Here we are, just a few weeks since our return from the warm lands, and already we have another holiday week - this time it's spring break. I've been wondering for a while now why they call this wandering week at the end of winter "spring break", when outside in our latitudes Mrs. Winter is still mostly in charge and most of my friends spend this time skiing somewhere in the mountains. It is true, however, that the last dates of spring break fall already in the month of March, when there is not much sign of snow in the lowlands, and also the stocks on the mountains, or rather hills in our country are very thin, so there is a real risk of taking your skis with you for nothing. For a large part of our three children's childhood, we spent this time with friends in a small, pleasant hotel right by the slopes in one of our not-high mountains called the Jeseníky, but as time went on, and the covida pandemic added to it, the prices of services rose steadily, while their quality sometimes began to fall short. So we decided that we should broaden the horizons of our growing children and organize another trip to somewhere where the slopes will be a bit more, and where there is a real chance that they will still be covered with snow in early March. Although we loved to visit the Tatras years ago, the picturesque mountains of our Slovak brothers, we know that the prices of services here have long since caught up with the renowned resorts in the Alps, while the capacity of the slopes is nowhere near the capacity of the Alpine ones. Therefore, we started to think about a suitable destination somewhere in Austria, where the mountains are already high, and even some glacier can be found, while the travel time by car still seems to be acceptable. However, when looking for a suitable resort, we ran into the fact that in most cases it is necessary to commute from the accommodation to the slopes either by car or by local shuttle bus, a complication that did not suit us and the kids very well. In the meantime, however, the family of friends with whom we've spent spring break together these past few years has become friends with another family clan that is in the tourism business, and their main focus is Italy. Having an experienced vacation planning mentor certainly pays off, and so we finally decided to book a stay at one of the ski resorts, despite the concerns of some of the trip members about the trip being a bit longer than originally intended. The price of accommodation with half board and ski passes for our whole family of five was quite reasonable, certainly less money than we would have paid for the same services among the hills two hours from our house, and with the promise of a much better skiing experience.

Before I write how it was further, it is necessary to make a small digression to explain my biased view, which you will see later in the description of our trip and stay. I was one of those who have the fears and uncomfortable tickling in my stomach from long car journeys with children at my back. Unlike my wife, who is willing to endure any length of time in the car with the prospect of a nice skiing trip (or other geographically distant experiences) and travel during the parts of the day when people normally sleep, I much prefer to cover longer distances by plane, and if I do travel by car, it's in the daytime... just in the daytime and in comfort... but with three kids in the car, it usually falls into the "impossible" category. Other not-so-optimistic assumptions on my part include the fact that I increasingly dislike the cold dampness associated with winter as the years go by. While I tolerate snow in the mountains, I absolutely hate it in the cities, especially on the driveway of our house. Furthermore, I hate waiting in queues and generally a large concentration of people in which I quickly lose track. On top of that, I don't like having my feet cramped in uncomfortable and unwieldy shoes, being bundled up in winter clothes, wearing a helmet and having to worry about two plates and sticks so I don't forget them somewhere... Yes, you're getting it right - I actually don't like skiing at all :-) I don't mind the actual skiing that much, it can be almost enjoyable in good weather, but all the inconvenience of the cold and lots of that bulky junk around leads to that, I would be happy to do without skiing if it wasn't one of my wife's favourite activities, and at the same time I wouldn't feel obliged as a parent to teach our children this activity too, so that they can freely decide in the future whether they find it enjoyable or not. When we didn't have children yet, I tried to compensate for some of the obvious shortcomings of skiing by attempting snowboarding - I wore snowshoes instead of ski boots, which after all are more comfortable to sit in at the pub, and I had to take care of a single board, not two skis and poles. But riding a board and teaching kids to ski don't go together, so I hung up the board and have been skiing instead for some time now - but at least I chose a compromise solution in the form of boards shorter than a meter, which have a tip on both sides and don't use poles. And while I briefly touched on sitting in a pub above - this is one of the lighter moments of the whole skiing anabasis from my point of view, because I like to eat and drink something good. However, this joy can be somewhat disrupted by a crowded restaurant, a queue at the bar or the fact that in recent years, alcohol has become less tolerated on the slopes, which again contributes to lowering the score of skiing on my popularity scale. And to make matters worse, let's try to imagine how much junk you have to pack for a ski vacation for a family of five, dump in the ski room and the hotel room, and then stuff it all back in the car and then store it all somewhere in the house when you arrive so it doesn't get in the way for the rest of the year.

