Zermatt

The Matterhorn





Electric cars ensure that the air is not just cold, but clear.



Zermatt is a playground for the rich. This huge poster was one of many that we saw while waiting in lift lines, or above ski runs. Most posters advertised expensive jewelry and watches. We blended in just fine, even though we were mostly a group of teachers, designers, and IT administrators. Everyone looks the same bundled up in snow outfits from head to toe. But sometimes I did feel like I was air-dropped on to another planet. It was a true escape from Amsterdam, in both scenery and spirit.



Another example of conspicuous consumption. This champagne bar is off one of the narrow ski runs that feed back down from the main trails into Zermatt. A perfect stop for a PRE-apres-ski drink. The small wooden deck benches were draped with animal skins, and they served the champagne in real glasses, not plastic, which you would expect when each glass sets you back 12 wet and wrinkled euros.

The ski-in, ski-out bars are among the best features of Zermatt. Besides the champagne bar, we stamped into a tiny two story medieval-looking hut that specialized in gluh wine. There was another bar that reminded me of grass-roofed gazebos that you find in the tropics. And a set of igloos to which we hiked for 10 minutes through the snow from the train station to have fondue dinner.



In the Iglu-Dorf: before dinner, we were given a tour of the hotel rooms. The hot tub looked nice, but everything else looked cold, especially the toilet.






My favorite photo from the whole trip.

Les Menuires

We found some great off-piste runs in Meribel, even though it hadn't snowed in a few days.



Les Menuires through rose-colored goggles!



I couldn't stop laughing when we did this as a group activity one night -- about 40 of us, taking off at once, and careening into side walls and each other.



Hahahahahahaha!



My fantastic flatmates: Alex, Brian, and JJ.



What I love about this photo: that the shower rod was rigged with a broomstick (before that, every time we showered, the water went everywhere) and that Brian actually brought a brand-new shower curtain with him on a snowboarding trip. Zomaar. So random.



WRONG! This French breakfast treat was in the cupboard of our flat when we arrived. It seemed to go along perfectly with the motto for the week: "Too much sick for your head." We finally gave it a try on the 4th or 5th day of the trip; turns out that it tastes like a very rich thick hot chocolate.



And a few other good memories of Les Menuires (among many): fresh bread and croissants every morning, the picnic table jam, talking about music and Dutch/American culture, "wil jij een ei?", and learning that goggles in Dutch is "google" and singular as in "my google is fogged".

Porte Puymorens

We did a quick trip to Porte Puymorens in the French Pyrenees for my birthday, by flying into Barcelona and renting a car (though later we found out that flying into Toulouse would have been easier).


Porte Puymorens is surprisingly great for snowboarders after a fresh dump of snow. Short runs, but it doesn't take much effort to hit run after run of freshies. And there was a rock field that provided endless opportunities to do small jumps and spins along the way.

Our quirky hotel was ski-in, ski-out, but hardly what you'd call luxurious. It looked like every stick was built by hand, including all the furniture inside. There was an old microwave oven built next to the main entrance, which the hotel used for collecting mail. The town below offered no nightlife, so we spent every night eating dinner at the hotel restaurant and then shooting a few games of billiards in the hotel bar.




The boys and I spent half of our lunch break trying to figure out how to take a photo with all of our reflections appearing in my friend's ski goggles.


The other thing I remember vividly about this trip is the Sandwich American. It was basically a giant steak and french-fry submarine sandwich. Yes, they put the french fries in the sandwich. Once again, I was confronted with the funny ideas Europeans have about Americans!

All in all, a relaxing and fun getaway long weekend.

On Community

I'm stuck at home sick with the flu today, which is so frustrating, because Saturday is the only day that most of the shops are open on the weekends, and it's actually sunny. I consider it a great sacrifice to stay at home, because now that I found out my friend has Sudafed and is willing to deliver it, I could go out and get my errands done without anyone realizing that I am secretly infecting them with my germs. Ugh. But no, I'll be a good citizen, stay indoors, and write in my blog.

Anyway, today I have been thinking about community. Yes. Community.

I'm someone whose mother is Japanese and whose father is Taiwanese, but who was born in the United States and thus grew up mostly only knowing English. I'm someone who went to high school with kids who were predominantly black, Jewish, and Korean. I'm someone who has changed addresses at least 20 times in her life, lived in 8 different states, and now in 2 different countries. I'm someone who has never belonged to any church. In other words, for most of my life, I have never experienced real community. In fact, for most of my life, I've been an outsider, a tourist, an observer, a visitor.

That is one reason I appreciated snowboarding so much. Previously I had only experienced community in small doses -- during freshman year in college, a fall internship in D.C., the summer after college, in graduate school, and during a 4-month internship in Atlanta. Though I made some good friends during these years, these communities were built mostly on proximity and dissolved quickly once its members moved to different locations.

