Growing up, I became very fond of downhill skiing. Sometimes in the winters our family went up to the Swedish mountains and went skiing and one winter I went to a ski school in a small ski slope at home where we lived. In the years that followed, I went on several trips with friends from the church I belonged to. We went both to Sweden and Norway, but the absolute best ski trip I was on was down to the French Alps, to the large ski area at Val-d’Isère/Tignes. It was in many ways a truly great trip and I want to share my memories from it with you.
It was time for the winter holidays and I was in my first year of high school. The church had organized a ski trip for the young people down to the Alps that I would join, and I was very excited. We went down by bus and it took little over a day before we arrived. I remember it was so exciting as we got closer and the bus hurtled up the serpentine roads. Arriving at the hotel in Tignes, it was a fantastic winter day that greeted us when we got off the bus. The sun was shining in a blue sky and there was a lot of snow, both on and off the slopes. We learned that the week before there had been a heavy snowstorm for several days and there had been a lot of snow. But by the time we arrived it had calmed down, the sun was peeking out and the slopes was freshly prepared. It was amazing!
The wonderful weather was one of my strongest memories from this trip. You couldn’t get any better weather on a ski trip than what we had. The sun shone every single day, there was hardly any wind at all and the temperature was absolutely perfect for skiing. On several occasions we sat down in the snowbanks, took off our jackets and our overcoats and enjoyed the sunshine. It even happened that we skied the slopes dressed like that. I remember coming home from the trip looking like I’d been on a sun holiday in the Canary Islands!
The nice weather and all the snow that had arrived the week before meant that the skiing was top class. The ski area is one of the biggest in the Alps and I remember one day we tried to get from one side of the ski area, where we lived, all the way to the other side without any detours but we couldn’t because the lifts began to close for the day. There were all kinds of slopes where, for example, one of the slopes went through a canyon and was called the James Bond slope after they had filmed a scene from it for one of the Bond movies. One of the longest slopes started high up on a mountain and then stretched about ten kilometers before finally coming down to the lift station at the bottom.
Another lasting impression from the trip was all the good food we ate. Normally food wasn’t something I took much interest in at that age but on this trip I really enjoyed the food we ate. One of the evenings, for example, we had a fondue party where we ate both meat and cheese fondue. It was completely new to me and very good! Most of the times we had our lunches at restaurants along the slopes. It was a wonderful feeling to unbutton the ski boots, sit down with friends at a table and eat steak with freshly made fries – all framed by an indescribably beautiful view of the mountain peaks!
Speaking of friends. Of course, it would not have been the same wonderful trip without good company and we really had fun together. We were a few guys who shared a large hotel room and bought home breakfast together (it was not included in the price), among other things small super tasty yoghurt packages which were new to us at the time (but now you can find them everywhere). Even the long bus journeys to and from Sweden were much more fun with all the friends and so was of course all the hours we spent on the ski slopes. All together it was an absolutely amazing trip that I still remember with great pleasure.