If I have described so openly my view on skiing and long car journeys with children behind my back, then you will understand that on an air holiday in the Canary Islands, where you can take only a few suitcases, because you can't get more on the plane anyway, and you don't need anything big and heavy with you, I was logically looking forward to such a holiday in warm regions and with a bar by the pool much more.

Now it would probably be a good idea to write something about the holiday itself, but no..., it won't be that easy, because I still have to torture you a bit with the preparation phase. Since our family has been skiing really regularly in the last few years, basically only during spring break, there aren't many other opportunities to see if any of the family members have accidentally grown in any direction, and therefore if the equipment lightly used a year ago will be useful for a few more days. Since it is customary in our part of the planet to receive gifts a week or so before the end of each year, it is quite convenient to do an equipment check just before this event so popular with children. It happened this time too, we went through the stock of skis of various lengths, poles of different heights, boots of several sizes and helmets of multiple sizes and colors that we had gradually collected as our kids grew up. The goal of control is, of course, to assign each child from this stock at least a little bit of matching pieces of equipment, to convince individuals that boys' and girls' colors are no longer played on, and simply to minimize the amount of newly acquired pieces to only the essentials, because storage spaces are not inflatable and whimsically buying something new just because I don't like the old one anymore doesn't seem to be effective with our sporadic use. The result of this year's inspection was quite satisfactory, we have equipped the younger two children completely, and if I had been adamant, I might have convinced our teenage eldest daughter that the children's skis of years gone by would still do her a service... But I'm an appreciative father after all, and so I convinced myself that at her age, my daughter deserved new skis, with height matching and more pleasing to the eye - so we had an idea under Christmas tree and didn't have to think of something else that would also end up spending most of her time in a corner somewhere.

It might seem that checking and completing the equipment is the end of the preparation phase, but it is not! In fact, it has been practically established in the past that even when skis are hardly used, the ravages of time have somehow gnawed away at them, so there is nothing to do but to take them to a service centre at least once every two years, where they can have their skis tickled a bit and their edges sharpened. Even if you plan this stage of preparation well in advance, of course, it regularly happens that you find a service at the last minute, when there is no time for price research, so then the cost of servicing reaches the amounts for which you could once buy whole skis in the bazaar... Well, let's be, we have the equipment... Actually, still not quite. Because skiing is far from being a sporting activity, where it depends on how you know how to ski - for a large part of the population, to which I, to my wife's sadness, do not belong, it is very important how a person looks, i.e. what covers the surface of his body. Girls are usually like that, which I can understand to some extent, so before the ski season there is an outfit check, which often reveals that some part of the outfit doesn't fit anymore and needs to be replaced with a new one. Since our oldest daughter has grown to an age and size where she is able to gratefully recycle some of her mother's better pieces of clothing, there is a bit of joy in this discovery, but the distressing side of things is that some of the new pieces need to be purchased, which is usually not exactly cheap, even though my wife tries to use her resources efficiently, but at the same time they don't seem to have it in the shops in our town, which then requires shopping trips to the surrounding area, sometimes even abroad. And despite thorough preparation in this area, it is often discovered at the last minute that a recently acquired piece no longer fits... again. Well, it's not easy for girls (with themselves).