Snowboarding was my first taste of real community after 4 years of living in California (I lived there 8 years in total), and the only time I've experienced community based on a shared passion. Every season a group of us would rent a house in South Lake Tahoe, buy season passes, and then spend most weekends from December through April in the Sierras. It's not as luxe as it sounds. The whole season usually cost me about 1500 dollars, which is not that much more than a week's holiday here in Zermatt. The fun usually began ahead of the season, with gatherings to meet new house members, and with excursions to the latest Warren Miller film, pre-season sales, and Icer Air. Then during the season, there were carpools, group meals, parties, and of course, snowboarding and skiing together on the slopes. You get to know people really well when you spend 4-12 hours in a car with them, and all day riding the lifts with them. There's lots of time for conversation, and you also become familiar with their various little quirks when you share a home with them, just as you become familiar with the quirks of your housemates or live-in significant other. We were all usually quite different from one another, but because we shared a passion for winter sports, often that was enough to bridge our differences. And year after year, the circle of friends and acquaintances grew wider and wider, until spending a day on the mountain was a bit like taking a stroll down Main Street in a small town with all its plusses and minuses, where you are constantly bumping into people you know and where conversations revolve around the latest doings of other people you know.

I didn't really think I would ever experience a similar sense of community here. It's not that I don't appreciate the great things about Amsterdam, such as the pretty canals, the centuries-old buildings, the bike culture, and the legality of a lot of things that I feel should also be legal everywhere in the U.S. I just don't have a strong sense of connection with the majority of people here, however nice they are. We are too different, or maybe I've just lived in California too long. I think there's some truth to the idea that nature can shape your personality. Here, the elements are so harsh. There have been days with hail, rain, snow, and sun appearing in sequence and then starting all over again, the wind blowing each of the weather patterns through the city faster than you can say "mijn godverdomme paraplu is kapot" (my damn umbrella is broken). We're closer to the North Pole than I've ever been in my life, which means that on the longest day of the year (fast approaching on the 21st of December), the sun will rise at 8:48am and set at 4:29pm. By comparison, on the same date, the sun will rise over the Berkeley hills at 7:22am and will set over the Golden Gate Bridge at 4:55pm. Daily life here occurs 5-18 feet below sea level, depending on which internet site you would choose to believe, with most Dutch aware that if the dikes holding back the North Sea were to break, then we would all be swimming in ice cold water and rusted bicycles. And many of the Dutch have also seen Al Gore's movie "The Inconvenient Truth", as it aired on television here a few weeks ago, which showed that if current global warming trends were to continue, many Germans would have beachfront property and most of the Netherlands would be no more. On top of it all, the Netherlands is among the 25 countries with the highest population density in the world; and of those 25 countries, only South Korea and Bangladesh are larger in size.

So it's no wonder that the Dutch are generally stoic, practical, and cynical. They believe in honesty and hard work. Given their lack of natural resources and especially space, they are gifted at making the most of what they have. They, more than any other group I've met, seem to prize the virtue of "keeping it real", and I'm not just saying that because they are generally credited with (or blamed for) inventing reality television. Among their most commonly used expressions are "doe maar gewoon" (just do it in the usual way) or "doe normaal" (be normal). This is quite different from the California way of life, which encourages weirdness...(cough, cough)...I mean, individuality. Great dreamers, entrepreneurs, and inventors come from California. Everyone I knew there had ideas under development, if only in their brain; everyone had a plan for early retirement, even if they were too busy snowboarding, rock climbing, creating puzzle hunts (ex-boyfriend), challenge square dancing (ex-coworker), building an airplane in their garage (ex-housemate) and otherwise indulging in their grand passions, to put it into action. On the other hand, great designers, engineers, and financial wizards (making money from money is probably bred into the population when you come from a small country)come from Amsterdam. To put it in Myers-Briggs terms, I've arrived in a land of mostly ISTJs and I've come from a land of mostly ENTPs.

But back to the idea of community. As I sit here typing and coughing away, I await my friend who has offered to drop off some NyQuil from the other side of town (NyQuil, DayQuil Sudafed, and Extra-Strength Tylenol are all hard-to-get commodities here). Last night, I ordered in some Thai food from www.thuisbezorgd.nl, which I discovered via a tip from another expat friend. The expats here are unbelievably supportive of one another, and there are a lot of us (almost one-third of Amsterdam residents were born outside of the Netherlands). We notify each other when we'll be in the States, so that we can place special orders for things expensive or hard-to-find in the Netherlands (last time, I brought back Halloween costumes and Trader Joe's chai latte powder mix). We care for each other's pets. We lend our couches to other expats in need of temporary housing or to visiting friends of friends. We give each other tips on where to find English-language books and American-style pancakes with crispy bacon and real maple syrup. Via the expat grapevine, I found out how to register to vote overseas and even how to check whether my registration actually went through. On November 4, I went to an all-night election party, where the singing of the American anthem actually brought tears to my eyes for the first time in my life, because I really wished I was back in the States to see Obama elected, but at least I was with fellow Americans who felt the same way. Again, I feel as though I'm part of a close community, held together by our shared experience of being foreigners in a country that let us in, but keeps us at a distance.

So, these are some conclusions after almost 2 years of living here. I've made some sweeping generalities throughout this post, so feel free to comment if your experience was different. And now, maybe I'll take a NyQuil-enhanced nap. It's 3:56pm, the streetlamps will soon be lit, and this ENTP is hoping that she will be well enough to enjoy seeing the Gotan Project tomorrow night.

Boarding and Biking, Part 2

So let’s get to #5 on the list.

This past weekend, my friend had a birthday, and I had the good fortune to be invited along on his birthday weekend. (We later told him that he should celebrate his birthday at least 4 times every year -- that’s how good it was!)

