The Alps Experience

I’m afraid that if I’m going to give you the real picture here, I have to tell you that the first week at school after returning from the Christmas holidays was the most boring, tiring, and un-enjoyable week of the year. I spent nearly every evening cooped up in my room mulling over university options and scholarship applications for next year. I stopped every now and again to play some hockey on the school rink which was ready for us when we came back. In any case, I did make some progress and I’ve applied to Augustana to study a BSc.
The next week proved much more exciting than the first. A trip to Filefjell to cap off our avalanche course with some practical training was worthwhile. Not because I was later involved in an avalanche (I wasn’t), but because it gave me my first real taste of fresh Norwegian powder. Great time, spent the whole weekend off-piste, taking drops and floating over the powder.
The educational portion of the trip was in the morning, and involved probing for a ski bag and searching for buried avalanche transmitters, amid other things. It was interesting, but the highlight definitely came in the afternoon when we were free to hit the slopes as we pleased.

My friluftsliv class also managed to squeeze in a short trip on our wooden skis at a small hill near the school before we left for Austria. Mine are 225cm long and 120mm at the widest part, so they floated quite well, but it was difficult to make nice turns. It was fun, and a novelty to ski on a pair of planks that you made yourself.


















Thirty straight hours in the bus and a couple days of icy skiing was definitely worth the reward which awaited us near the halfway mark of our week-long stay in Austria! Although temperatures of over 10 degrees Celsius were enjoyable during lunch, they were not so desirable on the slopes! There couldn’t have been a better surprise than to wake up one morning to the news that Zauchensee was covered in a 40cm blanket of fresh powder! The skiing was obviously fantastic and the trip was great on the whole. We stayed at Tauernhoff (a Torchbearers’ Bible school in Schladming) where we ate breakfast and supper. We also attended evening seminars where Tobias Kley discussed aspects of Christianity and delivered thought-provoking lectures. Tobi is a former boxer and decathlete and he has experienced many struggles, which he drew from on many occasions. The talks made a great contribution to our stay.
At these same meetings we shared the mishaps of the day and voted for a winning nominee who was then made to dance in a one-piece green snow-suit. The dance was pretty epic and the daily winner had to wear the suit on the slope the day after, but the stories were by far the best part. Although I was not a witness, the first day provided a story in which seven of my classmates posed topless at the top of one of the many mountains. They all faced away from the camera, looking out over the valley. All went well until they realised there was a ski-lift ascending that particular face of the mountain! The girls quickly hid themselves from the gaze of those on the eight-person chair-lift… The only problem was that we only had one green suit! We narrowed it down to one particular unnamed individual who sunk down in the snow, remaining stuck as she held her hands over certain body-parts.
College, eh?



The skiing really was spectacular. Tauernhof was located literally 50m from the gondola at the Planai’s base. Right at its doorstep were countless lift-accessible mountains; the map here shows maybe half of them. It was big enough that you could ski the whole day without meeting any of the 50 other Valdres folks unless you left with them in the morning. Great trip.

We continued to Prague for a couple of days on our way home, and although fun, it was kind of anti-climactic after an entire week of skiing in Austria. There’s not much to say about Prague aside from the shopping and gambling opportunities. There were some interesting historic points of interest, but none of them are free of drug dealers; I was offered “hash, weed, marijuana, whatever you want” (gee, there are so many choices!) a total of six times during my stay. A few more long hours in the bus, the first few of which were made enjoyable by a headache and overall body-ache (the result of a lot of telemarking and a couple of solid work-outs), took us to Kiel, Germany, where we boarded a very fancy ferry (where you could shop and gamble) which took us to Oslo. I slept most of the way.
During the home stretch, I began to look forward to sleeping in my own bed again and finally relaxing a little.
It was not to be.















I got home to find the same dirty clothes on my bed, the same piles of garbage on the floor, the same mess in my closet, the same empty box of cookies on my desk- I found everything exactly as I had left it. But no, that was not the problem. Obvious solution here: throw everything off my bed and crawl in, right? No, the real problem went far beyond this.
Everything in my room was exactly as I had left it, every picture on the wall, every candy wrapper, everything lay exactly as it had. The only difference was that my room itself was no longer where it had been when I left. You say what?! Exactly my reaction when Sindre, my room-mate, said (in Norwegian), “Somebody switched our room with Ida and Camilla’s!”
I understood what he said, but I only understood what he meant upon opening my second-floor door to find the belongings of Ida and Camilla lying in my room as if the two of them had been living there since the beginning of the year! I, of course, immediately ran downstairs to Ida and Camilla’s room which lies directly beneath ours with an identical floor plan. The report? Well, I found “my room” exactly as I had left it, as I think I may have mentioned already. It looked as if we’d “been living there since the beginning of the year”. Despite someone’s intricate work in reproducing our room, it felt completely wrong, and the first-floor view just wasn’t satisfactory. Somehow, it just didn’t have the atmosphere.
We considered moving permanently simply to avoid a bunch of unnecessary work, but we all liked our own rooms for some unexplainable reason. The move back up the stairs took a couple of hours, and it was a relief to be finished. I could finally unpack and sleep! Actually, I went out and played hockey first, but…
I must say the prank impressed me. The pranksters have not yet disclosed themselves, but I have a pretty good idea who it was. Sleep with one eye open!

At the moment, I’m trying to fight off a cold. I went for a good long ski yesterday and I think it worsened my condition (nothing too bad, it just wont go away). While I sit here writing, all I can think about is that the other guys are all out training for the Birki while I’m inside blowing my nose. Oh well, such is life.
I had a great time in Austria and I believe I will be going on a randonné trip in Jotenheimen soon. A bunch of alumni arrived here this evening and there is a hockey tournament planned for tomorrow. I’ll be wearing my Habs jersey.

Take ‘er easy.