Ski Schule

Daily Schedule

Tuesday 22.02.2011: Playing day

09.00 o'clock: Smiley is awake and meet us in the restaurant.

09.30 o'clock: 1,2,3, Magic! Children come into the cinema. Magic course for kids above 6 years.

10.30 o'clock: We feed our animals. Later we are playing outside.

12:00 o'clock: Yummie, Yummie, Yummie, We meet us in Smiley's-food-corner.

14.30 o'clock: Come to us in the playing room. We have lots of games for you. Have fun!

When we made reservation at this hotel, the thing that caught Ella's imagination most was "Charm School," or the hotel's magic course. So we decided to let her take the morning to learn some tricks, and we made plans to catch the noon shuttle to the Innerkrems ski resort.

Goldeck, while ultimately fun for us, would have been an awful place to take the children.  There wasn't a kiddie slope in sight.  But Innerkrems had a heavily-advertised ski school for children: "With Bobo, the penguin, learning everything is safer and easier. BOBO stands for creativity, child-oriented psychology and lots of fun in the snow. Ski lessons too."  Sounds...good?

Ella returned happy from magic class and tried convince Alex to be her beautiful assistant.  "Alex, I can make you disappear!" Alex, wise and wary, refused.

When we asked Joey if he was ready to go to day care, he ran off to the playroom without a backward glance; as we said goodbye he scarcely looked up from his trucks.  So we left him behind with a clear conscious and bundled the kids up for an afternoon in the snow.

Excited kids, on the shuttle to the slopes.

It took us quite a long time to rent our equipment for all four of us, and longer still to convince Alex to put on his ski-boots (which we rebranded as "robot boots").  We were able to get the kids signed up for a session of ski school from 2:00-4:00, which gave us an hour to have lunch before dropping us off.  Halfway to trudging to the restaurant, Alex was seriously regretting his decision to try skiing, although a plate of spaghetti did make him feel better. Ella, however, was getting more excited by the minute, and was really eager by 2:00, when we dropped them off in the schule.

At which point, I decided to rename this blog AwfulSituationsIPutMyKidsIn.com.

First of many

We were a little late getting the kids to the meeting place for school, not being altogether clear where it was.  The teacher, who was surrounded by a kids, briskly jammed the kids' skis on, and picked each up under their arms, plopping them in a line for a tow rope.  There they stood, wobbling, their first time in skis, in line with a dozen kids, at least four of whom were audibly weeping.  Alex and Ella both kept throwing anxious glances our way as they got closer to the tow rope.  When they finally got there, another instructor grabbed them, shoved them in place to grab the bar, and gave them a little push up the slope.  They both made it about ten yards before falling down, Ella with her skis above her in the air, almost getting caught in the ropes.  The instructors unceremoniously grabbed them again and put the in line at the top of the slope, poised to descend.

All while Dennis and I watched in fascinated horror.

When it got to be their turn to go down the mountain, the instructor told the kids to put their hands on their knees and gave them a gentle push down the hill, into the arms of another instructor. And then it was time to do it all over again.  They got slightly higher on the tow rope this time before falling, and made it down the hill without falling again, too.  Miscalculating, Dennis went over to congratulate them both, and was met with protests and pleas: "This is awful! My boots hurt! This isn't fun at all! Get us out of here!" Ella was especially indignant: "I thought that teacher was going to give me a hug, but she just grabbed me and pushed me in line!"


We backed away slowly.

There didn't seem to be a thing to be done but adopt the stoic, tough-love attitude of all of the other parents.  One little boy, maybe Alex's age, fell on his butt with his skis tangled, caught his mother's eye through mournfully through his tears, and begged her for help. And she gazed levelly back at him and barked "Stand!"  Dennis wondered whether Austrians grow up to be so stoic because of their experiences in skischule.

Regardless, we didn't think there was anything to be gained by taking the kids out of class after five minutes, and we didn't think we were helping matters by watching, so, while our kids were suffering through manhandling and humiliation, we retired for a cup of coffee and a game of cards at the cozy chalet.  What else could we have done?

Although our coffee break was not without adventure. Flush with cash and stinging from the poverty of yesterday, we decided to go crazy and try the local specialty, Riesen-Germknödel mit Mohn. We weren't sure what it was when we ordered it, and we were even more unsure when it arrived.  Dennis was pretty sure "Riesen" meant giant, but that was about it.

It seemed to be some sort of a moist dumpling, stuffed with treacle, resting in a pool of butter, and thickly coated with a mixture of sugar and...ash? Could "Mohn" mean ash?  (Well, no, as it turns out, it means poppy seeds, but they were, inexplicably, ground into a powder.)

Giant thing-a-ma-bob consumed, we returned to the kiddie slope just as the children were taking off and piling up their skis. They were then moved into a circle and told to scream, scream for Bobo!  So they did, and look who showed up.

While the children looked on, clown and penguin did a little vaudeville act in the snow, dancing and juggling toilet plungers.  When the clown dropped his baggy trousers at one point, the kids lost their minds and stormed the circle, laughing and trying to pull him into the snow.  The ski instructors, sadists that they are, just giggled a little and watched before finally rescuing the clown and reforming the children into their circle.  And the clown, bless him, looked perfectly happy to be covered with snow, wearing nothing but a bathrobe, playing with a mob of crazy kids.

Tousled but happy.

I'm convinced that the instructors put on this little show so that the kids would be in a good mood, instead of weeping messes, when the parents came to pick them up.  Whether it was calculated or not, this was the general effect on my children. Ella squealed "This was so fun! It was totally worth learning how to ski, just to get to see the clown!" And she was eager to get her skis back on so that she could show us what she'd learned. Alex, although more subdued, was likewise very proud of himself, so Dennis signed them up for lessons again tomorrow.

Ella and Alex proved to be equal to George's and Lucus's stamina, and the four friends played some sort of complicated Super Mario Brother's tag game for an hour after Ella and Alex devoured six pieces of chicken each.  Although Ella's fatigue finally showed itself in bedtime, when she admitted to Dennis that she was grouchy with Alex because he was better than she at skiing.  She's decided that tomorrow she'll move up a level.

And, Ella being Ella, I suppose she will.