Ski fahren

7am wake up on a Saturday was pretty tough. Struggled to quickly prepare everything for skiing, I should have sorted it the night before. The 8.30 train was going to be pretty tight. Thankfully Chris (my housemate) suggested we get the 9.15, praise be!

Garmisch Partenkirchen is a 1h train ride from our place. It’s €54 for the train-Ski pass combo (in non-Skier language - dirt cheap).

I’m always a bit terrified I won’t know how to stop on the first two runs, and I’ve learnt to take some gentle blues. By the end of the day we were bombing it down the black runs, with me taking broader turns than Chris and meeting at the bottom.

This was my first time trying out the 20€ skis I bought in a flöhmarkt second hand. Great success! I just need to find poles and I have the full kit.

I absolutely love the feeling of skiing. Sliding elegantly, getting a feel for the soft snow and just taking a turn as you reach it. Leaning on the icey patches.

It’s pretty tiring, so we stopped occasionally to eat Tupperware pasta with our hands (no one remembered forks). I put down a bottle of beer, which promptly rolled down a difficult black slope, becoming smaller and smaller... Prior to this I’d been cautious about going down a black but finally there was no choice but to retrieve the bottle. It was actually perfect because it built my confidence a lot!

As we moved across the Zugspitze valley, the sun came out and everything became perfectly clear and quiet as the cloudline dipped. I am very lucky.