Spreading Christmas Cheer

Sometimes people can surprise you in the most unexpected ways. I guess that's what makes it so surprising...

Every Monday throughout the season I will be starting a 3 day
Snowboarding course. The group I start with is the group that
I finish with on Wednesday afternoon. The idea is to take beginners through the basic steps of snowboarding and get them out on their own by the end of the 3 days. The group I started with yesterday was pretty good. A friendly bunch of Englishmen who did reasonably well for their first time.

This afternoon when we met up again, a little girl in the group came up to me and said "Thank you for yesterday James, Merry Christmas." - she then handed me a little card and a chocolate coin. It was the sweetest thing I have seen in years, and for someone so far away from friends and family on Christmas day, it really cheered me up.

Kalkun og skiskolan

In Europe, Christmas Eve is the big day. Presents are opened and lots of food is eaten. It's a strange feeling to be wished a Merry Christmas while thinking... "but it's not Christmas yet" I'm getting used to it though by stuffing a 7kg turkey and roasting up some bacon potatoes. Let's see how this bad boy turns out. Last year in Whistler the turkey turned out pretty damn well- but I had a lot more time to cook then: all day in fact.

The guests are coming in droves now. I have been taking private lessons for several days now and now with the tour groups arriving; the group classes began today. It's nice to finally be working. Thankfully most of the guests are coming from England so the language thing is not an issue, but I have had a couple of Norwegian kids which is proving to be a little difficult. I'm sure it'll get better with time- crazy Norwegians. I am finding it pretty good talking with the Swedes who work here- but sometimes it feels like I will never get Norwegian... even if I wanted to!

I am effectively bankrupt at the moment; thankfully it's only temporary as I have started working and expect my last paycheck from Stockholm in the next few days. I can breathe out again any day now.

Globetrotting Santa

A Tomte is a mythological creature in Scandinavian folklore believed to take care of a farmer's home and children while he was away. They are depicted similarly to garden gnomes: small bearded men with pointed hats.

In 1881 a Swedish magazine published Viktor Rydberg's poem Tomten, which told of a Tomte alone on a Christmas night, contemplating the mysteries of life and death. This poem was illustrated by Jenny Nyström's painting (left)- one of the most famous representations of a Tomte; and clearly a massive influence on the image of the modern day American Santa Claus.

How I was Tomte for a day: I'm not really sure why I was chosen. Maybe I am the tallest? Hopefully it's not that I am the roundest... yet. For whatever reason, I was asked by the ski school to be Santa for the day. I donned the hat, the beard, the red pants and the red coat - I even stuffed an extra coat in for belly filling. It looked pretty convincing really- the hat had these ringlets of hair coming from underneath it that made me look more like a Jewish Rabbi-Santa: but I think that was pretty cool. I then crept up to the children's center and lurked mischievously around until one of the kids spotted me. It's more like a daycare center really: the kids would be 6-7 years old I'd say...

They screamed and pointed and all came running as I ran away behind one of the buildings trying to let out my best booming laughter: "Ho Ho Hoooo!" I went from one side of the building to the other for about 15 minutes or so. Making myself seen and then disappearing again. After some time I came out in the open for all to see and gave a big wave while mustering from my artificial belly: "Hallåååååå! Gooooood Jul! Ho Ho Hoooo!" (Helloooooo! Merry Christmas!)

Just Where In The Hell Are You?

Geilo is a small ski resort town with only 2300 permanent residents - located about half way between Norway's two biggest cities: Oslo and Bergen.

The first English ski tourists visited Geilo as early as 1867. The modernisation of Geilo as a ski spot began in 1935 when one of Norway’s first slalom races was held in Geilo. Geilo was allowed to boom as a resort thanks to the opening of the Oslo-Bergen railway in 1909; this same railway still operates today and plans are made for high-speed upgrades in the near future.

My place is on the north side of the valley (the red marker) while Geilolia skisenter is located on the south side of the Valley (the green marker). In the mornings I get up, take a shower, have some breakfast and maybe check the weather for the day to decide if I am going to wear 15 sweaters or just 12 today.


I then strap on my cross-country skis and head across the valley towards work. There is a cross-country track that runs around the lake.