Now, perhaps we can finally get to the initial stage of any journey, which is certainly packing. The preparation for this act has been done in a way before, as described above, but now comes the moment of truth, if we really have everything ready. Probably almost every parent is familiar with the repeated struggle before each trip with the children, who are asked several days in advance to prepare their clothes (the older ones) and toys (the youngest ones), so that the result is always the same, with the angry mother packing all the children into their bags herself, and at this stage the popular phrase "Next time you won't come with us if you can't even pack a few of your things!" The challenge for fathers in many families is probably to get the piled-up pile of luggage and equipment into the car, which at first glance appears smaller than the pile. It's probably pointless and provocative to ask if we'll actually need all that stuff, yet sometimes we do, but then we somehow squeeze all that stuff into the car, perhaps violating the laws of physics in many cases. In the case of this particular expedition, I split the process of putting stuff in the car into two phases, where the evening before I left I put only my ski boots and helmet in the car, and left the rest until the morning I woke up... This plan got a bit too long during the night, so I didn't build up the necessary time reserve, but not only that - for any mentally demanding process I need peace and I don't like to be disturbed, so packing took a bit longer and the vehicle was ready to leave about an hour later than originally announced - certainly not an ideal start to the trip. In addition, I have a habit of checking all rooms before leaving the household to see if anyone has left a window open, a light on, an appliance on or the water running... and being distracted and not sure at the end of the check if I've missed anything, I go through some rooms repeatedly - so I added another quarter of an hour to our time deficit and instead of "very early in the morning" we just left "in the morning". It should be noted, however, that I couldn't finish the home inspection before the dishwasher, which my wife had started, finished its cycle :-)

We're on our way! Since we had counted on an early departure in the dark, a woman nominated herself for the first leg of the drive - the order remained the same, even though there was no sign of darkness, but I could still read a few verses written on the inside of the lids in peace - among other things because children usually start to be naughty in a more pronounced way only about two hours after we leave home base. I woke up just outside Mikulov, where we usually fill up the car's tank and in turn empty the tanks of others, so that we don't have to stop again soon. Since I had already finished, I got behind the wheel and we set off for the next leg. At first the journey was normal, but from the back row we started getting questions like "When are we going to be there?" or "I'm bored." Our son, in the middle in age between our two daughters, often drives away boredom by annoying everyone around him, provoking and inventing silly things, with the younger of our daughters readily joining in his ideas. So they decided to sing. It's not that I don't like music, but when they repeated "The dog ate the morning meal, quite a small one, the cook hit him for it, on the head with a mallet..." for about the posterior time, I started to seriously wonder if I didn't also happen to have a suitable instrument at hand with which to hit the two in the back. I managed to annoy my wife twice - once by looking at the navigation and not being sure whether I should turn, and the second time by pressing the brake pedal harder... Even if one tries, there are often comments on how I drive..., so I vowed and during the next break, which was connected with feeding the predatory animals, I declared that mine should do it herself, since I don't know how to do it. I changed my mind a bit during the late lunch, as I realised that we were now going to have toll sections, and I had all the money and credit cards with me, but my sweetheart headed straight for the wheel, so after starting the car I just asked her if she was expecting to have to deal with the toll in a while. That inquiry assigned me the role of payment assistant, so I then handed change and collected receipts for the car captain at the toll booths. The journey was fairly uneventful, but as the kilometres ticked by, the children's enquiries as to whether we would be there yet echoed with increasing frequency, as usual. By the time we were scratching the car up the final climb that, according to the navigation, was supposed to bring us to our destination, the query from the back bench had already taken on the character of a constantly repeating loop, so it was indeed time to park in front of the hotel. As we arrived at the place, it was an interesting surprise to find that our friends, who had set off about two hours before us, had arrived at the reception only ten minutes earlier, and yet the pilot of their car is no slouch (more like Niky Lauda). So either my wife, who drove most of the way, is driving like a real racer, but rather we gained time by reducing the number of service stops along the way - we actually only had two, which is why I have to commend our team for not standing on the pee every half hour this time :-)

About the hotel, which was to become our temporary home this time during spring break, we already knew in advance that some time had passed since its construction, and also that it was a little bit more spacious, so for example, going from the room to the restaurant for breakfast would mean a few healthy steps... However, it wasn't until we got there that we found out that the hotel is situated on a slope, has eight floors, the reception and restaurant are on floor number 0, our room is on the eighth floor, and we have to walk a little further to it via the outdoor terrace. In addition, the ski room is on the same floor as our room, about fifty metres further on, and we park the car with all our luggage and ski equipment two floors below the reception. To make things a little better, to get from the lower floors to our rooftop suite and the ski room, we have to use two lifts, one to reach the third floor, walk through a corridor halfway across the hotel, and then use the second lift to climb the remaining elevation to the eighth floor. And let me just add that there is only one not very spacious elevator on each section - so moving around the hotel promised a lot of calories burned by moving and time waiting for the elevator...

