Alpen 2021

Many things happened in 2021. Even though we're not able to travel a lot, it's not getting boring. In May I had an interview in the ENT department of the university hospital in Innsbruck, Tirol, Austria, and they immediately wanted me to start working there, even though, my plan was to travel in between the jobs. My job in Lindenberg/Allgäu was great and I loved it, but I had to move forward and get closer to the mountains. It was hard to quit my job that quickly. At the end, I had two weeks off and went to France, climbed up Mont Blanc from Chamonix to the top on skies. Well, the first 2000 m / 6600 vertical feet, I carried them on my back. It was the beginning of July, so people were wondering, what I was doing there, walking through the woods with skies. In the late afternoon I reached an old cable car house where I stayed overnight. The visibility was not very good, to say the least and the snow on the glacier very mushy, so the plan was, to cross the glacier early in the morning. At noon the next day I reached the hut where there was only the caretaker but no guest. He told me, the weather would become bad the following day and it'll be better to go up the summit the same day, so I did. Around six I got there, alone. Three groups, coming from the opposite site, already went down. It was very windy and frosty. It was getting dawny on the way down, where I met no one. The rest of the two weeks I spend hiking around in those wonderful french alps.

Since I moved to Innsbruck, I went up so many mountains, as it is surrounded by mountains in every direction you look at. The city is not very big, still very busy though.

To the north there is the wonderful Karwendel, one of the biggest wilderness areas in Europe. In the south there are smoother mountains as well as rocky dolomite like towers.

In Austria, people don't work as much as in Germany. At the beginning it was very strange to me to leave the hospital at four in the afternoon and, well, it still is. But like this you can still go up a thousand meters after work. The north chain is rising up directly behind my house for another 2200 m/7200 feet. Once you cross the mountains and descent on the other side, you're far away from civilisation.

Public transportation is fantastic. You can get everywhere you wanted to in a short time for almost no money. I got a ticket for one year, covering the entire State of Tyrol, for 610 Euros.

South Tyrol, Italy, is just around the corner, only half an hour. Two hours to Bozen/Bolzano.

Just recently I spend ten days in Switzerland and learned how to fly. I can't wait to be allowed to do it on my own and go up some montain and paraglide down again.