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Published: January 17th 2012
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The average Czech person loves the outdoors nearly as much as their beer. When asked about the weekend, nearly every one of my students – except one group whose extra-curricular activities are harder to get out of them than secrets out of a dead person – will inevitably answer (wrongly but endearingly) ‘we were in the nature’ – a stock Czenglish phrase which is the equivalent of the Germans ‘making a party’.
The extent to which the Czech’s love their outdoor sports is evident no more obviously than on the ski slopes and ice skating rinks. As the visibly English skaters lurch around the ice rink with the smoothness of Frankenstein’s monster or precariously wind their way down the slopes there are inevitably hundreds of six year old kids doing figure-of-eights around them making these despondent figures feel as small as possible.
Skiing in the Czech Republic is very cheap, especially when done as a daytrip like my first one that I joined on Sunday. For the same price as my hastily-bought, modest ski trousers (about £40) I got return travel from Prague to the ski resort of Herlikovice, one-day ski hire, a lift pass, two meals and two beers. Herlikovice is one of many fairly small resorts in the popular Krkonoše Mountains on the border with Poland and boasts just four major slopes – one for beginners and a couple of intermediates – and a few minor expert runs. This is ample for those that only have a day to spare or those that want a gentle reintroduction to skiing, like a ‘once every five year’ skier like me. The main complaints from the Czechs is that the ski resorts can get quite busy which is why many of them choose to travel to the Austrian Alps instead.
The only way in which I can be classed as a real man is that I really can’t multitask. This is especially true when it comes to any mechanical or technical things like driving, typing and skiing. Behind the wheel, when I am concentrating on the physical act of driving I lose all sense of direction and my conversational skills are even worse than usual. This one-track mind really came into effect when I was skiing on Sunday. The skiing itself went okay – no injuries, a minimum of wipeouts and a gradual curve of improvement – but walking without falling over, standing still and carrying skis all became tasks that I couldn’t competently juggle with the responsibility of not killing myself on the slopes. Really, I felt like a childlike walking disaster when in the presence of the other members of the group.
The day began in ignominy as I failed to master even the simple manual ski lift. Sitting on the horizontal bar rather than letting it drag me, I soon came tumbling off in front of a bumper audience surely mocking me under their collective breath. I gathered up my scattered equipment and tumbled down the slope Bambi-like to rejoin the queue. The embarrassment didn’t stop there as, when I tried traversing the rather simple turnstile for the second time in ten minutes, I managed to somehow get caught straddling the barrier with one leg and ski on one side and a leg and a ski on the other with the metal hurdle stuck on ‘do not pass’. A new crowd formed behind me as I struggled like a cow stuck on barbed wire and I had to awkwardly take the skis off and regroup on the other side with people again taking sniggering side glances in my direction. Eventually I got to the summit of the beginner slope by showing the kind of concentration reserved for a tennis player in a grand slam final or a surgeon performing major surgery on the Pope.
The remainder of the day passed off relatively trouble free except for a pivot that ended in the splits right before a group of teenage girls who shouted some kind of abuse aimed at my permanently damaged genitals. The weather was really good for skiing as the snow pleasantly fell throughout the day and the slopes stayed largely ice-free. Due to my cowardly temperament I never fully enjoy skiing as my mind always stays finely balanced between terror and self preservation and excitement so I believe I always hold back a little and never truly let myself go kamikaze-style.
The main thing I learned from this experience is that you can’t become a professional ski master with one day of skiing every five years.
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