Ski trip at Romme Alpin, Sweden

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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You know you´re from Sweden when...

Some of the things on the following list are so true!

21. You have different sets of clothes for different halves of the year and rotate them in your wardrobe and storage rooms . 22. The hallway of your home looks like a used shoe store. (Weather) 1. You are obsessed with weather. 2. You find it perfectly normal to ride a bike in a blizzard.3. It's only a blizzard if you can't see your car in the drive because it's covered in snow. 4. You've worn a souwester (“sydväst”) without being a fisherman. 5. The first little bit of sun is out you go to the nearest park and you put on sunscreen factor 30 and a bikini while watching old ladies walk past in furry coats. 6. You find it normal to have the headlights of the car on at the brightest and sunniest of days. 7. You and your kids are the only ones in the playground wearing clothes according to weather. 8. You always go "That's not REAL snow" whenever it snows in countries that usually don't get snow. 9. You find it adorable when people from other countries get excited about a few milimetres of snow that only stays on the ground for a few hours. 10. You find it ridiculous schools in some other countries have to close if there comes more than five cm of snow on the roads during one night. 11. You constantly whine about the rain or the cold weather. (What others say about the Swedish) 1. People ask you if you have polar bears on the streets and you try to spread the myth further by saying it is true. 2. You have been asked whether there is a “Swedish Bikini Team”. 3. You don't get why Non-swedes think it's odd that the sun stays up for about 24 hours in the summer. 4. You can't see what's so "cute" about writing 13:00 instead of 1 pm. 5. You think that Sweden is constantly in the news abroad and are surprised to find that this is not the case at all. 6. You seriously want to HURT Non-Swedes who ask 'how's life in SWITZERLAND?' 7. Non-Swedes laugh at you for wearing a bicycle helmet and you answer: "At least I won't be the one dying of a skull fracture". 8. People refuse to believe you're actually from Sweden because you're not platinum blonde with a Sven-Göran Ericsson accent. 9. You tell them your surname is Larsson and every Non-Swede automatically assumes you are related to Henrik Larsson. 10. Drunk Englishmen keep telling you how drunk Swedes usually are, in their experience, and you find it rather comforting to know that there are drunk English people keeping an eye out for us abroad! (Misanchellous) 1. You have a summer house in the countryside. It has no running water or flushing toilet, but you can't understand why none of your non-Swedish friends want to visit. 2. The law in your country says it's legal to sell sex, but illegal to buy it. 3. You go downtown during a Sunday and don't expect to meet a single soul during a thirty minute walk. 4. You thought 'Aftonbladet' and 'Expressen' were full of silly news. Then you went abroad and found that many papers include nothing but naked women and sex. 5. In desperation you think you bought the wrong item because the condoms come in square packages instead of rectangular ones. 6. You have absolutely no idea what is meant by" Swedish massage" that keeps being advertised in spas all over the world. 7. You are constantly surprised that you are the tallest one in any given situation while abroad (some countries are exceptions of course). 8. You get chills down your spine thinking about the "Flour-tant". 9. Your parents pay you every month for not eating sweets for a year (or so). 10. You instinctively spot Swedes from a distance based on looks and what they're wearing and/or by the round pale mark in the pocket of their jeans (obviously they are anomalies- Norwegians or Finns at a push…) 11. You have been or know someone who has been an exchange student 12. You are amazed to find that other countries are not familiar with winter tires and 'halkbanor'. 13. You know an entire catalogue of “Bellman”- and “Norge” jokes. 14. You own more than 5 candles and light them daily. 15. Everyone owns at least one mobile phone, but there's no longer land line phones in all homes. 16. You think that v70R is the ultimate sportscar. 17. You know the population of your hometown quite accurately. 18. At the age of ten, you knew all twenty five counties of Sweden by heart, including every town with approximately more than five people in it. In other words, you’ve have had a good geographical education. 19. You wash your face in an English bathroom and get totally annoyed about the fact that you are either burning your face or putting a layer of ice on it! Therefore you rave to Non-Swedes about the superiority of only using one tap for both hot and cold water since "In the country where I come from, we have had one tap for both hot and cold water since the Medieval days!" 20. You can type in someone’s name on the internet and find out everything about them; phone numbers, see where they live and even see a picture of their front door. 21. You go to McDonalds & the staff work as elite models in their spare time. 22. When you tell Americans that you're Swedish and get thoroughly annoyed when they say "Me too!" 23. You have seen both your parents naked more than once. 24. You secretly consider Finland a part of Sweden and can't understand why they don't. 25. Your queen is from Germany. 26. Someone in your family or someone you know has a ping-pong table in their country house. 27. You find it normal to have the kitchen lamp hanging from a cord/string over your table instead of being attached directly to the ceiling. 28. You get homesick out of reading that list 29. You actually read all of these posts. 30. You would never ever admit to anything on this list (since that would make you “too” Swedish) 31. You unfourtunately realise that everything on this list is true.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2226483923