Skiing

I lived in Germany for a good while. I can’t really remember any bad times there. There were some people I worked with that I could have done without, but on the whole it was, I feel, one of the high points of my life.

I was there in the 80’s and worked in a huge medical center in the middle of a city the first time. That was a great time of what I can remember. It seemed to me in Germany there was always something to do. Whether it was beer or wine festival, volksmarches, sightseeing or just going out to restaurants there was activity everywhere.

I learned to ski my first time in Germany. This will be unbelievable but for a week of ski instruction, ski passes, hotel, one meal a day, and ski suit and accessories it cost me $120.00. I had to pay for transportation, but it wasn’t expensive and I liked riding on German trains. As with anything that includes standing and not tripping I was a complete bust my first two days of skiing. I was ready to give it up, but friends with me talked me into staying with it. Finally the instructor told me to go off by myself and learn to stand on the skies. The best thing he could have done.

By mid morning the third day, I was standing, turning and coming to a parallel stop. I still didn’t have control, and grace on the skies was not one of my strong point. It became obvious when our instructor took us down a path, which to me was pretty narrow. I got out of control and couldn’t stop. While I’m barreling down the path I see a big opening and I’m thinking great. Once I hit the opening I see I’m going to run into a line of people on a T-bar. I started screaming for them to watch out. I didn’t notice the T-bar path was about two feet deep into the snow. Luckily I didn’t hit anyone, but my skies dropped into the T-bar path which sent me about ten feet into the air and ended up sliding me a couple of feet into the snow. My skies were behind me, I was under the snow and I can remember people in my class digging me out. It took me about fifteen minutes after that just to find my glasses. My instructor told me that was the best crash he’s ever seen. For some reason I was pleased to hear that, at least I was doing something good on the skies.

The fifth day they turned us loose and I still had some pretty good falls, but mostly it was fun. I was hooked on skiing after that.
I remember the skiing the most, but I also remember being with good friend and every night we would go to a different Gausthauses and have excellent food and always, excellent beer. It was one of those times in my life where everything seemed to be going very well. I didn’t have a lot of money, but there always seemed to be enough to go and do what we wanted.

Looking back at those times always brings me a good feeling. To know no one wanted anything from you except friendship. To know you were going to have a good time no matter where you went, because your friends were there. I lost contact with most of my friends from back then. I just found one after 16 years of no contact. It has actually been quite wonderful. We started off talking like we’d had just seen each other yesterday. He stopped by my here for a couple of day on his way home and it was a great visit. He was always the one taking pictures and movies. We sat back and watched old movies of us during our skiing and volksmarching. It bought back very good memories. I’m still trying to find old friends and have only been lucky with that one so far, but there are always new friends.

As I’ve said before, I think I’ve found some friends and some really good people as of late. I guess I continue to be lucky.