Weekend #2: Valfréjus, France

Week two of classes was a lot different from week one. I actually had class MTWR, what a drag. It's kind of weird not getting out of class until 8pm some nights. But the weeks go by so quickly since we only have class four days a week.

So this past weekend we decided to go skiing/snowboarding in the French Alps. I had never done either before, so it was interesting, haha. Our train left at 6am on Friday, but some people had to leave at 9pm the night before because of problems with making reservations. On the way, our first train had brake problems (we've had train problems both weekends so far, I hope this doesn't become a trend), delaying us about an hour and a half and making us miss our second train. We finally made it to Modane around 4pm, and took a taxi up a mountain to where we were staying in Valfréjus. This was the view from our window -

We didn't really do anything Friday night, just went and rented our equipment for the next day. Some people took their boards out and snowboarded on the closed slopes until they got chased off by a snowmobile, but I waited until the morning.

We got an early start on Saturday morning. I started off snowboarding (or attempting to), and I did that for about 3 hours or so. After lunch, I decided I should switch to skiing, since I wasn't getting the hang of snowboarding. With zero lessons and few tips, I got down the green slope on my first try without falling! I skied the rest of the day, and felt like I got the hang of it fairly well. I actually tried to go down a blue slope at the end of the day, but I wiped out right at the beginning and decided to call it quits.

We left on Sunday around 1pm and didn't get back to Metz until 8am Monday. We had a layover in Strasbourg from midnight to 6am. And apparently the station there closes from 1am to 4:45am. Perfect, right? So we found the one restaurant that was open (although apparently they were just about to close, and stayed open an hour later just for us), then found a bar to hang out in until they closed at 3:30am. After that, we just walked around and tried to stay warm until 4:45am. Once the station opened, we found a bench and slept as best as we could until we could board our train at 6am. Needless to say, everyone was exhausted when we got home, and I still haven't caught up on my sleep.

So overall, Ski Trip '11 was a success!

This weekend: Berlin