Cross-country tracks are like roads made by grooming machines on the snow with sunken tracks on the right-hand side (or both). You can ride langrenn without these tracks, but they make a much faster and more efficient trip if you do. A few small islands (bottom left of the picture) are connected by narrow bridges to allow access across the water. It doesn't actually look like water mind you - being that it is frozen and covered in snow - except next to the bridges where you can see thin sheets of ice with painfully cold-looking water running past. For the most part I am pretty solid on these skis, but keep in mind I haven't been doing this very long and it's a surprisingly difficult task to undertake. You are only attached to the ski at the toe and the skis are about 5cm across. To get decent speed you need to launch yourself forward as you press with your poles in a sort of trot. It's hard to explain. Every once in a while I take a fall somewhere along the track, normally when heading from soft to hard snow, going down a slope (both bridges have short slopes right before them) or through the more 'off-beat' sections of the trail. Thankfully I have avoided falling into the lake so far. The bridges are just under a meter across and very slippery. The water is only about 70-80cm deep so if I did fall in; I would probably survive.

Personally, in terms of ways to wake yourself up in the mornings; I would prefer a cup of coffee.

Rest of the Week

The rest of the week was packed with contract signing, ski practice, safety sessions, boot fitting, snowboard crossover (for those who don't ride snowboards) and all the kind of stuff that I had expected earlier in the week. Unfortunately this time I wasn't surprised by beer and spas. Oh well. You can't win every time.

Later that night I was surprised by... a spa. Thursday night the school had arranged for us to meet up some people who work for Nielson- a British tour operator that brings in most of our clients- at the local spa for some swimming, hot tubbing, saunas etc etc. Pretty sweet deal and it was nice to speak English for a while; my brain was starting to hurt from all the Swedish/Norwegian.

From there we headed out to "Off Piste"- our local bar/club and drank/danced it up for a while. Good times.

On Friday during lunch I was surprised with a Happy Birthday song and a big marshmallow cake. A little late I know but they wanted to wait until more people showed up. Pretty sure I heard 'better late than never' quite a few times that day. (My actual birthday was nice, but as everyone else was still to arrive there ended up being 4 of us who went out. Fun!)

This weekend we had a serious professional come in to coach us all. Johan Malmsten is from Sweden (a big plus because I could actually understand him) and has been working for Adventureski here in Norway for over 10 years. In a word; He's good. He started us with basics, as a means to help us teach in future, and then worked us up to short turns and carving techniques. I was amazed with my progress and I will forever more be a massive advocate of coaching/lessons. Over the course of the weekend I went from staggering half-assed down a red slope to riding on one ski, flying down reds, 180's, backward skiing, carving turns, trick turns... you name it. I even raced a guy I work with down to the cafe and actually beat him! Admittedly I had a serious size/weight advantage over the little Peruvian: but still!

Like my new office?

Leap of Faith

Our induction week quickly turned from mucking around and generally having a crazy experience to some seriously huge leaps into our roles as instructors.

Wednesday morning we had set up several activities for some local school kids to occupy themselves for the day; toboggans, slalom courses and a bbq. We all donned our uniforms and lined up next to the parking lot as a coach pulled up and out stepped around thirty nine year-old Norwegian primary school children. I put on my best smile and greeted them as they walked past with their mini skis, their tiny little boots and their minuscule ski poles.

"Goddag, goddag... Valkommna!"

To begin with, my job was quite simple. Keep and eye on the kids, make sure they don't run off, help them get into their boots, fit them for rentals and helmets and generally make sure they are all happy and having fun. We were then split into groups and I suddenly found myself teaching these kids how to ski. Thankfully I was assigned the lowest ability level: but keep in mind these kids were born and raised in a ski town. Most of them have been skiing for many years and here I am teaching them! Somehow I managed to struggle through the morning: sheerly through size and power my skiing is more solid than these kids and I am pretty sure I managed to fool them into thinking I knew what I was doing. Sure a few things popped up; questions were asked and I had no idea what they were saying... but by some miracle I didn't fall over once all morning. Yeah baby.

It was about minus 15 that day so the kids quickly started to freeze up. We headed inside for some varm saft (hot Ribena basically) and that was the end of the skiing part of the day. I made it! From there on we manned the BBQ and gave out hot dogs, set up a snow racer track (little race car things on skis) and had snowball fights with the kids as we slid around the mountain on our butts. Good fun had by all- except one little girl who took particular offense to my snowball antics. Apparently she started to resent the fact that she couldn't hit me with one without being less than 2 meters away so resorted to punches and kicks. Note: a ski boot to the shin hurts; even when wielded by a 9 year old. Seeing a man down I was suddenly inundated by small children - God bless 'em - while taking many fists full of snow to the exposed areas of my face.