His brilliant idea was to check out Snowworld, which is the biggest of the 4 indoor snowboarding hills in the Netherlands. Did I say ‘hill’? Compared to Snowplanet, it was a resort! (In fact, I found out later that Snowworld is the largest indoor snowboarding center in the world. By contrast, Dubai is third.) We had ski-in, ski-out accommodations right on the ‘mountain’. Once inside, you really could pretend you were in the Alps. The lodge was packed with skiers and snowboarders, bundled up and bootstomping around, because it was still cool in the reception area. There was a fireplace, with a gas fire in it, and comfy chairs around. The wooden beams were decorated with Christmas lights and there were a few Christmas trees scattered here and there as well. The winter sporting goods store was the biggest one I’ve seen so far in Europe. Through the windows overlooking the slopes, you could see people lining up for the 6-person chair lift. On the left-most slope, ski racers were speeding down the slalom run, which was marked with bright orange and blue flags. There was even a mid-mountain ski hut, with a bar and a DJ on Friday nights.

We checked into our 4-star hotel rooms (though my equally snowboard-crazy Dutch colleague later scoffed: “do you know what it takes to get 4 stars in Holland? You get 1 star if you have a swimming pool, 2 stars if there’s a mini-bar...”). Rooms were 75 euros per night for a double, and 100 euros per night for a double with the sofa bed unfolded to squeeze in a third person. The rooms were right out of a design magazine. There was a marble sink, fancy bathroom fixtures, and a sliding glass door that served as the door to the shower if you pushed it to one side and served as the door for the toilet if you pushed it to the other. A giant photo of snow-covered woods was wallpapered above the beds. The comforter was so nice that I may have to buy one for myself. The freebies arranged attractively on the shelf above the sink included q-tips in a fancy box and “Snowworld”-branded shampoo, body lotion, and shower gel.

We were too late to eat dinner at Snowworld (nota bene: the website said ‘apres-ski’ facilities closed at 10pm, but they really closed at 9pm – if there’s any complaint I have about Snowworld, it’s that they were very disorganized when it came to information dissemination, with some employees giving us contradicting information). We ended up instead at a place in downtown Landgraaf called Mykonos Palace. Highly recommended. They serve you a glass of ouzo as soon as you sit down. What more can you ask for? Oh yeah, the food’s good too and reasonably priced. Just make sure you don’t order too much, as we did. The waitstaff were too shy to warn us, but they giggled as much as we did when we had to make room for yet another plate from the kitchen.

The next morning, we got off to a slow start – lingering over the huge buffet breakfast, which was included with our hotel stay -- but it hardly mattered. 4 hours at Snowworld is 25 euros and 8 hours is 30. If you get the package deal, like we did, then you only pay 39 euros for 8 hours plus an all-you-can eat barbeque lunch. The 8 hours is pure piste time. If you leave the piste to go to the restroom or get a snack, the clock stops. Given that the 39 euros also includes rentals, and I already brought all my snowboarding gear, I decided to ski – yes ski! -- for a few hours after lunch.

It was my first time on skis in more than 10 years. People told me that I would notice an immediate difference between shaped (i.e., parabolic) skis and the long straight skis I used when I was in my teens and 20s. But it was too long ago. I didn’t notice a difference. The first run was a bit scary, in fact, as I had to remember to keep my body facing downhill at all times. The opposite of snowboarding. I also didn’t quite remember what to do with my arms and poles, so the poles dragged like a useless set of appendages behind me. But by the fourth run, I was feeling comfortable.

But…I still spent the bulk of the day on my snowboard, because nothing beats that feeling of being one with my board and surfing the snow!

The piste seemed longer than it really was, because there is a bend in it and you can’t see the bottom from the top. There was enough snow that if you fell, it wouldn’t hurt that much. Also, the snow was piled up in some places and thinner in others, just like on a real piste. So it was easy and fun to do little hops and spins along the sides of the slope. The ski lift took you to the top of both a blue and a red slope (for North Americans, the colors in Europe equivalent to green-blue-black are blue-red-black), but unfortunately the red slope was closed for competition. From the lift, you could watch the competition or see the action in the park, which was a decent size, well-designed, and served by its own button lift. After 3 or 4 piste runs, I went to the park to session one of the smaller jumps and made some good progress.

We finished off with a delicious fondue dinner and plenty of wine. I was sad that we only had one day at Snowworld, but I was looking forward to the next day of biking…in a cave!

To be continued…

Boarding and Biking, Part I

I’ve mixed biking and snowboarding five times in my life. Once in France, where after snowboarding all morning on the glacier at the top of the mountain, a group of us rented mountain bikes and biked from the middle of the mountain to the bottom. Well, the others biked. I mostly fell…on…every…single…turn. The next day, I looked like I had fallen into a Willy Wonka factory machine, the one that makes Scrumptelicious Blueberry-Raspberry Delight.

The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th times were all in the Netherlands. The 2nd time was when I biked from my flat to snowboard on the indoor conveyer belt (see earlier post). The 3rd and 4th times were when I biked from my flat to Snowplanet, which is the closet indoor snowboarding hill to Amsterdam. Even though it’s the closest, it’s still 2 ½ hours away by bike. Luckily, the bike ride is mostly pleasant. The path is one that a lot of people take when they are biking to Haarlem. Also, after snowboarding, we only had to bike a half hour from the hill to the train station and take the train back to Amsterdam.

