Out in the snow

Gripe of the week.  Internet.  I’m not going into details coz it makes me far too mad but the jist is this.  We bought a mobile internet dongle so we could use the internet from our apartment, not least so we could skype people, after 2 days of joyous use the credit run out & we needed to charge it up.  It won’t let us though, no matter what we do.  This French company don’t want to let us give them money, no wonder their economy has gone to shit.  So it’s back to using Wi-Fi in cafes & bars on limited battery & dodgy signals but hey, if that’s the only thing we have to moan about then life must be good.

And it is.  We’ve had a week on the snow now & its f#cking brilliant.  We’ve had a few white out days but thats not a problem as its dumping 20cm of snow on the mountain, & it has been dam cold up there, -20 on average but what do you expect when to come to a place like this.  We have tiered & aching muscles already but then I came here with a particular dodgy back & The Wife’s knee has never been the same since 1 of you boys smashed into it after half a day’s ski lessons only to decide he didn’t need any more (granted he did spend most of his time videoing some old bird on the drag lift) he lost control & tried to stop all his 16 stone of, err let’s call muscle (?) on her leg.  I don’t think either of them stopped.  We also have 3 flights of steps to get up at the end of the day, this is not easy at the end of a hard day sliding about on your arse.  We’ve covered a lot of the mountain already but probably on about half of the lifts are open so there are still loads more to do.  The ski conditions themselves are good for this time of the year.  The higher slopes are fluffy powder with only the runs into resort getting icy.

On to the more important stuff.   Beer (I can’t bring myself to call it Après Ski).  We’ve been to all the bars that are open (not that many, yet) with varying degrees of enjoyment.  Let’s start with the bad, The Blue Note – We’d heard a lot of good stuff about this bar, but we couldn’t bloody find it.  After being directed to it for about the 19^th time we eventually found it but it wasn’t really worth it.  Think youth club out of Byker Grove & full of students on their gap year full of their own self importance all talking over each other to convince others that they were really vain, humourless & boring.  We were convinced so we left.  Then there’s the Pettie Danois – This is easy to explain, think of a shit-pit you’ve been to then add in some complimentary smoked, dried & cured meats & few boiled eggs & leave them on the bar for the day, then fill the place with scuzzers that can’t afford dinner so they go there for a free meal get pissed on the all full beer & wine then throw it up on the floor where there standing.  We won’t be going back.  Lucky though, all the bars that are not bad are good.  Our favourites being; The Lodge, V Spot & XV.  (Strangely it’s the bars full of French that are best).  I’ve also discovered my Football pub, the Pacific Bar, very similar to the Ashes back home but more underground (I mean literally, not in the cool exclusive sense).  The drinks are expensive, about 8 euro’s for a beer & glass of wine but as the other local workers get to know you then a few free drinks find themselves coming our way, let the rich tourists make them a profit.  The bars are all having opening parties as well.  1, The Morris Pub, had theirs last week & we was going to go.  When we was away before 1 of my mates (the 1 mentioned above actually) sent out a batch of mini disks for me (do you remember mini disks, they were around for about 6 months before being replaced by mp3 players) anyway one of them he sent me out was the debut album by the Coral & to this day it remains as 1 of my all time favourites.  Well would you believe it they were playing the opening night so we was going.  We got into the V Spot though & got a fair few pints down our neck & then couldn’t be bothered to walk the 30m to get there.  As it turns out though we had a result, they came on about mid-night, played 1 song complained that the sound was shit & stormed off. 

The really bad news is, we start working next Wednesday, we have to start at 10am as well.  Tough, Tough, Tough.

In the mean time I will be solely concentrating on Snow & beer, the important things in life.