As expected, unpacking was an exhausting experience, and the moment I locked the locker door in the ski room and the last bag ended up in the room, I was dreading the moment when we would be throwing those piles into the car again. Fortunately, after the fitness insert with the luggage, it was time for dinner, i.e. to replenish our energy. In addition to that, we were also going to meet the other participants of the ski trip, because besides our long-time family friends, our group this time included another family tandem, i.e. the family of our friends' new friends, who this time inspired us to choose a holiday destination with their tourism business focused on Italy, and well, another family of our friends' friends... don't you know it already? Never mind, there were quite a lot of us adults, plus a horde of children, and I apologized to everyone on the spot that I wouldn't be able to remember their names... which of course happened, so when we meet again, I'll have to repeat the introductory round :-)

The next morning we woke up to quite nice weather, so after breakfast we put on our ski clothes, put on our helmets and headed to the ski room, which could often be called a sweat shop and a diving simulator - because before you get into your buckles you often get pretty sweaty, and buckling in the buckles does not compare to practicing a dive by the necessity of working at depth along with holding your breath. It worked, our boots are on, everyone is pulling their skis and poles... so I also pull my youngest daughter's gear and we head to the cable car. At the ticket office, I've added two more ski pass cards, so I suddenly find that I'm missing more tentacles to be able to successfully pass through the turnstile to the lift and push my daughter in front of me. As the gear and cards poured out of my hands, I wondered again how anyone can enjoy a sport that requires so much stuff and you're still strung up like an astronaut? When we somehow scrambled up to the base point on the hill, where the other lifts to the surrounding slopes were coming out, it was time to split the team - our older girls (wife and earlier born daughter) went off to enjoy the white joy, while I stayed with the two younger athletes and headed with them to train on a lower difficulty slope. At the turnstile of another chairlift, this time a chairlift, I got a little cursed again as I waved two passes and gave my daughter a little more skiing. We arrived at the top station without any major complications, I hooked my daughter into her harness and with the persistent reasoning of my son, a few years older, how to guide our youngest adept on skis, we set off downhill. In a similar fashion, we gave a couple of runs and I kept grumbling about the passes, how I had to fence two in the turnstiles because I couldn't find a suitable hiding place for my daughter's pass on her clothes... It was only during a small refreshment break, however, that my dear half discovered the standard pass compartment on the sleeve of the child's jacket that most ski outerwear has, but which had remained hidden from my eyes and touch until this moment. After placing the card in the right place, the training rides then proceeded quite calmly, with occasional minor collisions and slips, no need to blur here. Even though (or because) I had a horse with straps in front of me on the slope, which occasionally pulled me nicely, I was a bit tired in the evening and my aching back had to be a bit subdued with a few doses of liquor, thanks to which the first day seemed actually relaxing - but I had no idea what was to come.