Skiing update: Today I did my first red slope on skis. Pow!

First Steps

This week is our induction into Geilolia Ski School- getting all the new instructors together, getting to know one another, learning about the school, rentals, the town itself etc etc. I must say, so far it hasn't exactly been what I had expected...

I expected Monday to be full of informative talks, old videos, safety briefings... that kind of thing.

Monday morning we gathered at the school- about 25 of us in all- for breakfast and a briefing. We were then divided into 4 groups and assigned tasks. Being in pretty fast Norwegian; I happened to miss exactly what this was about but realised that I was part of the 'dinner group' and we were set to work out what we'd all have for dinner and given a budget to go buy supplies from the supermarket.

Once that was done we were all fitted up for cross-country skis at the school. Luckily I had tried it a couple of times as a way to get across the lake to work- so this didn't make me as nervous as it potentially could have. We all loaded up into a bus and started driving. I sat there happily enough chatting to all the new people; where they were from, what they were doing, their experience etc etc. Mostly Swedes, a couple of Norwegians, a German, a guy from Peru and me; the Australian.

About 45minutes later the bus stopped; we all got out. One of us was given a map and the bus drove away. "O-kay..." I thought and started Skiing away hoping someone knew how to read the map. No one did. I was feeling quite happy with myself having only fallen over twice when right at the end I fell a third time trying to walk up a hill. That put me one fall ahead of the next closest faller- a Swede. Damn it!

Eventually we decided we were lost and all stood around looking at the map for about 10 minutes with very little progress... after a short while longer we decided to hell with it and over the next hill there it was: our destination- a big cabin in the middle of no-where. As the cases of beer and wine came out, the outdoor 15 person spa was uncovered- the first day of induction quickly devolved into a pretty awesome "get wasted & get to know each other" session.

At one point we were all set up into a game of hide and seek. The girls went inside for 10 minutes while the guys were outside looking for good hiding places. One guy took one for the team as a decoy and hid up in the snow: making it look like we'd all trampled up there with him. It was about minus 8 degrees outside by the way. We then went back inside through the side door into the kitchen. We turned off all the lights, crept silently in and lay on the floor until the girls went outside through the front door. Once they were clear of the cabin we grabbed a case of beer, slid upstairs and sat comfortably in the warm house while the girls marched around outside for half an hour trying to figure out how 10 guys had completely vanished.

Can you tell that I recently turned 25?

As we went around the dinner table to make the introductions formal I stood up and in my best Swedish said "Hi everybody, I am James; the 25 year old Australian. I can't speak Norwegian and I can't ski either but I have a tendency to do strange things and so here I am. Cheers!"

Even though I was neither the guy who passed out nor the guy getting carried down the stairs to bed, I had a great night and look forward to what else is in store for us. I suspect I won't be getting too many more surprises of such magnitude but who knows. Tomorrow I am teaching some Norwegian kids how to ski. I probably should have learned how to do that myself first.

Crossing Over with James

When people ask me how long I have been snowboarding they generally are pretty shocked to hear that I didn’t even see snow until I was 16 years old. This is just one example of the issues facing an unexperienced Australian instructor trying to ‘fit in’ in Norway.

Most of the people who work here were basically born on the snow. Skiing has been in their families for hundreds of years. Imagine the reaction I get when I say that I had never stepped into a ski boot… until today. One aspect of my new job that I may not have mentioned before now is that; while I am officially a snowboard instructor, I will be expected to teach skiing- and apparently a lot of it.

Unlike Canada, where roughly a third to half of everyone on the mountain is on a snowboard, Europeans like their skiing; a lot. Of the hundred or so people I passed today on the slopes I saw maybe 10 snowboards- if that. I have a feeling the demand for ski instructors might be a little higher than snowboarders. So to summarise: the reality of the situation is that in less than 2 weeks I will be teaching people a sport I have no experience with, in a language I do not speak.

With this fact in mind; this afternoon I promptly strapped myself into a pair of skis, grabbed myself an instructor and crammed in a solid hour of skiing. While I am far from being ready- I have taken the first steps to make this ridiculous situation a little less insane.