The best thing about Snowplanet is the barbeque they have in the summer. If you get a combo-ticket, it only costs 12 euro. They prepare a generous assortment of meats for you, and you grill it yourself. They also bring you bread, fries, a mixed salad, potato salad, and cole slaw. It’s a real feast. It would almost be worth the drive even without the snowboarding thrown in.

Otherwise, it’s a lame little hill. In my opinion, not even that good for teaching beginners. The conditions are what we in Tahoe would have called ‘dust on crust’. Here it’s even more apt, because the indoor places have sawdust-y snow. Underneath it is – I’m guessing -- either ice or concrete. The temperature is colder than most people expect. They keep it below freezing (-5 or -6 degrees Celcius). There’s no music playing, and they haven’t bothered to do much with the walls and ceilings. So you don’t have the feeling that you are in anything other than a big rectangular freezer.

In the summer, there’s a “fun” park in the middle with 3 or 4 rails and boxes. Useless to me, since I made a promise to myself to stay away from metal a few years ago. Being older now and working in a corporate environment, where I almost already have to whisper that I’m a snowboarder (versus being a skier, which is somehow considered as respectable as playing golf or tennis among upper management – it implies not only that you are strong and athletic, but also that you are an aggressive and powerful risk-taker; it does not imply that you are juvenile, reckless, and arrogant! But okay -- I won’t continue further along this slightly-bitter riff for the moment). In short, I feel as though I can no longer risk coming to work with black eye or a broken tooth.

My reservations about jibbing have not extended to jumping though. That’s something that I can’t give up just yet. Unfortunately, Snowplanet has just three jumps. A small one at the top, which is always un-jumpable because the landing is so icy. A giant one in the middle, which has a gap you could drive a car through and is obviously designed with competitive snowboarders and skiers in mind, and a medium-sized one at the very bottom, which theoretically I could jump, if only I could get enough damned speed. The only way to do that, apparently, is to either attach an engine to my board or jump the giant gap in the middle first, which generates just enough speed to do a pop off the bottom jump.

But I must continue this later this week, as I see now that it is 3:52am, and I shouldn’t continue to indulge my insomnia this way. I’m not sure I can blame it on jet lag anymore, since I came back from the U.S. on Wednesday. It won’t be easy getting Ambien on short notice, because I still haven’t signed up for a GP in Holland. I slept great over the weekend – 9 or 10 hours a night, both nights. Ugh, what happened? Maybe I’ll pick up some espresso beans on the way to the office…

Snowboarding IN Amsterdam

Yes, it's actually possible. You can snowboard within the city limits at Indoor Ski & Squash Watergraafsmeer. Can you believe it took me this long to actually do it? It's only a 25 minute bike ride from my place, it cost 12 Euro to participate in an hour-long group lesson, and they supply all the gear.

But there's a catch (of course there's a catch!) The catch is...there's no snow. The "hill" is a carpeted conveyer belt that is sprayed with stuff to make it slippery.

Check out the photo. There were six of us snowboarding in this tiny space at once!

Our instructor started by putting long metal bars down, and then had 3 of us stand behind the front bar and 3 behind the back bar, all in what he called "gliding" position, as if we were pointing straight downhill. He pressed a big black button on the side and suddenly the ground started to move away underneath us.

Gradually, after we all got used to the idea that we could stand upright while the conveyer belt was running, we did exercises to learn how to slow down on the mountain. In other words, we turned the board so that it was perpendicular to the slope to simulate a heel-side stop. We did the same thing facing uphill to simulate a toe-side stop. Next we did some toe-edge and heel-edge turns, but we could only angle the board enough to move from one end of the bar to the other. Then some of us were able to let go of the bar, and do the falling leaf in place. The final part of the lesson -- strictly for those of us who already knew how to snowboard -- was to move the top bar further back and have us do linked turns from one bar down to the next.

The instructor warned us that even seasoned snowboarders would have trouble at first. He wasn't kidding. 12 of us participated altogether, and 9 were complete beginners. Even the three of us who had been snowboarding for 7 years or more fell on our knees, butts, and backs a few times.

One main difference was, the belt didn't slow down or stop, so you never really got the feeling of how being perpendicular would actually slow you down. Also, it was very weird to be in such a constricted space with a metal bar at waist-level and two other people on either side. On a snowy hill with that kind of slope I wouldn't normally be afraid of falling, but with the conveyer belt constantly going, you had to trust the instructor to stop it before you hit the back wall.

That said, I'd say it was a fantastic way for beginners to learn the body movement required for snowboarding. It was cheap, it wasn't cold, we didn't have to drive or fly for hours to get there, and the bar was literally three steps away from the hill. And of course, this being Amsterdam, the apres-ski was especially good! We shared a few bottles of wine and pasta at an Italian restaurant in Rembrandtplein and then mega-strong cocktails upstairs at Harry's Bar. Just like after any other day on the slopes, we talked about the best falls of the day and our future snowboarding trips. We'll probably hit a few of the other indoor slopes in the Netherlands (there are 4!) within the next few months so that the beginners will have a chance to give it a try on real snow. Having never been to one of these indoor snow domes, I'm really curious about what they are like. So watch this space for more about indoor boarding in the near future...

What's French for "whiplash"?

In the summer of 2005, I parted with 100,000 Northwest frequent flyer miles in order to attend McNab Snowboarding Summer Camp at Les Deux Alpes, a glacier in the French Alps. It was such a great experience that I knew I'd do it again once I moved to Europe.