The next day, the second ski day, was Monday. Waking up and breakfast did not indicate any difficulties, but when we arrived at the ski room, or rather at its entrance, it was swarming with dozens of figures in orange vests. They were young people on a ski course, who, as it happens, had occupied the same hotel on the very same day of our stay, thus clogging the corridors, lifts and the ski room. There were skis and other equipment lying around, probably from the rental shop, as the recklessly rolling youths did not care what damage they caused to the entrusted equipment, the surrounding properties and other persons. I was somewhat annoyed by the orange crowd, so I referred to its members as mandelins in a businesslike manner, hoping that we could minimize contact with this bunch as much as possible, even at the cost of adjusting our own schedules. The key, therefore, was to be at critical locations, such as the ski lodge or the cable car boarding station, preferably before the orange deluge, and failing that, to sit down for a coffee somewhere and wait for the colour of the oranges to sublimate. Fortunately, this time we beat them to the cable car, so we got up the hill before noon. I had my little horse with me again, and he was riding a little better today, so I was looking forward to taking the harness off in a few days and being able to ride like humans with my daughter. Since the kids (like me) like to have a snack after a few rides, we fit in a little while at a pub near the cable car station. I didn't even want to imagine what would happen if the mandelins took over this same restaurant and heaven forbid the local toilets. Fortunately we avoided this disaster, but even without the orange swarm the refreshment station was somewhat full, so we just grabbed a table of sorts and got soft drinks at the bar. I would have liked to have had something a little sharper to make the day a little nicer, but I didn't want to risk getting caught by the local law enforcement while skiing under the influence of alcohol. So after a while, completely sober, I headed to the counter to grab some chips for the kids to snack on. I took a tray, moved over to the part where they were serving the unhealthy snack, and signaled to the guy behind the counter that I would like two... The smiling Italian reassured me that they would be there in two minutes, so I calmly waited. When he brought the basket from the fryer in those two minutes, I was reaching across the counter, but my mistake - the dummy had given away all the fries left and right, and there were none for me. Already slightly dissatisfied, I waited another two minutes. He brought the basket of fries again, but instead of finally waiting for my order to be processed, the creep nicely handed three portions to the young girls who had only just arrived at the counter - with a "sorry, girls" and another wink at me. By now clearly pissed off, I waited for the next batch to finish frying, hoping that some other chicks, the local parish priest or someone else with priority service rights wouldn't show up. Fortunately, that didn't happen, I finally got my fill, but I kept telling myself that I'd rather not visit this restaurant again - which I later complied with, though not of my own volition. After the meal, we were supposed to hit the slopes again, but our youngest was somehow tired, so we agreed that I'd head down to the hotel with her while the others continued to polish the white plains. On the way down the gondola our little one enjoyed the beautiful view and the quiet ride, it was just a bit bumpy at the very end. We then walked the few steps to the ski room, where to my delight there were no crowds, so I sat my daughter on a bench and went to unlock the locker. Before I could do so, however, our little skier reported only briefly that she was sick and - in several waves - her tummy heaved and she dumped all the goodies and drinks she had consumed a few moments before onto the ski room floor. Well, a bit of a precarious situation - me and my daughter in slippers, an unappealing cake on the floor, no bucket with a rag anywhere and the risk of a repeat of the geyser. So I attempted to change quickly so we could get to our room and direct any further potential upheaval to where the flusher or shower could handle it. However, as it happens when you're in a hurry, I couldn't get the other shoe off, the buckle got stuck, and well, as I was pulling, the hard shoe suddenly shot out and created a sizable gash on the shin of my other foot, which immediately swelled up and hurt a bit too. Well, wouldn't you use a hotter word in a situation like that? Of course, a few of them flew out of me, I took off the shoe on the second attempt, rolled my pants above my knee so that they wouldn't stick to my bruised shin, changed my daughter and we headed to the room, with the intention that I would return to the ski room in a while to clean up the nasty mess. Since I didn't want to leave the kid alone, I called my wife to send help or come to base camp myself.

It took a while to get down the hill, but soon my mother appeared in the room and took care of our princess, while I soaked my towels and went to the ski storage to deal with the consequences of the unpleasant incident. As I approached, I was a little unnerved, as orange paint was just spreading around the ski shop. After pushing my way through the crowd to the bench where my daughter had become nauseous, I realized I wouldn't need any more wet towels here. There were several mandelins sitting on the bench, who were quite calmly tapping the ground in their socks while changing, so if there was something disgusting there a moment ago, it is now cleaned up. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that in the meantime someone from the local staff has mopped the floor, but I have the mischievous impression that the cleaning was inadvertently done by participants of an improperly organized ski course - good for you, mandelins :-)

