of this post is obvious I hope: Austria is an excellent place to have a holiday if you like schnitzel, strudel, goats, hills and Haribo. And WHO doesn't like those things? Back to the books next post. I have a cracker for you...