Skiing - So long boxmeer and hello sweden

Ski trip – Austria. - Sorry for the massive slab of text

I have delayed writing this for a couple of reasons.

We hadn’t been doing a lot in old boxmeer – apart from watching movies and the odd postal package home. But my blog is upto the point where we are at the snow.

We drove the car upto the mountain base, grabbed the bus for the 500m walk upto the gondola and then past the two lift stations to the place where we hire our gear. (mark didn’t need to hire his as he carried his snowboard from Canada to Holland – Austria) The first thing we noticed (apart from that it was horribly busy and that there wasn’t a lot of snow was that the people in the (Stubai Glacier Intersport hire gear sport shop cheap snowboard ski – added keywords for google searches) shop were terribly terribly rude. Grabbing receipts, shouting orders, general bossiness was just purely uncalled for. Andrew didn’t know how his snowboard bindings were to be set up, and the guy rolled his eyes and then snatched the board, and set it up without any questions. Basically – customer service = -5.

We got our gear (I added a helmet) and took off on a few basic downhill runs, the runs that were going slightly downhill to start. I got a board given to me that was far smaller than mine at home, which made it quite difficult to start with (especially because the snow was essentially ice) and it hurts a lot when you fall over.  I changed it much to the annoyance of the people working at Intersport. The annoying that was that Andrew wasn’t as good as we were, which wasn’t his fault, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying when you have to keep waiting for him. In his defense, he improved a lot towards the end and was keeping up if we stopped to try jumps and stuff.

We got home after going to the supermarket which wasn’t horribly overpriced to our surprise, but what was surprising was that there was no mince. So spaghetti bolognaise turned into spaghetti, with chopped up sausages and tomato mix. It was.. ok.

The accommodation that we had was good, we stayed in a self contained unit which had cooking facilities that were quite good at first glance. Anyway, the next day was not so good. Dealing with a few work issues and then not really wanting to go up and fall over on ice put a dampener on most of my morning. Also having to deal with rude Austrian/german people. It was ridiculous, opening doors for people and not getting at least an acknowledgment from them was ok at first, but after the 10^th time my patience was getting quite strained. Lets say – very strained. Add to that the fact that the line at the resort to get onto the lifts was huge 5 minute wait at the bottom…
In the afternoon though the slope started to soften up, people started leaving and Andrew went down so mark and I could fly down the mountain as fast as we could and try out jumps by ourselves. Nothing like speed and adrenaline to get you back in a good mood.  Cooked tea and early bedtime.

The next day Andrew didn’t want to get out of bed – I think it was a double factor of staying up to late (we were in bed early, but he stays/stayed up late watching movies/playing games, so when he wakes up in the morning, he is crazy tired. He did have a bad fall late in the day the day before though.

So Mark and I took off to the slopes by ourselves, we were treated to an almost empty mountain. That isn’t exactly true, but it was far less crowded than the weekend. Even tried out our crappy german to some of the people on the ski lift with us, who – to my amazement, talked to us for a

while. Nice…
The day was filled with jumps, fast downhills, crashes, self-catered lunches and more boarding than in the last two days put together. Good day. On the way down I got yelled at by a stupid german for not going down the hill fast enough at the end of the day, which was so annoying. Stupid Germans, even when I told him in German that I didn’t understand he kept yelling to our amusement.

The last day for boarding was much like the first two, except we had got Andrew to go down the hill faster, and there was still not that many people on the hill (well 3000m hill ;)  We found a few trails that had nice jumps on them, and although we are not very good at all, it feels like we are good!

That fourth day we thought that we had to go home, so we had already packed and had the car ready to go, so we were planning on leaving about 2pm to make it home before midnight. We then realised about 1pm that we had another night at the accommodation.  All good, we skied till late, and then headed back after some not so great pizza’s we headed off to sleep again. The next morning we awoke to someone (the person that greeted us had gone out) who was asking us to pay 72 euro extra! We knew that we had to pay 30 euro for a cleaning fee, but the person (the owner we found out later) wanted us to pay tax (even though on our invoice it clearly states “TAX INCLUDED”) as well as an extra 10 euro for cleaning as well as a wifi fee (not specified when we asked for it, or written anywhere.) So mark went downstairs to talk to someone about it, and show them the invoice, this other women then comes up yelling about how we owe her money and was really embarrassing herself and her company. It was ridiculous. Telling us that our room was a disgrace (which just had clothes on the floor) and needed the extra money for cleaning. To put it frankly, the women was rude, obnoxious, and just personified the majority of Austrians that we had met that week. The name of the place was “BELLIS HUIS” (Bellies huis review, reviews, stubai accommodation). Don’t go there. Teach them a lesson for being crazily rude to customers.

I wanted to drive home, as it would be my last drive of the car on our holiday, and so I set off driving from Austria across Germany to boxmeer. We left about 9.30 and arrived about 7.30.

Back in boxmeer.

So arriving in boxmeer for the last time. The place that was my home for about 4 months, and then a place to come back home after we traveled for months on end. Our friends were there, and it was a place to relax and home in Europe. We spent the first day not doing a lot – movie watching and I organised what I was going to send home, which was quite easy actually. Packing on the other hand was annoying.

