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Published: January 15th 2017
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Zieleniec
See how steep and icy that baby slope is! I must be very brave. At least as brave as the 3 year olds I had for company. You may have noticed if you have seen many of my previous blogs that hot weather features in most of them. You may also have noticed that many of my trips take place during the European winter as I head south seeking sunshine and warmth. It should be no surprise then to discover that I had never been skiing before. I love mountains, but the thought of being in them when it was freezing, along with loads of other people in fluorescent clothes, wasn’t too appealing. I have often thought that skiing would be the most difficult sport to explain to aliens (except maybe golf). “You mean you get ferried up the hill, just to slide back down again? And then you repeat that all day?” Even the word “skiing” is a bit sinister. No word should have a double “i”, should it?
Well, blow me down with a snowflake, turns out skiing is actually pretty good. No, it isn’t. It’s either frustrating and awful till you get it, then it’s loads of fun. There is no in between.
How did this all come about? I was invited by my girlfriend to go skiing with her and her family
for new year. Therefore, I would be embarrassing myself falling over on the baby slope in front of her family who I would be meeting for the first time. Being Polish they have all skied since before they could walk. Being from Yorkshire I had always seen skiing as something posh people do. How could I refuse? I don’t actually remember refusal being an option. I was flattered to be invited then told I had about ten minutes to make a decision as her mum wanted to book the last remaining rooms (it was only booked in December).
I arrived at Wrocław airport at 3pm. After getting through the airport I was picked up and driven 2-hours into the mountains stopping for a bit of food on the way. Bags were dropped at the hotel and I had 20-mintes to get changed into borrowed ski gear before another 30-minute drive up the ski resort where I immediately had my first 2‑hour skiing lesson on a floodlit slope from 7 to 9pm.
The instructor’s English wasn’t great but it was good enough; “very well David, very well”. And he must be a very well teacher because by the end
of the first lesson I was already skiing parallel rather than just plough to stop and turn (apparently, that’s good). So, I finished lesson one pretty smug. Hobbling into a bar (no one told me what a nightmare ski boots are to walk in) to enjoy a mulled wine and some dumplings, suddenly skiing seemed to make sense.
Then the next day came. It was lunchtime and the baby slope was full of nippers. I was never afraid of hurting myself but was terrified of taking one of them out. I had another lesson and frustratingly seemed worse than the day before. The teacher had me weaving down holding a long pair of poles that she had the other end of. This went very well and I was getting a bit fed up of repeating the stick thing though when we eventually gave them up it was revealed that I couldn’t turn right on my own. Turning left was no problem but when I tried to turn right, my head and body would turn but my skis led me straight on, on collision course with the nearest four-year-old. A mulled wine break was called for.
I had another
go in the evening, this time with Magdalena following telling me what I was doing wrong. We were on a longer slope so if/when I mucked up I had time to immediately try and rectify my technique without having to wait till I got to the top again up the baby conveyor belt. I must admit that when my lift pass told me I still had an hour and a half left on it, I thought there was no chance I could last that long – it was getting pretty tedious mucking up all the time. With 15-mintes to go, I got it. Suddenly I understood why people go skiing.
Next day I was rubbish again. Frustratingly (I use that word a lot when discussing learning to ski), it took an hour to get to the stage I was at the day before. Prior to that I had developed a new weird habit of clicking the back of my skis together when I turned as if I was deliberately trying to clap out a tune according to jeering onlookers. But the last hour was great. I dared to go down the bigger longer steeper slopes and could even daydream
Torun
Most famous for its gingerbread. as I weaved down the hill, seemingly at lightning speed – until a little kid whizzed past and put me in my place.
Other than that, I had a little look around Poland. It’s nice. I’d been here before in pre-blogging days but only to Krakow. And the food was surprisingly good. Don’t ask me to pronounce the treats that we were fed on New Year’s Eve, which included a raw meat and raw egg combination and a gravity-defying chicken soup jelly in a cube. All were delicious.
Will I ski again? Probably. And next time I won’t have the same fear of ski lifts that I did before the Poland trip. That is what worried me the most but in fact the lifts were fine; it was actually skiing that was the tricky part. The closest ski “resorts” in Scotland are a 4-hour drive away and when you tot up costs for petrol, accommodation, lift passes, ski and boot rental, I’d be better off going back to Poland!
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