Winter in the City - TriCity

On the way to Ski Land :)

Long time, no see :-) Unfortunately I have experienced close encounter with not one, but two dental surgeons. As a result, I am growing bruise on my cheek and haven't had any solid food for a week :( Only comfort I have at the moment is that I can catch up with my ice cream eating :-) My biggest worry is that this Thursday is Fat Thursday and i won't be able to eat donuts.

Train stop covered in snow - it is winter time!

Anyhow, back when I looked like myself I wanted to explore more winter activities that you can enjoy in, or around TriCity. As I wanted to get out of the city I decided I will go skiing. Actually I decided I am going skiing about 2 months ago. It just took that long to moan somebody into coming with me. Fortunately volunteer was found before all the snow melted.

Winter landscape, what else would you need?

There are few ski slopes around TiriCity, with the closest being around half hour drive to about hour. (there is one ski slope in TriCity, more specifically in Sopot, but due to TriCity microclimate, might be closed if winter is not very wintery :) All of the ski slopes offer ski rental, tutoring and i am pretty sure all of them have bar or some kind of facility to eat in. Also, some have more than one slope and are artificially snowed, but all of them have some sort of skilift.

Winter branches

I choose to go to the closest one, not only because it is closest, but also because it seemed to be the least crowded. I did brag how I skied when I was a child in order to find somebody to come with. But truth to be told I had skis on one time in my life before and was skiing on a hillock so small that you wouldn't know that it was a hillock if you weren't told. However I didn't expect it to be any difficult, after watching all the winter adds where everybody is a professional skier, even cartoon characters. I was convinced is easy as pie.

Icy road, and sunbathing dog

It is nice to get out of town once in a while, especially in winters. TriCity has a special microclimate. Everywhere around is winter, but in TriCity is autumn, or if we are lucky - spring :-) so I really enjoyed the drive and the views. However when I got to the ski slope my heart stopped and I was ready to run back home, and if it wasn't for my pride I would. The slope looked much steeper and higher than on their website, it was also much busier than I expected.

Ski slope from the bottom

Let's just say that I turned out to be the best at putting shoes on and off, the other stuff - not so much. Just to get to skilift I had to use help of everybody and everything around me: fellow skier, their ski poles, wooden fence, workers, plastic fence. At one point I wished i could crawl. And all of that before I even got to the top of the slope.

Ski slope - the middle

Once I got to the top I was even more scared. It was much higher that I thought it would be. As I proceeded down I almost skied of the slope path into a ditch, also whenever I wanted to stop I was only gaining speed. The only way I figured out how to stop was to throw myself on the ground.

Ski slope - the top

As a result after 20 min of me trying ski I started to feel as if I went swimming not skiing. Not only all my cloths were wet. I had wet hair and was getting wrinkled skin of my fingers from constant water. I can truthfully say that 5-year-old skis better than me. After making that observation you cannot wonder that after one downhill ride I was done and ready to go home.

Funny enough, when that trip convinced me I am clearly not made for skiing, everyone wants to go skiing :-) Go figure!