Settling In

I arrived in Geilo as safe as can be expected: and am settling in nicely to my new place. Compared to Whistler this place is heaven. Accommodation-wise at least. A decent sized room, my own bathroom and a big shared kitchen/living area. There are 8 rooms in total but so far I am one of the first to move in: we'll see if I get so lucky with house mates...

After spending my first night unpacking and taking it easy I leaped into organisation mode on day 2. Got my lift pass, a Norwegian phone number, new boarding clothes, my new uniform, submitted my visa application, did a few runs of snowboarding (despite having done none of the stretching/preparatory exercise that I had planned - it felt pretty good) and to top it all off I was in the right place at the right time and inadvertently started working because they needed extra help. I wasn't due to start working for another week.

After I finished doing a few easy runs down the slope one of the group organisers came in and grabbed me. Before I knew it I was helping set up and run an activity evening for a conference that was gathered in town for the week. Basically consisting of crazy snow games and group-building activities:

One was a game called Penguin Football: just like soccer only the players were wearing these weird cone things on their faces so they could only see through a little hole. It was hilarious to watch. The ball would be right next to someone's feet and they would stand there looking around randomly like a retarded penguin.

Easily the funniest thing however was the Bungy Run: one end of a bungy cord was tied to a tree while the other was tied to the person via a harness: they had to try and run as far as they could and stab a flag into the ground. They would get to a point where they would be basically horizontal: grabbing onto the ground, digging their feet into footholds as though they were rock climbing along the ground. Obviously once this reached a certain point they would fly backwards along the snow. Some of them shot up into their air and flipped over backwards while others just slid along on their asses. Gold. I laughed so hard.

Aside from laughing at the expense of others, I spend the evening riding around on a snowmobile, drilling poles into the ground, lighting bonfires, laying out deerskin rugs, riding snow bikes down the hill, sliding around after way-ward soccer balls in the snow. You know. Typical first day on any job ;)

I have a good feeling about this place.

"Any double amputee who enjoys taking a dive out of the window of a moving train is okay in my book"

I’m mixing it up this time by not making excuses for my lack of entries into my blog. Or did I just do that? Anyway. My last weekend in London started out as to be expected; a lot of drinking in strange places, getting my 3-day-old jacket stolen (the 3rd to disappear in my travels) and getting lost in the burrows of London.

The tandem vomit fest that Ben and I undertook for about 8 hours on Sunday morning however, was not on my initial itinerary. Through a process of deduction we have narrowed it down to dodgy chicken from a classy place called FCKF at 2am. Maybe the phonetics of the name would have warded off wiser men.

Replace the ipecac with chicken burgers and remove the volition and it would end up like an all night version of this: Family Guy

With this in mind it would seem that fate has a cruel sense of humour- the following evening as I was crippled with a variety of pains in front of the television I was treated to a lovely program called Human Guinea Pigs – picture jackass meets a science show. Through a mixture of a non-working remote control, aches, nausea and general shock: I was trapped in front of 4 young English men attempting to consume two kilograms of tripe (boiled cow stomach) in under 12 minutes. The first of the 4 was staring into a bucket within 3 minutes while one of them actually managed to finish off the lot. In my fragile state you can imagine what this did to me, but miraculously I didn’t join in the regurgitative festivities.

Still fragile some 48 hours later… I bagan my journey to Geilo, Norway. Well aware of the lengthy waiting periods I faced in transit I grabbed the most interesting book I could find off the shelves at the airport without knowing too much about the book’s content.

This book was one of the funniest things I have read in a very long time. I couldn’t put it down. In fact; while not the longest book in history, knocking off an entire novel in half a day is something I can’t honestly say I have pulled of; ever. Having said that- naturally this book would have to be full of disgusting practical jokes, gruesome disembowelment stories and of course- the all-too-familiar symptoms of incurring dysentery while in south-east Asia. If the imagery wasn’t enough to rattle my fragile soul… the fact that the same bruised and battered muscles that I had overworked in the early hours on Sunday morning are the very same muscles one primarily uses in laughing constantly for 6 hours… was surely sufficient to do so.

“I even took a shine to trolley man – he may have been an abusive violent alcoholic, but any double amputee who enjoys taking a dive out of the window of a moving train is okay in my book.”

David: you in particular would crap yourself reading this book.


Paul Carter – Don’t tell mum I work on the rigs. She thinks I am a piano player in a whorehouse.

Big props to the pilot for landing on ICE by the way. Sitting here on the train just under 3 hours away from my destination – let’s see how Norway plans on treating me.