Skiing, Take 2

We had gone on a school PTA sponsored ski trip to Austria back in January (blogpost to follow, waiting for the younger daughter to upload pictures), so we thought we would try something closer to home in February. So I googled "skiing near Erlangen" and got a hit for Fichtelsberg. Where's that? So I googlemapped Fichtelsberg and it said that it was an hour and 20 minutes from us. Great! It wasn't a big mountain, but that was okay. It had a variety of slopes.

So off we went....but as we started out the GPS said it would take 3 hours. Huh?

Well, it turns out that there is Fichtelsberg the town (which may have some sort of snow related activities) and Fichtelsberg the ski area and they are two different places.

We did make it there eventually. It was the grayest gray day that ever grayed.

If you didn't see the people you would think this was a black and white picture.

But lucky for us, it was "Skifasching". Fasching is what the German's call Mardi Gras or Carneval. It is a time for people to dress up in costume. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera but we captured a few things on my blackberry phone.

Are these ballerina mice?

A little ladybug ?

There was a parade through town and a marching band that ended up at the ski lodge. They also did demonstrations like one guy skiied down as a house on fire and others skiied as firemen carrying a ladder.