Our daughter shook off the unpleasant incident quite quickly, but the next day we ordered her a diet and a sports day off just in case. Since you already know from the introduction of this report that skiing is not one of the activities I would actively seek out myself, I volunteered to be a babysitter and spent a relaxing day at the hotel. Our princess and I played nicely for most of the day - it was only at this point that I was actually glad she had brought along a travel set of dolls in a rather bulky shipping box - and we also relaxed at times. When the rest of the family arrived in the afternoon, we went on an errand around the hotel to pick up a few odds and ends. We had to walk around a bit longer, however, as we were a bit surprised by the opening hours of the local shops - the shopkeepers here probably only work part-time, taking a long rest after lunch and then looking forward to dinner again soon. However, we did end up buying something and were looking forward to dinner as well. My daughter was feeling quite healthy, so she finally made friends with the children from the other teams on our trip during dinner, so the kids had fun and the adults could have some delicious sleeping pills. However, since the bar ran out of rum during the second round, we had a bit of a restless sleep.

Early the next morning my son showed up at our bedside saying he wasn't feeling well, which was not a good sign. After breakfast, mum wasn't feeling quite up to skiing either, so we all ended up staying at the hotel. I took advantage of another day of sporting time off to start writing up this story while I still had some details vivid in my memory that might merit recording. In the afternoon, my daughters and I went out for a late lunch - we only came across a pizzeria by the cable car, which was also closing, so I quickly ordered two round meals. The first pizza was a regular "Margarita", but the second one I wanted to experiment with - it was called "Americana". When they brought it over, I looked - the base of both versions was the same, but the overseas one had extra fries and sliced sausage on top. It's actually quite disgusting at first glance and I don't really understand that they'd sell you something like that in an Italian pizzeria, but I guess there are customers for that, right? I didn't let the first sight put me off and ate most of it with gusto, while the girls didn't have the courage and just ate the classics, even though they love fries.

Maybe I would have done better not to gorge on that American combination either, because the next morning, the day before I was scheduled to leave, I declared myself a lazar too. I was feeling rather heavy and even a fleeting memory of yesterday's pizza was not pleasant. So I spent the day lounging on the bed in combination with diet, only our two oldest girls went to the slope to use at least a little bit of the funds invested in ski passes and still enjoy the snow and nice weather. I just prayed that the next day we would all be able to make the long journey and arrive home as soon as possible without too much suffering.

The last morning was in the spirit of packing and transporting the pile of little-used sports equipment across the hotel to the car. Come to think of it, I may have traveled a longer distance up and down the hotel during my stay than I did on the slopes a few hundred meters above. So perhaps if we ever visited the same hotel again, which I'm not too keen on doing myself, I could save money on a season pass and not have to lug my skis around. The following car journey then passed quite calmly, actually until I got a bit stuck in front of Vienna, when I again somehow failed to interpret the picture on the navigation display correctly. My passenger and I filled the delay I caused with a factual exchange on the subject of using the sat nav, whereupon I asked for the correct settings to avoid future kuffering and professional discussion - so let's see if that helps. When we crossed the border, some of my travel jitters had fallen away, home was close, and I finally had a proper meal to welcome me back - garlicky and very pork dumplings - it was very good and made me feel a bit better... in fact, it was one of the most enjoyable moments of the trip from my point of view.

What to say in conclusion? I know I'm somewhat biased, and due to the fact that skiing is not one of the activities that are at the top of my favourite list, I can't get over the hardships that this demanding sport brings even under normal circumstances that easily. When I add to that the other complications that came our way this time, I somehow think that this holiday will not be in my memories in the category of the better ones, rather the opposite. Fortunately, we had been in the Canaries for a week about a month ago, which was one of the best holidays from my point of view, so it can also be seen in such a way that we have had two average holidays so far this year - I guess life has to be in balance. I understand that snowsports enthusiasts (and masochists) are willing to sacrifice considerable effort, time and resources to slide down a few times, and that the enjoyment of riding in the Alps is of a slightly higher standard than the experience among the hills of the Jeseníky and Beskydy mountains. We have less than a year before next spring break, and half a year to choose a suitable destination. It will be a difficult choice...

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