European vending machines are the best.
Entry posted by pognoi
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I went skiing this week with my Explorer unit. (yay)
now, you can stop reading there, or you can continue reading about how everything went.
Day 1.
I spent 14 hours on a train with 3 of my mates, and 16 13 year olds. It was great, because I just sat there, watched movies, and threw food at them, but also bad because they'd throw it back, continue to ask me questions about the scout leader (who was, my mum. Ergh.) and it was 14 hours, on trains, for 700 miles.
Although, in this time, we did pass through several cultural captials, the likes of Burn, Paris and London. I definitely liked the small slice of paris (the walk from Gare du nord to gare Du L'est or whatever)
Now, the best thing on the journey was learning about the new vending machines in french and swiss stations. Its utterly fabulous.
I went to buy a kinder bar, because, well, I was hungry. And then, when it went to eject the bar, it got stuck. So I was standing at this vending machine, as our train pulled in, thinking 'oh bollocks, I'm about to get yelled at'. Then I pressed the change button, and it gave me all my money back. So not only did I get my money back, I got 2 kinders, for the price of one.
My friend looked it up, and it's something to do with lasers in the bottom of the vending machine that sense whether or not an object has fallen. If it hasn't, then you'll get all your money back, rather then running off angrily to the guy in the nearest ticket booth and swearing at them because they are foreign and have no idea whats happened. Absolute logic, and customer satisfaction at 100%
We got to Kandersteg at about 9PM local time. The food we were introduced by was one of the greatest mountain dishes to say hi with, and I went to sleep almost immediately....
Day 2
To be woken up by my little brothers dodgey pop music, and slamming my head against the timber pillar above my bed.
So the first day we were fully in Switzerland, it snowed about half a foot (which is not that much in the terms of things locally, but made most of us go insane.)
We walked up and down for a bit, fell down a 5 ft ledge, and then had lunch looking down at a frozen lake where REAGA (the voluntary search and rescue swiss team) were doing hypothermia training, and it was great fun watching grown men jump into literally frozen waters.
this was followed by piste sledging. So normal sledging, you go 5 miles an hour tops on wooden scaffolding on snow that seems like it wants to bury you and glue you and never let you move. Piste sleding uses metal sleds, down flattened and icey slopes, some up to 40 degrees in steepness.
Yeah, mental. According to our guide we reached about 35km on these things.
Finally, we went curling. We were all rubbish at it and just ended up watching the ice hockey match going on next door.
Day 3.
WE FINALLY STARTED SKIING YaY.
For those of you who don't know, skiing is one of those sports I was actually good at. It's a little boast of a thing I can talk about.
My mum skied for England, and I started skiing when I was 6, and from then on skied almost every week until I was 11. Annually we did holidays to France rather then going away in the summer, and I got into the county race team at some point.
Anyway, a couple years ago I had a big crash racing and it put me off, so I turned to ski cross, where I since have had many more, and far worse crashes, but couldn't care less.
What is ski cross? I hear you mumble. It's like a slalom, where you are given a set amount of gates to go around, but the corners are banked, you are given up to 12 bumps and jumps to ski over, and you race head to head with up to 5 other people.
Aaaand I picked up my first injury, skiing into a tree 
Day 4
We went skiing again..! But to a different place.
This one had a really good ski cross, so I was happy. And then it had some nice off piste too, then I twisted my leg a little bit and had to ski 'cautiously' for the rest of the day.
IN THE EVENING we had a massive snow ball fight. This was great because it meant I could pour snow down my brothers back and it be deemed okay. But then the ice started getting thrown.... Injury 3!
Day 5
OMG more skiing woaw.
I hit about 65 km on this day. Which is pretty bloody quick.
Also, there were lots of little jumpy bits so that was fun
SKI CROSS
Evening activity was cooking bananas. I hate bananas, as do one the rest of the explorers who were there, so we had a massive banana fight and then got told off a little.
DAY 6
Final Day of skiing. Nooo D:
But... SKI CROSS.
Here, have a running commentary thingy of me skiing an olyimpic quality one:
and we're off!
Round the first S bend
Round the second and he slips into 2nd place
Round the left quarter turn
Over the 1st air time hill (they exist out of coasters as well you know)
Second & third airtime hills (and into 1st!)
Double camelback and finish!
The only thing that could've made the day better was if the slalom course was open... and if I didn't tare some muscle in my knee.
How?
This:
That's what happens if you get cocky kids.
To finish off the trip, we went night tobogganing. It's super dooper fun, especially when it was as icy as it was:
So yeah my leg is in a rubber thing and I have loads of homework to catch up on.
If any of you read this, thanks for taking to the time to read something entirely not coaster related. Maybe I'll do one of those things soon.
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