I learned to ski on the Alpine slopes when I was a child. In my home country far away, the ski area was small and bad weather meant that it was not open for long at a time. We lived in Switzerland from 1979 to 1980 and on weekends in the winter we went skiing, like most other people in Switzerland in those years. There was not a great deal of entertainment available at this time, considering all the options today. This meant that we went skiing on the weekends as a family, but we did not get enough acquainted with skiing, me, my sister Hekla, mom and dad. Today I ski less than I used to, but I do go with my wife and our boys, mainly to make sure that nothing happens to them.
To me, ski culture is a certain smell that consists of 4 elements, i.e. the smell of hot chocolate, french fries, cigarette smoke and sweat. Add in the noise from the people, and the old skiing vibe is perfectly restored.
The year is 1979 and I’m skiing with Hekla and my mom and dad in the Alps. We are driving in a light green Audi 80, my dad’s car and the skis are stored on top of the car. We are looking forward to going skiing even though we can hardly ski. When we arrived, it was packed with people and kids skiing, and trying to get up the mountain. We met up with old local family friend, he was a doctor and a friend of my dad from the old days. He taught us how to ski as well as he could, and then we headed up to the ski lifts. We chose a fun route high up in the mountains so we could ski down for a long time. We took the lift at the top of the mountain and there weren’t many skiers at all, which was great. However, it turned out shortly after and our friend and ski instructor, maybe should have taught us about the directions in the mountain as well, especially what the colors on the ski slopes meant. We knew nothing about any of this and chose this fun ski route marked with a simple black color. When we got to the top, my sister Hekla and I jumped out of the lift and wanted to start skiing. Mom and Dad told us to wait a bit, because they wanted to look around a bit. They quickly realized that something was wrong here. There were very few people up the mountain and the ski track was very steep and dangerous. It was obviously the most difficult track in the area and difficult to ski down except for the most experienced skiers, let alone for two kids under 10 years old who were just starting to learn to ski. My sister Hekla was determined and always knew what she wanted. She said she wasn’t going to hang around here all day and started skiing down. I didn’t intend to be any lesser man than her and skied straight after her down a ridiculously steep slope. We kids skied down to the hill and kept going, while mom and dad yelled at us to stop immediately and walk back. Hekla and I didn’t realize that our lives were in serious danger there in the mountain. We continued skiing down the cliff and Mom and Dad chased us with difficulty, terrified that we would be badly injured or even die. My mom describes it as the longest downhill skiing trip she’s ever done in her life, and my mom is 91 years old. We all managed to ski down eventually without getting into an accident and mom and dad were not happy with us kids. After this we learned well about the colors in the mountain, black, red and blue.
