One of the challenges of living in Berlin and working in Munich is that the holidays often don’t match up, especially around school holidays. Winter break is the worst, as it is often starting the last week in January/1st week in February while Munich barely gets back to work until the 2nd (or even 3rd) week of January. In the past, I used to drop in a few days while the family was off for ski week. But then enter COVID…

As the office instituted a mask mandate at the desk until end of February, it was a no brainer to work from home. And so this year, home for the week was a lovely little village in the Austrian Alps, Reith im Alpbachtal. With the whole week there, I decided to do a bit more due diligence in the area. Surprisingly, the little town center had a lot more to offer than I expected. First, two doors down was a cheese/dairy manufacturer (which also had a 24 hours vending machine for all your midnight lactose cravings). Then there was the bakery which even opens at 6.30am on Sundays (that’s commitment). There were a few restaurants which we didn’t have a chance to try as we were quite tired/or busy at the end of the day. But the highlight was Cafe Konditorei Thaler. Every day the locals would gather from 10am to have a beer, glüwein or coffe and enjoy freshly made krapfen or doughnuts. Forget Krispy Creme, these delights are carefully crafted before your eyes. First the dough is raised (maybe steamed, not sure) before being dropped into the hot oil, flipped to brown both sides, and then removed. A minute later, they are prepared with your filling of choice (Teo loved the cherry, Kai was a fan of the vanilla, while I loved them all including the apricot) and then topped with the relevant sugar (granulated, powder, or cinnamon sugar). To me they are the GOAT.

But I guess I am digressing from the actual focus of the holiday — skiing. We decided on the first day to explore a new area (Skiwelt). While it started at bit ominously (the lady selling the lifts told us lifts were down due to high wind), it was a great first day with the sun coming to join. We ended up skiing the rest of the trip at our regular mountain area Ski Juwel. While Chika took charge of getting the boys to ski school during the middle of the week, I thoroughly enjoyed my alpine home office — which had a killer Italian coffee machine to boot. I managed to join the last day of skiing in time to see Teo and Kai win 1st and 2nd place in their races and have some good family runs to end out the trip.

I could get used to this kind of lifestyle of working around the world. The question is where to next?