On Saturday, the 30th of January, we set out to Harrachov by train. Why? The answer is quite obvious – because of our compulsory ski course, which is being arranged for 1 year students every year.
Harrachov can be found in the north of the Czech Republic, in the Liberec Region. On the early morning, we all met at the train station in Benešov. On time! Luckily, our skiis were taken in Mr. Švarc´s (one of our PE teachers) car, so we had to take and grab only our backpacks. Lucky of us! After five hours of travelling, we arrived to our destination. On the way, we were spotting how surroundings started to change. We could already see more and more snow around. We even noticed one the Harrachov´s slopes to Černá hora, covered with snow, but surprisingly without skiers. So we began to look forward to fantastic skiing experiences.
When we got there, we were accommodated in the pension Sunski. There were already prepared rooms for each of us. Our room had its own bathroom and a kitchen. What luxury!
Then we were divided into 3 teams according to our skiing skills. Basically it meant that the most talented of us belonged to the team No. 1 of Mr. Tomáš Masár. Advanced skiers made a group No. 2 under the guidance of an instructor Mr. Matěj Rašovský and the luckiest ones became members of Mr. Michal Švarc´s squad.
We went downhill skiing every day. In the morning we were forced to wake to have a warm-up - not everybody liked that. We were skiing especially on the downhill course called Rýžoviště where we usually got by ski bus. It was fun even to get on it as there were other people hell-bent on squeezing onto the bus! However, we went cross-country skiing a few times, too. Torture for plenty of us! Those who were really eager for skiing and wanted to improve their skills could join “evening skiing” on the course “Osvětlenka”.
During the whole week the weather wasn't very good. Actually, it kept us surprised every day. One day it was raining, the other day we woke up and there was new snow everywhere. Then it started melting a bit, so a slippery icy surface made skiing even more difficult.
Every room was assigned work to prepare a programme every evening - something interesting, funny for the rest of us so we could spend time together and have fun. We also had to act out some selected fairy tales such as “Snowhite & ...”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Little Gingerbread Cottage” (???), take photos of some of Harrachov´s “landmarks” and present them. On Thursday evening, we had a disco and after that, we were allowed to go outside the pension to have a snowball fight.
On the very last day we all participated in a competition – ski race. Ondřej Květ and Alena Urbanová came first in the men´s and ladies´ categories of slalom. Congratulations!
On the whole, this course was very demanding, but on the other hand, there was a lot of fun and we all really enjoyed it. The only and last thing to survive was our journey back to our home town on Fri 5th February. Farewell Harrachov!