I just came back from my second trip to Les Deux Alpes (and second post-McNab side trip to Lyon), and once again, thoroughly enjoyed my holiday, though it meant consuming half the box of ibuprofen I'd bought at the start. 6 days of repeatedly throwing oneself off a jump in a desperate bid to land a cool trick is a joyous yet painful experience.

Thanks to the marvelous coaches at McNab (including Jenny Jones, who might well turn up as one of the few non-American women invited to the X-Games this year), I'm now nailing frontside 180s. Sadly though I seem to have mysteriously lost my ability to perform switch 180s -- which I could do, albeit not beautifully, before this trip. There was one day where I managed three gorgeous backside 180s in a row. It's all on the McNab video; okay, so I don't have a copy of said video, but there are witnesses to back me up. I need proof, since one day later, I couldn't replicate the feat.

Again, I was hanging out with a crew of Brits & Scots, all very friendly and sweet. There were only three female campers, and two of them were there with their boyfriends. So it was perhaps a dubious honor when I won the Women's Big Air competition on the last day (similar to when I won "Best American Camper" 2 years ago, and I was the only American camper there!) The prize was a brand-new North Face jacket, so I'm not complaining.

In addition to the trick contest, on the morning of the last day, the coaches held their infamous McNab Derby. This was no ordinary speed competition. They clicked all of our boards together in a big pile, and then they faced us in a line. When Neil called "Go!", they tackled us as we dove for our boards. Then we had to race down the mountain to the train, ride the train back up, and tag one of the coaches who was wearing a bright orange jacket. I had trouble extracting my board from the pile but made a decent showing in the race portion -- despite a number of slow-moving obstacles on the hill such as the people riding the t-bar. Boarding the beginner-strewn runs with my speed-addicted skier friends at Heavenly is good training, as is weaving around trams, cars, other bikes, and tourists on my bike in Amsterdam.

On Saturday, while almost everyone else either stayed in Les 2 for another week or took a flight back home to the UK, I went to Lyon. It was my second visit there, and I really love it. It reminds me of Philadelphia, where I grew up. A small city, with acres...sorry, meters...of shops and restaurants and bars and cafes. No major tourist attractions like the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, so it's often overlooked by tourists. I didn't have time to do the tour of the covered walkways or the silk-weavers house. I did have time to watch Die Hard 4 dubbed in French though. Um, why did the bad guys kill off all the computer geeks? Oh never mind, I'll watch it again in English some day.

I also rented an electric bike. You can turn the dial to "Off", "On", or "Eco". I never figured out what "Eco" really did. But when you clicked to "On", it felt like someone was giving you a tiny push from behind every 30 seconds or so. Fabulous for biking uphill. Not so good if you start with the "On" setting, like I did once accidentally; the bike started to go without me so I almost fell off it. Once I got the hang of it, it was no problem. I even answered my mobile phone in the middle of biking to the park and had a 5-minute conversation, during which the other bikers on the path gave me hard stares. They all had two hands firmly on both handlebars. I guess it makes more sense to do so when you have hand brakes. In the Netherlands, I could be cradling a baby in one arm and smoking a cigarette with the other and hardly anyone would notice.

Lyon has a great bike path along the Rhone River, with floating beer gardens along the way, and a giant park that compares favorably with Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The park has a little zoo, so I'd turn the corner on my bike and suddenly be within a few hundred meters of some elephants, lions, or a giraffe. There's also a beautiful Vieux Ville, with quaint narrow staircases going up into the hills. And while most people are willing to speak English, they were also willing to speak French, if it looked like I wanted to speak it -- and even if I spoke it badly. A nice change from Amsterdam, where I'm thrilled if I can convince a shopkeeper to speak to me in Dutch for 2 minutes. My French improved by miles...oops, I mean kilometers...in just one day. Though I have to admit, I had a 15-minute conversation with my taxi driver during which I was convinced I understood everything he was telling me about his mother, only to find out that the whole time he wasn't talking about his mother at all, but the mayor of the city. In other words, "le maire" and not "la mere".

Oh. Merde.

Another Sort of Stereotype

Two things I neglected to mention in my last post about Austria:

1) When I entered the country, the train conductor asked for my passport and flipped through it. She also asked me if the snowboard above me on the luggage rack was mine. I said yes it was. She looked at the snowboard and then she looked at my Amsterdam work visa (inside my passport). Then she asked whether I smoked. I said no I didn't. "Do you smoke other things?" Hmmm...what "other things" might she be talking about? She didn't believe me, I could tell. The combination of snowboarder AND living in Amsterdam is just too evocative. This blog should really be about reviewing the coffee shops, shouldn't it?

2) It dumped the night before I arrived in Innsbruck, so there was 2 feet of fresh on Stubai Glacier -- and hardly anyone else interested in it.

