Felt like the first scene of ‘Banged Up Abroad’ on the Discovery Channel. Although nothing illegal was being undertaken as we got off the EasyJet flight, a couple of tens of kilos above the weight limit for luggage. There was an aura in the air that perhaps one member of our family would get rejected at the Swiss border security.
For this to make any slight sense, you must know of the legislation of the Schengen Treaty of which just about all European countries signed. It means that once you enter as a non European Union citizen, you are only allowed ninety days within a one hundred and eighty day period to stay without a visa. Because I’ve been backpacking for the past five and whatever months, arriving into Geneva airport, I had used up eighty five of my ninety days. This is part of the reason I spent so much of my time in the UK, as it isn’t part of the treaty. The issue that we saw was that because I was spending more than five days in France, they wouldn’t let me in due to risk of overstaying my welcome. So we rock up to Geneva airport and the guy checks the passports all handed in at the same time. And he gives them back to us. How good!
Megéve. For the first couple of days I think we met only one person who spoke English as their first language. The place was scattered with Swiss and French. I was pretty over the whole cultural thing but Mum and Dad loved that to walk to the gondola to get to the ski slopes, we had to go out of our hotel in the town centre whilst the church bells were roaring. Church bells were a nice cultural added touch to the place although they certainly weren’t appreciated banging every hour throughout the night.
Apart from meeting me, the family came over to Europe to enjoy a white Christmas. It didn’t snow on Chrissy day however we did get to click into our bindings and have a shred. Chrissy was weird having cold weather and not being able to wake up and walk around in a pair of boardies all day sinking beers and cold meats.
The views of the surrounding alps were incredible. Never have I seen such sheer slopes surrounding a ski resort. Was definitely a little bit of a different scenery to Thredbo.
Although not my favourite place I’ve ever skied, it was nice spending Chrissy somewhere different. Village was lovely and was phenomenal to get the skis on again after going a year without. Moving onto Meribel next which is supposed to be a much bigger mountain.
Merry Christmas x