The next day was cooking dinner for Wouter day – a thankyou for having us as well as a repayment for the many dinners that he cooked for us. I really enjoyed cooking there, and made chicken casserole and chocolate ripple cake for dessert. I spent the morning doing some minor shopping, post office walking around, and communicated in my best Dutch to get by (quite easily really – although lets not get carried away here – my dutch is terrible). Furthermore – so is my language of all European countries! The night went well, spending time talking to Wouter was nice. He has helped us so much with everything, posting things, with food, with setting up our accommodation,  helping me with an interview at a school, lent us his car, translated documents, helped us with city hall and appointments, bought phone credit for me when I was away, picked us up from the airport and bought us a welcome meal, lent us his bike, let us store things in his apartment, let us bring our countless laundry to his house smelling and let us use his washing machine. I could go on, but he has helped us so much and has been such a good and kind friend to us and me more personally, having long and amusing chats till late in the night. The most disappointing thing is that I didn’t get to say goodbye properly.  **, If you do happen to be still following this Wouter, thank you again, and I hope that you have enjoyed my stay as much as I have. You have helped me and allowed me to see Europe, and hopefully the guys took a little bit away from my visit. Without your help, I wouldn’t have been able to see and do what I have.

The night after having dinner at wouters, we rode our bikes to the hockey club to see them at training and to see them before I left. The night was fun, we danced, went out – and caught up with most people before I left. It was not the easiest thing to do – not knowing if you will ever see people who you have had such a good time with and played with, as well as making some very good friends. I wanted to stay, but I knew that sooner or later I had to go. We got home at about 5am, and leaving to Sweden at 16.00 that day.

I woke up to go and see Wouter a little late (about 10) but I think he must have already left, which was so disappointing, it made it easier in a way – but I still wanted to say goodbye.

Last minute packing of my bags (ready for Andrew to drop off at the airport) and then a goodbye to bongo who has helped us out so much – we basically took over his house for a long time(about 3 weeks in total) – not to mention borrowing his GPS after the debacle from NAVMAN. (Don’t buy a navman for overseas) That was about 6 months that we borrowed it for.  Our trip with him to Norway is one I will remember for a long time.

The second last part of my trip then started with Andrew dropping mark and I at the airport and we flew to Stockholm (or nykoping for ryan air) which was quite a peaceful and smooth flight. We only waited about 10 minutes at the airport before we saw tuscani – who we were crashing with for the night. It was really nice again seeing someone that was so friendly and had many stories and feelings that correlated with ours.  Silvia then drove us the 30 minutes back to her house and then we had dinner which consisted of Chicken wings, rice, salad and curry paste – nice and tasty. We also saw old johnny – who still hasn’t really opened up, although he has upped his sentence count to 3 or 4 – much higher than his .09 on my last visit. He almost talked more than funky! (kidding haha). We were so tired, a) from the night before, b) you always seem to be more tired after flying I think. We talked and chatted until 11ish but didn’t end up going to sleep until well past 12 – closer to 1am. I barely had time to lie down before I was asleep. The next day Tuscani and Silvia were going to church to sing in the choir, so we went along – it did mean an early get up though. So at 8.30ish we got up and had breakfast – nicely prepared by someone (Silva or Tus – I didn’t ask) but I was grateful (yogurt and muesli apparently does work J )  We then headed off to the next town over (I think) and sat in a house opposite for a little bit while they were practicing – came for coffee and then went back in for mass. I went in a little later than mark but it was still interesting, being able not to understand anything at all didn’t really matter. The choir was actually quite good. We then left after mass finished, had some nice coffee and Swedish cake – they were all celebrating advent. (I don’t know if I used it correctly then) We then drove back to their house for lunch. It was an amazing lunch – we had salmon.. and wow. It was amazing.  We felt so welcome in her house, and although we left only after 1 night, I can appreciate why Tuscani feels sad about leaving. I don’t know what her other family was like, but if they were similar then she has been very lucky.

We then got driven to the train station to catch a train to catch a train (amusingly enough). A nice warm and happy/sad goodbye was had and then on we went to Stockholm. We arrived after about an hour from nykoping (booked online) and then tried to find a a) a toilet b) a supermarket. Thankfully the people in Stockholm were very nice, and directed us to a supermarket – everyone we asked was helpful. (5 people lol) but food was bought for our 20 hour train ride, and we were so stuffed from carrying our bags around we piled them into the trolley and then went about buying enough that would have only fit into a basket – but our trolley was overflowing! The looks we got were amusing, but we didn’t care! I would like to comment about the bread in Europe. It sucks. Especially in Sweden, it is hard and can be extremely dry at times. (most times it is a little dry). So we bought a couple of sweet pull aparts instead, which at least have some moisture built/baked into them. We got back to the train, and I started writing this. – Annoyingly there is no internet on this train, so I won’t get to update this for a while – but we go with 3 things that are hopeful.

1)      The dogsledding is great and there is enough snow to hold a sled and a snowmobile.

2)      The food and accommodation that we have is nice and comfortable.

3)      We see the northern lights.

It is by far the most expensive part of the trip, but I don’t think that I will be back in Sweden any time in the next.. well at least 2 years at least, but more likely a lot longer than that.