Saturday and Sunday are getting combined into one blog post, since the main focus of both days was skiing. About two thirds of the group ended up going skiing (with two or three going snowboarding). A few "aggressive" skiers went with Craig on the first train at 7:30, while the rest of us went with Brad on the 8:00 train. It took about an hour to get from the hostel to a ski area, a process that included a bus ride to the train, to the cogwheel train, to a gondola. Our group went to Mannlichen (all Swiss spellings tentative), a nice area at the top of a mountain with several red (medium difficulty) runs, some black (difficult) runs, and 2 blue (easy) runs.
Most of the group I was with went down the first blue run, where we quickly discovered who was better at skiing...My entire skiing experience before this consisted of two trips to Sunburst Ski Area in Wisconsin, so I was pretty nervous about this whole experience. The run ended up taking about 1.5 hours for the three of us lagging in back...the rest of our group did it in about half an hour. I discovered that Mom was correct: you CAN sideslip down an entire mountain...after that very stressful, icy run, the group ate lunch, and I and another girl who was having leg cramps ended up just waiting inside and wandering around a bit until the rest of the group was done skiing.
Our group on a mountain:
Why all the little Swiss kids are so ridiculously good at skiing:
We did have one unfortunate incident on the mountain. Although I succeeded in my dual goals of making at least one ski run and not dying, Aaron in our group did get hurt and ended up laying on the ski run for almost an hour before getting picked up by the ski patrol. It turned out that he tore his MCL and strained his ACL, so he's on crutches right now.
Mountains - sponsored by Coca-Cola:
The group of about 8 of us headed back to the hostel at about 3:00. While 2 of us had done only one run, several others had done that same run...6 times. Had a bit of an adventure getting back to the hostel when we missed our bus, then missed our stop once we'd caught the next bus half an hour later, but we eventually made it back. We went to a nice little Italian restaurant for dinner, which turned out to be extremely expensive, but decent food.
On Sunday, all of the skiers, minus several who were too hung-over from the night before, left on the 8:00 train and we all went to a different mountain, to the town of Wengen. After staying together for a couple minutes, the aggressive skiers gave up and left the 9 of us behind...this run was very different than the day before. Where Saturday had been basically open areas down a mountain, this run wound around and down the mountain through some forests. This run took about an hour, and was way more fun for me...many thanks to the group for waiting for me to catch up several times!
My major improvement for the day was a change from sideslipping down most hills to snowplowing down most hills, until I had an impressive wipeout towards the end of the last hill...I stayed down in the town while the rest of the group took the train to do the run again. Following a nice lunch from a little snack shop (apparently in Switzerland they put the hot dog inside a roll, not a bun), we went on to "First," yet another mountain.
A long walk and long gondola ride later, a couple people did one more ski run, while 3 of us did the First Flyer attraction, which was basically a giant zip line down part of the mountain. Moderately terrifying, but a lot of fun (and included with our ski passes!)
This time, we made our way back to hostel with much less difficulty, knowing that we needed to (a) get on the bus immediately after exiting the train, and (b) actually push the stop button when we got close to our stop, not after it.
Feeling poor from the expensive dinner the night before, about 12 of us chipped in for some homemade spaghetti, courtesy of the Coop grocery store, and Tim and Mari's cooking. 2 Swiss Francs per person...far more reasonable than 20 a person at the restaurant!
After dinner, I watched (via iPod video streaming) the Packers win their wildcard playoff game against the Eagles, and finally went to bed at 2 am or so...fantastic weekend in
Oh, and yes, we were skiing in the same region that will be hosting the World Ski Cup next week. We saw them setting up some of the runs.
Location:Alpenstrasse,Interlaken,Switzerland
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