Racism in Austria

At first I wasn't sure if it was real. Maybe I was just reacting to a cultural tendency not to smile or laugh. After all, you can't expect everyone to be like Californians who smile at everyone and everything. Then it morphed into more of an instinct, a feeling of being unwelcome. But then after two incidents with the old lady cashier at Stubai glacier (the first was when I said "Hallo" and got the complete silent treatment, she just waited until I saw the price on the cash register. The second time, there were other people around, so she said the price, but then became very impatient when I was hunting around for exact change -- and glaringly dropped the change into my tray), something clicked and I realized that I was (and had been for days) experiencing racism in a very institutionalized non-overt form. The only other time in my life that I've ever experienced the same sort of racism was in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Don't get me wrong. I've experienced overt racism before, and that's not fun either. But at least then it is very obvious that it's racism. This type of racism is much more uncomfortable because it is subtler. It is a lack of eye contact, or a mocking tone of voice, or a rolling of the eyes. At first, you doubt yourself. You wonder if you did or said something culturally offensive. And also because you doubt yourself, you don't react as quickly. You spend precious minutes going over the conversation in your head, trying to puzzle it out, and by the time you realize what it was, the person is gone or the moment is over and you would look silly trying to respond.

It wasn't just the cashier. It was also several of the ticket salespeople at the main railroad station in Innsbruck, the woman at the hotel counter, one of the waiters in the hotel restaurant. The latter actually said to me that Chinese eat in the other room and pointed to a side room away from the main part of the restaurant. I told him that I wasn't Chinese; I was American. This confused him. Of course I was Chinese. To him, it was like an elephant claiming to be a bear. I think he finally gave up because I was obviously stupid, and he said I could sit here, there, wherever I wanted. I was too stunned to confront him on the real question, which was "why do the Chinese have to eat in the other room?"

My experience was validated after I got back from my 9-hour train ride last night. I googled "racism" and "Austria" and got a number of hits. These are the most interesting of those:

Extremist Groups in Austria
Racism on "Wife Swap"

Clearly, the blacks, Muslims, and Jews who have immigrated to Austria have it even worse. The Japanese and Indian tourists who arrive by busloads in Innsbruck are tolerated because they spend a lot of money there, but I'm pretty sure that after they leave they are talked about derisively.

I will probably never return to Austria, which is a shame because the town was lovely and a few people were extraordinarily kind. For example, the harmonica player who had invited my mother to Austria picked her up and dropped her off every day from her hotel 20 minutes away in order to give her free harmonica lessons. Then he and his wife drove her to Innsbruck and gave her VIP tickets to the music festival where he had been invited as a judge. They were both warm and friendly to us throughout the weekend.

Another consolation of all this is that on the train ride back, I had the thought that I really couldn't wait to get home -- and for the first time, I felt that "home" meant Amsterdam. Today I reveled in smiling shopkeepers and public transportation employees and didn't mind the rain one bit!

"The Little Devils"

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Les Diablerets, or "The Little Devils", seems like a classic Swiss alpine village. It is French-speaking and earns most of its income via summer and winter tourists who come to downhill ski and snowboard, hike, cross-country ski, parasail, canyoneer, rock climb, "mudbike", and otherwise test their health insurance policies. The little devils appear everywhere, including the Cafe LeCroix, whose logo is a little red devil with big boobs and which advertises a special kids menu for the customers' own "diablerets".

I spend my only full day in the village shopping its two open sports stores, then walking 20 minutes along the river down to Vers L'Eglise ("Towards the Church"). I like this name, especially after I arrive and find that the church is one of only 4 buildings in the village (the rest of the village are houses scattered on the mountain above). I also like the name of the town where I change trains for Geneva. It is called "Aigle", or "Eagle".

Glacier 3000

Today I took the bus to...(to be said in a booming voice) Glacier 3000 (cue loud echo, cue soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Glacier 3000 is well obviously...a glacier...in Switzerland. Perhaps the 3000 refers to meters? Anyway, every time I hear the name, I think of a glacier in the future, where all the snowboards are powered by little jet engines or maybe the glacier is virtually created and we ride it via stereoscopic head set and wired jumpsuit (since that seems to be the direction the world is heading, see Gore AL, Inconvenient Truth).

Actually there is a very fast cable car to the halfway point, and then another slightly-less-fast cable car to the summit. But then -- ugh -- you have to take a long catwalk to the bottom of what the Brits call a drag lift, and what we Yanks once called a T-bar. I say "once" because I'm not sure T-bars even exist in America anymore. Ha, maybe they should call it "Glacier 1970" instead.

I think I drove the old liftie a little bit crazy because I had such a hard time with the lift. He had to keep helping me pull the T-bar down (it's attached to something like a bungee cord that snaps up as soon as you let go of it). For most of the morning, it wasn't too crowded and I was boarding the lift alone. Then once when someone tried to get on the lift with me, I managed to get on it myself, but left the other guy behind, thus messing up the whole line because there were two waiting just behind him and you can't fit three on these things unless you have very advanced T-bar skills. Je suis desolee!

The next time there were two of us on the T-bar, the liftie broke protocol and offered the guy his end of the bar first because he clearly identified me as a T-bar idiot. Now with 2 of us on the bar, we got to ride up for 10 minutes, with our crotches and faces only inches apart. It is a strangely intimate contraption.

Later in the day, I tried to ask the liftie if the time on the clock was correct because it said 4pm, and I had to catch the bus at 5pm. "Le temps, c'est correct?" I repeated it more than once because I thought he just didn't hear me. But this really seemed to confuse the hell out of him. I realized later that I had been asking him whether the WEATHER was correct, not the time. Oops.

Though the lift experience was not ideal, the park was. It had three distinct lines of jumps including one line with my-size jumps, the sun was out, and the snow was nice and slushy. I spent all day there and would definitely consider going back -- perhaps with a bit more French under my belt first.

