I’ve made it back from Switzerland; unfortunately, not quite in one piece. Up until approximately 4:30pm on the last day everything was going swimmingly. The snow had been outrageously good for most of the week, the resort had some awesome backcountry skiing and I was with a somewhat legendary crowd of people.
The only scar on the landscape was the price of booze. I swear someone who set up a shack in Villars selling beer and vodka at vaguely reasonable prices would make a fortune. Regardless, I managed to remove the scar from the landscape and place it attractively on my right eyebrow. I was flying through an absolutely bollocks stretch of powder, which had crusted and turned into snowballs. My right ski collided with a particularly large and resilient one and, fuck knows how, fired itself tip first into my goggles. I went, and stayed, down like the proverbial sack of shit. Luckily, I had some great people around me to pick up the pieces, patch me up and keep the morale high. An hour and a half later I was sitting in the Villars MediCentre with Max. Fifteen minutes after that I was the proud owner of seven stitches, a lump the size of a golf ball and a bill for 316 CHF. If there are any skint doctors out there I humbly suggest packing up and emigrating to sunny Switzerland.
I’m back on home turf now with a nice shiner and a lot of stories. It was definitely one of the best ski trips I’ve been on. I’m leaving for the US on Thursday to start my teaching placement and travelling. All that’s left to figure out is who the hell’s going to take these stitches out before I go! I should probably do some packing as well.
I’m going to be a bit of pain in the arse to contact this year. I apologise in advance. I’m not going to be using my mobile except in absolute emergencies. Until March I’ll have my laptop so I can keep in touch via email, but after that it may well be very patchy!
Cool Runnings,
Olly