Switzerland: Ski Verbier

My trip to Switzerland was a fine break for the history-laden buildings I have been visiting on my other trips. In Switzerland, I traded these architectural masterpieces of man for the natural masterpieces of God far larger than anything man can build: the Swiss Alps. And what better way to fully experience these massive pieces of art than to rent a 148 centimeter piece of plastic, strap my feet to it, and lay myself at the mercy of the snowy mountains?

So, after our wonderful train-sleeping experience (see "A Night in Delémont"), Pug and I arrived in Verbier, a ski-town in the mountains of French Switzerland. We went to Verbier for a good reason: free food and lodging. You see, Jennifer (remember, Pug=Jennifer) has family in Verbier. I'm not really clear how they were related (and frankly, I don't think Jennifer is, either), but the truth is that they are related, and Anne-Marie (Pug's relative) wanted us to come and stay with them, so we did. I say "wanted us" but it's more that she wanted Jennifer to come, and I just reaped the wonderful benefits of her benevolence. But I digress. So, we were staying with this family, and they had two children, Deana (f,8) and Cloede (m,5). More about them later. It's about time to stop rambling and use the most logical ordering system: chronology.

We arrived in Verbier (pronounced "Ver-bee-ay," rememeber, this was the French part of Switzerland) on Friday morning. We didn't really have too many plans for Friday, so we decided to walk around the town to see what it was all about. Turns out we really were in a ski town: 90% or more of the shops were either ski rentals, ski clothing, or nightlife. We did find a souvenier shop at one point that we browsed for a while - I like meandering around souvenier shops for some odd reason - but other than that there wasn't much to see. At around 2, we went to the pizza restaurant that Patrick and Anne-Marie own, and had ourselves a wonderful pizza loaded with mushrooms, salomi, and some other stuff. That night, we hung out with the children and went to bed early in anticipation for skiing and snowboarding the next morning.

Early is the best time to get up on Snowboarding Day. Every time I have been snowboarding, that's when I woke up: early. There's something about Snowboarding Day (it's almost a holiday, hense "Snowboarding Day") that it's just better to wake up early, I guess like little kids that wake up at five in the morning on Christmas. We rented our equipment and headed to the Gondola up the mountain. Eventually, we went as high up the mountain as we could possible get, and, not being the greatest snowboarder, I was scared. When I got off the gondola, everything I could see was white. I think we were in the midst of a cloud, because I could only faintly tell the difference between the white-gray air and the white ground, and I couldn't see the contour of the slope, it was just a mass of white. But on Snowboarding Day there is only one way to get down the hill once at the top, so I strapped in and was off. We took the Red slope, yeah, that's something you don't see in the United States. Red here is intermediate; Blue is easy and Black is hard. They don't have shapes though, no Blue Squares and Black Diamonds, everything is just a circle. So I went down the Red Circle. Because it was snowing, and had snowed the day before as well, there was a lot of powder on some of the slopes which is something I have never experienced before, so that was pretty cool. Other than that, it was just normal snowboarding. I say "just," but snowboarding is just plain fun, so I had a blast.

That night, we babysat Deana and Cloede, who were really fun. They reminded me a little bit of Jordyn and Joel a few years back, even though they were completely different. Anyway, we watched Vegi-Tales with them: "The Lord of the Beans." I personally thought it was hilarious, especially since I am currently reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on the trains.

That's about it for the trip.