The Adventures of Team Parker

So it’s been ages since the day so my memory might be going a bit shaky. Also, we pretty much didn’t take any pictures on this day because I forgot to take my camera with me in the morning. Let’s see…

We got up early and had breakfast. I tried the Bircher Muesli and I must say, it was divine! I didn’t try it before coz I thought it looked a bit sludgey and gross but actually, it was really good. Here’s a pic that I took the next day. I’ve actually decided to try to make my own Bircher Muesli when I get to the US or back to SA. It’s basically oats soaked in lemon juice overnight. Then you add yoghurt, apples, nuts, and mixed berries to it. It is yummy! Anyway, after half a bowl of that, I was stuffed.

At breakfast we discovered that the hooting that had awoken Sameer at one in the morning was actually Brett, who had lost his keys and couldn’t get into the hotel. He ended up sleeping in his car. It was so cold, he had to wake up every now and again to drive around and get the heating going, then park off and go back to sleep again. Brett had been so drunk the night before that he couldn’t find the hotel, had gotten lost, then got tired lugging his skis everywhere and decided to hide his skis behind a tree along the way. Later on, he was picked up by a pair of Scandinavian girls, who he’d shared a taxi with, and they’d managed to get him back to the right hotel. Of course, this was before he realized that he’d lost his keys.

After breakfast, Brett went to go find his skis and we later found out that he never found them! I think one day soon, some lucky Davos resident is going to be taking a stroll through the town and see a glint of red sticking out from behind a tree, and find a pair of skis.

Anyway, the previous day we discovered that you could leave your skis and shoes at the ski rental place near the Jakobshorn slope where we were skiing in the afternoon, that way you don’t have to lug them all the way back to the hotel in your uncomfortable ski boots. So this morning, we wore our sneakers and took a leisurely stroll to the rental place to collect our things. Patrick and Florence had also recommended that we take some lessons, as we weren’t doing so good. So we went to find out about that. The first place we went to – the Top Secret Ski School – wanted to charge us about 200 Euro for the day. We decided to nix that idea and instead just bought some thick, woolly ski socks for me. They were expensive but at least my horribly painful blisters were soothed slightly.

Then we trudged up to the restauranty thingy near the slope we were on, to the Davos ski school there. They said we could have an all day lesson for 60 Euro each, which was so much more reasonable, so we did that. The group we were joining had already left so we had to run or at least hobble off to the next little slope, which was near the kindergarden ski school.

We got there and Bedilia, the woman we were supposed to join up with, said we should rather join the more beginner group. So we joined up with an instructor called Yann. No picture him — tall, skinny, pale, with a light blond fuzz on his jaw, wearing blue reflective sunglasses and the blue and yellow Davos ski school uniform. He was great. Didn’t say much but somehow managed to get you to do what you needed to. So he’d demonstrate what he wanted, go to the bottom of the slope and watch you come down. If you weren’t doing something right he’d say “Try not to cross your skis. Lean out like this, and push your heal out, like this” and he’d demonstrate. The one funny thing he told me was “Stand up straight. Not like an old lady sitting down.” If I ever get the videos uploaded you’ll be able to see me doing my little “old lady sitting down” move. But if you did something right, he would say “Ja, dis is goot!”

Anyway, we spent the whole day there, except for a short lunch break with the guys further up the mountain. We went to a restaurant just a bit down from the Panorama, which we’d been to the previous day. I didn’t get any pictures there, but it was lovely. (Here’s a picture I took the previous day from the Panorama’s observation deck.) There were deck chairs along one end with people taking in the view, an outside area with big wooden tables and benches and then the indoor area. They have this cool thing where you enter the building in go into a little hallway that has heavy leather curtains that are lined with wool. This keeps the chill out of the building when people come in and out. This was where we first saw a bit of snow. It was very light, almost non existent, just the occasional flake coming down. You couldn’t actually even examine the flakes because they melted as soon as they touched something.

Then we went back to the ski school for the rest of our lessons. By the end of the day we had both made so much progress and we felt really excited about trying out our moves the next day. It was really quite cool to see how all those tiny things that Yann had told us throughout the day added up. Now we could actually stop and turn at will. He actually told us that if we come back the next day, we should join Bedelia’s group, which was more advanced.

We went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. We went to a place called Pot Au Feu, a lovely restaurant which for some reason was decorated entirely with paintings of sheep and little stuffed bunnies. We had fondue for dinner. No starters or side dishes required, just fondue. They told us it’s not really traditional to have anything else with your fondue because it is so rich and filling. They brought the fondue to us in a large enamel pan that was placed over a flame and shared between four or five people.

Here’s a picture Sameer’s classmate Lauren took of the fondue. We dipped little cubes of bread into it. After about six cubes, I felt a little ill. It was cheesy, very cheesy. It was so rich that I couldn’t eat anything else, not even dessert. A cup of coffee was all I could manage. Sameer’s classmate Chris (who they called Swiss Chris, as there was another Chris in their class as well) said that fondue and raclett, which is a similar type of dish eaten with potato, are great Swiss dishes but people tend not to cook them at home anymore because once you make a fondue or raclett in your house, you never quite get the smell out. Yes people, real fondue is made with very smelly cheeses! The next morning when I got to breakfast, I was going to have a slice of bread with cheese. I took one bite and decided to switch back to my Bircher Muesli. I think my sense of smell and taste for cheese had been heightened the fondue and I just couldn’t do it.

Anyway, after dinner people started tasting the cherry schnapps and the cherry spirits and drinking “soup shots”, which was basically left over meat fondue sauce, which some of the other people had had for dinner, mixed with equal amounts of sherry. Some of the heavier drinkers were totally sozzled. When the bill came Sameer and I were like “Wow. Thank god we don’t drink alcohol.” Our bill was about half of everyone elses. I can’t imagine how that kind of drinking can be sustainable, not just from a “my liver is dying” point of view but also from a financial point of view. Anyway, after that Sameer and I went back to the hotel and everyone else went off to another bar.

We fell asleep almost immediately, we were that tired. And it was the deep sleep of the truely done in. Suddenly, there was a pounding on our door. I got up out of my sleep wondering what drunken reveller was knocking on my door. I looked at my cell phone and saw that it was 2am. Sameer went to get the door. He opened it and found Patrick and Florence shouting “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” I have never lunged out of bed as quickly as I did that night. By the time Sameer closed the door and came across the room, I’d already opened the door and was leaning out the balcony looking into the sky for the snow. I couldn’t see it at first because it was so dark. But then I looked to where the street lights were and I saw it. Snow, falling like rain. Then we looked around and realized that everything — trees, cars, roofs – was covered in a fine layer of powdery snow. We watched it snow until we got too cold to stand outside then went back to bed. Florence was right, when it snows, the world sounds very far away.