After seven hours on the coach, all 41 of us arrived at Dover. We were boarding a ferry to Calle where we would spend another 16 hours on the coach to reach Saalbach, Austria. It was 5 p.m, and everyone was ready to stretch their legs. It was strange at first on the ferry, almost everyone spoke French (exept for the other schools that were going to Austria). Just to fit in, I decided to sing a French Placebo song, while my friends were shouting "Not Placebo again Marni?!" at me.
We reached Calle after an hour, and we were back on the bus.After watching a few DVD's and stopping off at a few Burger Kings, we all fell asleep. I asked my English teacher if she could wake me up as we were passing through Luxembourg, because, I'd allways wanted my picture taken there, but she forgot. Many people woke up early the next morning with pen all over their faces or shaven eyebrows, as people stared at them.
We stopped at a cafe to have breakfast. It was weird because you had to pay to go to the toilet!
When we finally reached Saalbach, everyone was tired, and needed a shower. I was surprised, because there was hardly no snow there. Saalbach is a strange combination, there are many shops there, but along with that, they have random ponys by the roadside ect. The hotel was quite small.
.
.
We were staying in Saalbach for 9 days, so we all were obviously going to have full, heavy bags, wich we had to heave up four flights of stairs up to our rooms. The rooms were quite small, with shared balconys. After a shower and a change of clothes, we were called down to tea. One word of advice : If you ever feel the need to try Austrian food, don't. Just don't. For a starter we had soup (so called). It was baisically hot water in a bowl, with a chiken flavoured oxo cube, herbs floating on the top, strange noodles at the bottom, and grease bubbles. Everyones reaction to the food was priceless!!
6:45 Sunday morning, we were awoken by the teachers knocking on the door, telling us to get ready for breakfast in half an hour. A girl seriously does need more time than that in the morning. Most of my mornings in hotel were spent on my bed saying "I really should get up now." Breakfast consisted of bread, salami, or if you felt really adventerous, some corn flakes that had been open for a year with cream. I didn't eat most mornings. We also had to make ourselves paked lunches in the mornings, for when we were on the slopes.
We reached the schiskule (yes, thats how they spell it) at 8:30 every morning, to have our ski boots and skii's fitted. After that we would go up the stairs to the skii lift. Walking in skii boots was difficult at first, I'm sure they put the stairs there, just so the more experienced skiiers could laugh at the beginners and feel better about themselves!
.
I remember seeing a slope for the first time when we reached top station, and told myself "Oh my god, I'm never gonna be able to skii down there."
We all got into our groupes, with our skii teacher (Matier, or Mateias) we just called him Mat. He took us down a really small slope, it was baisically an inch of a slant, and I still managed to slide down it, fall into a ditch and smash into a fence. It took ten minuets for someone to notice I was gone! We then practiced turning, and I kept on hitting the posts over while trying to go round them, and every one fell right at the end, because we wern't confident enough to go around the bump of snow, instead of through it! Eating food wasn't much easier. Everyone is expected to be tired after three hours of skiing, so why make it harder by putting two flights of stairs up to the restaurant? And why put slippery tile on the floor where everyone can fall over in there skii boots? Remembering this was a restaurant specially built for skiiers.
It wasn't long before everyone realised there was such things as chips in Austria. But seriously, after 4 days solid of eating water, you really appreciated a plate of chips. By the third day, we were skiing down massive slopes no problem. It was fantastic! Apart from the fact that Mat kept on calling me 'Mony', and his most used sentence was "Mony don't stress, don't worry, your not going to die". But teachers are strange, school teachers I mean. We had been skiing five hours a day, everyone compleatly shatterd by the time skiing was finished, but they still had some extra activity to do, such as go to Hinterglemm for two hours while we were still in opur skii gear, all sweaty in the boiling sun. It wasn't cold in the slightest there. Quite a lot of people got sun-stroke. We were followed continuously by a little year 7 girl all holiday, Sioned. But she was our life line, as she was the only person we knew who could speak German. She orderd all our food for us and helped us out the entire holiday. Every day came and went.Everyday after skiing, we had to go back to the hotel. The place were time stands still and the place where it's a sin to ask for still water.
Although I fell over many times on the easy slopes on the first and second days, I as fine on the harder slopes. I did happen to come last in the race, but only because I got my ski stuck on a pole near the start line OK?!?!
On this picture here, we skiied all the way down the slope and it took us 15 minuets to get to the bottom. So all in all it was a fantastic trip, but it was a releif to be back on the ferry. Me and my friend Emily, orderd all of our food in French, because we were so happy we understood the language!!
So what time did it all finish then? I wasn't the first to leave by any means and us pensioners actually managed to outlast some half our age (I won't metion any names, Emma) - and what about all that lovely food? Did it get eaten in the end? I know Neil was eyeing up the leftovers. The tiler's butty box will be overflowing this week.
I was also impressed to see one of the country's leading music critics in attendance...
