The next big trip - skiing in the Alps

Now that the ice skating craze is over and global warming is back in effect, it’s time to turn our attention to more important things, like vacation! Dennis and I are finalizing our plans for our ski trip in the French Alps. We are leaving next weekend and we’ll be gone for a whole week.

Dennis and I had been looking at various ski places around Europe, but we really had no idea which place would be good. We were asking around for advice and found out that Switzerland is good for hard, technical skiing, Austria is good for after ski partying, and France is good for intermediate skiing with a relaxed family-oriented atmosphere. Not being party animals, we decided that France would be fun. One of my coworkers told me that his dad runs a ski trip and he put us in contact.

The club ski trip is in Le Trois Vallee, which is the largest group of interconnected ski resorts in Europe. We will be staying in a chalet that serves dinner every night prepared by a French Chef. Of course, French wine is also served. Hopefully, it will be as good in real life as it sounds on paper (well, not really paper…).

I bought the airline tickets directly on the KLM website. KLM, like their US partners, has instituted a strict luggage policy. At least the first piece of luggage is free, though. But I had to call to get approval to take the skis. The guy told me that the skis could count as my free luggage as long as I don’t have any other luggage. Is this guy for real? How can anyone go skiing with only skis and no other luggage? To get approval for the skis, he needed to know the exact dimensions and weight of the ski bag. In the end it took three phone calls to the airline to get it straight. The skis are nearly as inconvenient as taking the cat on the plane!

Speaking of the cat, we have asked the neighbor girl to watch Nova while we are gone. When we picked up the cat from the kennel after out trip to Spain, he was very sick. Have you ever seen a cat with a head-cold? He looked miserable and could not even breathe through is nose. He had to breathe through his mouth with his tongue hanging out! Anyway, it will be nice for the cat to be safe at home and the neighbor girl was pretty excited to earn some extra money. It turns out that she’s an experienced cat-sitter, too. She and her Mom will come over this weekend to see where we keep the cat food and stuff. My next chore (yes, writing the blog is actually procrastination for other chores) is to write the care instructions for the cat in English and in Dutch. The girl does not speak English although her Mom does and could translate. But writing the directions in Dutch will be good practice for me. I’ll get one of my coworkers to correct all my mistakes!

I learned a bit more Dutch this week at work. We were talking about hair styles. One lady was talking about her “pony” but she was pointing to her bangs. I said that in the US, a “pony” would be a ponytail and I pulled my hair back to show her. She said, yes that’s a ponytail, but ponies also have hair on their forehead, as in a forelock. In England, they call bangs a fringe. I think the word fringe is much more descriptive than bangs or pony. Does anyone know why Americans use the word bangs?