Buon giorno (and arrivaderci) Italia!

Today we are taking a quick little drive over to Courmayeur in Italy via the Tunnel du Mont-Blanc.
The tunnel in itself is an adventure. It's almost 7 miles long. One-way tolls for cars are about 32 Euro (US $42.80). Trucks pay over $200 Euro. It saves that much time. So we get from the motel to the resort in about 15 minutes and from France to Italy in about 10.

Wow, I love listening to Italians speak. Even "Informazione" sounds romantic. I am tempted to scrap Dutch and study Italian instead. The "g" sound in Dutch is about the least attractive sound I've ever heard in my life (sorry Dutchies!)

We take a series of gondolas, "bubble cars", and chair lifts and then finally, the Arp gondola. You can ride the Arp to the summit to take in the view, but you can only ride down if you are with a guide.

The whole crew at the summit
(assuming that Dan is reflected in Johnny's sunglasses)
We traverse, ride a wide open bowl that must be heaven on a powder day (but is more like purgatory today -- eh), pick our way down in a steep couloir that is mostly avalanche debris and ice, and then skateboard for at least a mile on a flat road to the lodge.

After lunch, Joe and I decide to split off from the rest of the group. Too much combat zone, not enough surfing, for our tastes. We dump all of our gear off and spend the rest of the day on-piste.

After 4 straight days of hauling a huge kit on your back while boarding, it feels marvelous to ride light again.

One heli of a day

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My first heli ride ever!

The intro to backcountry and the backcountry freeride groups were combined together, so there was 12 of us plus three guides. We drove about 2 hours to Switzerland to the heli pad. There was a single heli transporting us, and only 4 could fit in a heli, so the heli had to make 4 separate trips to get us all to the drop zone.

The first scary thing that happened: when we were already way up in the air, the passenger door opened. Luckily Johnny grabbed it right away and shut it, then gave a little shrug to our helicopter driver. Oops!

Second scary thing: When the last heli arrived, and its passengers were getting out, 2 of them were crouched low, but definitely headed up the hill towards us even though the heli hadn't taken off yet. Apparently, they hadn't been given any instructions by the guide who was now too busy securing their gear to notice them, and the sound of the motor running was too loud for them to hear us yelling at them to stop. Someone standing next to me was becoming increasingly emotional and started screaming "you morons! you complete idiots! you're going to get your f#$@ing head taken off!" You could see this really confused look on Ed's face; for all he knew, we were yelling at him to come closer. Finally, one of the guides ran towards the heli waving his arms and the guys got the message.

For those of you who might ever ride a helicopter in the future: if you're not landing on something you know is flat, like the roof of a building, don't walk away from the heli even if you are crouching low. It's especially hard to detect contour in snow.

I think Ed was having a run of bad luck because shortly after the helicopter incident, he and Tim collided and Tim's pack smacked Ed in the eye. Well, at least we were told to leave our crampons at home today!

Johnny had warned us a day ahead that the Pin was likely to be tracked and also that we'd have to climb ladders at some point. The latter warning persuaded Joe to stay home; he has a strong fear of heights. We did climb some ladders, but Johnny was wrong about the tracks. The whole day was virtually trackless, and it was amazing. Even though it hadn't snowed for days, the snow was in great shape.

At the end of the day, we have some drinks at a local bar, which unfortunately would only accept paper euros (no coins) so we all ended up overpaying. Then back in France, after quick showers, my group goes into town for some celebratory curry with some friends of Ed and Joe (apparently, "going out for some curry" is the thing to do in the UK; one would never say "let's go out for Indian food"). It's hilarious to see the reactions of Ed's friends when they see his purple eye.

Incidentally, the heli was a great bargain. For 130 Euro ($178.86 US), we got one all-day heli ride plus the services of three guides.

From the Midday Needle to the Sea of Ice

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This is one of the classic backcountry rides in Chamonix, comparable to doing Half Dome in Yosemite.

We started off the day by riding the gondola up to the L'Aguille du Midi, which is about 12,600 feet above sea level. Then we immediately put crampons on our feet, strapped our boards to our packs, and were roped together by Johnny so that we could inch slowly down a steep ridge with about 30 others who arrived on the same gondola.

We rode a bit and then stopped. The moment I had been dreading. More hiking! We put on snowshoes, and this time, we were all roped together. This, I hated more than anything. Roped together with 5 guys who were all taller and fitter than me. For the most part, I was breaking my own trail. Instead of being able to step in their snowshoe tracks, I was forced to walk 3 steps for their every 2 at a much faster pace than I'm used to.

Johnny's a nice guy, but calling him "impatient" would almost be an understatement. There is no resting when he's leading, and everyone is marching too fast to chat. When you break for lunch or the bathroom, you know that you can't be dilly-dallying; you have to be very efficient. Because the second you finish your sandwich, he'll be clicking into his skis, and you'll be thinking wistfully of the dessert that you didn't have time to eat.

So basically, within a short amount of time, the rope between Ed and me became very taut and the rope between Simon and me became very slack. In fact, poor Ed was practically dragging me up the hill half the time. I thought maybe I'd end up pulling him off his feet. But he's a big gentle guy and didn't complain once about it. I was so frustrated with the pace that by the time we had our lunch break, I could barely speak. I just ate and plotted ways I could drop out of this course and join the Technical Clinic instead.

