Åre (20.-24.1.)

In the end I decided to do the trip (thanks, Maria and Mama for not getting too tired of my Hin und Her!)! At the latest by the time I took my first ride down the hill it was clear that this was the best decision I could have made and the spread of adrenaline/serotonin literally swept the illness away from my body (well, maybe the antibiotics did their part too...). We used to start our skiing day by taking a ride down the slope next to our stuga, taking advantage of the freshly groomed slopes and some days even the untouched fresh-fallen snow. Wow! After some rides we would take a bus to the main skiing area in Åre where there were plenty of different slopes and, as it was the student week, various free events and activities like a career fair including "speed dating" on the lift (unfortunately Christian didn't find what he had expected there ;-), a mobile throwing competition (did Telia really intend to strengthen their brand recognition by that?!) and free korv every day.

After the sun had gone down (remember, that was at about 4) some of us did some After ski while I prefered to take a sauna before we all cooked together. Every other day we even did some night skiing and one evening Maria, Katharina, Annika and I went sledging - such fun (see Annika's video)! We also tried one of the students parties one night which I found quite disappointing (and I don't think it was only because I had to stay sober) - apparently "students week" did not only include university students and most of my readers will know how Swedish people act when they had a drop too much... All in all, the eight of us spent some great days on the slopes and in our cosy appartment in Tegelfjäll. It was a pitty that we already had to leave on thursday evening, especially as it had been snowing the whole day and the next morning would have greeted us with lots of fresh snow. If you want to get a more lively impression of our trip, don't miss watching the excellent film Annika made! You can also read about our trip in German on Annika's blog or in French (and English :-) on Mathias' blog.