Not many people know but I've long had a list of things I want to do in life. One of those things is skiing. I went on a ski trip last weekend with the Chinese-Swedish association (SKS) to Romme Alpin, Börlange. It took 2h30min by bus and I had to wake up at 6 AM after going partying the night before. However, I managed to sleep on the bus and soon found out I had not been the only one on the bus that had been to the same corridor party.
The weather was perfect during the two days of the trip: sunny and between -3 and 0 degrees. When arriving I got amazed with the hight of the slopes and wondered how I would manage to ski all that downhill! The ski resort wakes up very early (9 AM) and soon becomes crowded, as it was when we arrived. We got the equipment and I soon discovered that ski boots are not at all comfortable, maybe in order to prevent you from injuries.
There are two kind of lifts: the ones where you sit, and the ones you grab and get pulled. The first time I tried the second one I let go too soon, almost when getting to the top of the hill, which made me slide downhill all the way backwards! Funny for the first ski experience! Learned my lesson on when to let go the lift handle! During the only lesson we took the instructor teacher how to make the snow plow (how to break when going downhill). Apart from that we didn't learned anything from him and I had to figure out how to turn and break when doing that to avoid gaining too much speed. At first I was counting the number of times I fell but soon lost count!
In the end of the first day I had done green and a blue track (which is harder than the green). During the blue I basically fell most of the times and tried to make it straight down because couldn't manage to break very well in such steep slopes.
At night we got a room in the ski lodge, which was modern and cozy. Then, we had an amazing Chinese dinner at a restaurant in the center of town (never saw so many plates I had no idea what it was in my life). I had a lot of fun asking what each thing was, what it was made from and about other Chinese customs. This is the best way to learn things, by talking to people ;-)
The next morning we had a fabulous Swedish breakfast waiting for us! I found how amazing it is to have yogurt with own-made cereals at breakfast and now do that all the time. Everything was very clean and had a home-kitchen style. Hard to explain this if you've never been here. Some people call it Stockholm style.
I soon found out that somehow I had become really good at skiing during the night. Its like if my brain consolidated all the movements and techniques I needed when sleeping. Some people had described to me that happening to them but I had never understood it before. Therefore, I managed to do all the green and blue slopes falling much less and in a very enjoyable way. I even managed to do a training similar to the competitions on TV in which you have to change direction between each color bar buried into the snow.
In red, the slopes I've skied on
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the feeling I got when arriving to the ski resort: I arrived to paradise. However, when I got to top of the mountain I didn't know where I had arrived. I guess there is always a place better than the other, even when you don't believe it.
Last but not least, I didn't took many photos because didn't want to bring the camera with me to the slopes since falling could make me break it.
If you're wondering why I seldom post things on this blog I answer what someone once told me here in Sweden: "If you are constantly writing about your life you've no time to live it"
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