We boarded down into the Mer de Glace, which is a large valley with a glacier creeping through it. This was the first time I have ever seen a glacier outside of a photo. It's weird how man-made objects usually have to be symmetrical and perfect to be considered attractive. A glacier *should* by all criteria be considered ugly. It's rough and random, not to mention the color of Windex and toilet bowl cleaner. Yet somehow, it was staggeringly beautiful.

We stopped to take photos, then continued along an ice bridge (huge crevasses along either side), twisted and turned around a lot of rocks, and ended up at one of the major tourist attractions in Chamonix for those who neither ski nor board...the Ice Caves. These are man-made caves, drilled into the glacier. One of the caves contained life-size wax figures of mountaineers in various tableux. It also featured a room where you can have your picture taken with a wax Saint-Bernard, who has the stereotypical barrel affixed to his collar.

Because there was no longer enough snow to ski out of the valley, we ended the day by hiking up a long wooden staircase attached to the cliff walls. As we went up, we had to steer around tourists in jeans and sweatshirts and their passels of kids strolling down to view the caves. At the top, we waited in line for a cable car that took us to the train station. From there, we took a train back to the hotel for a well-deserved beer and a rest in front of the telly to watch a rugby game. The Brits had to interpret of course, especially as much of rugby consists of players throwing the ball backwards.

A humble start

that's me holding up the line
At 8:45 I am downstairs lining up to get my lunch, my lift pass, and my gear: a backpack, a pair of evil-looking crampons, red plastic snowshoes, a shovel with detachable handle, collapsible ski poles, Ortovox transceiver, and climbing harness with a short rope and carabiner attached.

By later in the week, I realize that just about everywhere we go in Chamonix, this is the basic kit that everyone carries -- and many people carry more. It is not uncommon to go the bar apres-ski and see 3/4 of the clientele still wearing their transceivers with the lights still blinking (you know, just in case the bar gets avalanched). I also learn at some point that locals in Chamonix typically consider themselves rock climbers and mountaineers first. The skiing is something they just do in the winter to keep themselves busy. Deaths are really common here; over 100 a year. There are so many dangers that it is always recommended that you go with a guide when riding even a little bit off-piste. Besides the already mentioned avalanches, there are collapsing seracs, crevasses hidden under thin ice or a crust of snow, falling rocks, and sometimes bad weather. At least we didn't have the worry about the last danger; it was sunny and warm all week.

But I am getting ahead of myself. It's still Day 1. And I have not a clue what I'm doing.

We get a quick lesson in donning the transceivers and making sure they were transmitting. Then we pile into the vans and are off to Le Tour. The rest of the day is all a bit blurry.

Let's see...there was my first button lift ride: where you have to put this plastic disk attached to a long metal pole between your legs and then it drags you up the hill. It took me three tries to get myself moving on the lift; for the third try, the lift operator came out of the booth to help me. Merci beaucoup, cute French liftie!

There was a long mostly uphill walk in snowshoes, when I first remembered thinking "I'm not sure if I'm going to survive this week." It was also the tenth time I remember thinking "I'm not sure if I'm going to survive this week." I've had way too many weeks of no gym membership and being pampered with home-cooked feasts at my sister-in-law's house.

From 'Dam to Cham

After 2 hard weeks of work in Amsterdam, I'm ready for a vacation!

Ha. Actually I had signed up for this McNab Snowboarding course back in November, when I had heard that there were only a few places left, and when I had thought I would be arriving in Amsterdam on January 9 (instead of 6 weeks later, due to working permit snafus). It's a week-long course held in Chamonix, with the same outfit who runs the freestyle camp I took 2 years ago in Les Deux Alpes.

Anyway, lugged my board bag & backpack a few blocks to Central Station, then hopped a train to Schipol airport. Wow, the train station is directly underneath Schipol. You get off the train and go up the escalator and hello!, you're right there in the terminal already.

It's a mere one hour flight to Geneva but it is at least an hour before I get out of customs and find my shuttle driver. Then we wait another 1.5 hours for other passengers to arrive and drive an hour to the motel. Hmm...perhaps I should have taken the train direct!

Arrived too late to really see the town or mountains, but just in time for dinner. I meet 3 other McNabbers.

Dick is a game warden and married, but one of his relationship quirks is that he and his wife never take vacations together. Apparently, they get along better that way. He's taking the Backcountry Freeride course, which is considered level 2, the course you would take if you survived Intro to Backcountry, which is what I am signed up for.

Joe is in Cham for the entire season, honing his skillz. I am jealous. I would almost certainly have been doing the same thing in Tahoe, if I hadn't decided to go to Amsterdam instead. Then again, if that were the case, I wouldn't be experiencing Cham in all its glam and glory. We find out that we'll be in the Intro course together.

Kat is my roommate for the week and a journalist with a ski and snowboard magazine in the UK. She was there to write an article about her course, the Technical Clinic. So that means that her course is paid by the magazine. I also find out later that all of gear and clothes are on loan to her from various snowboarding companies. Nice life!

After dinner, we separate by course and meet the people we are going to be snowboarding with for the next 5 days. There are only 5 other people in my group and they are all very fit-looking guys. Everyone has at least some of their own gear already, except for me. I am a bit nervous about this. Hey I thought it was an intro class! We agree to meet in the lobby at 8:45am, and everyone goes off right to bed. I can already tell that this is going to be nothing like the easygoing freestyle camp.