6 – 10 February 2020

After the previous fiasco of Liz being stuck in Berlin courtesy of Air France we had vowed never to fly Air France again. Stupidly (but not out of character in terms of travel arrangement track record over the last few months) Anthony had forgotten about this when booking Zurich and had forsaken the reliable, environmentally friendly and no-longer-on-strike train system to fly Air France via Paris to Zurich for the princely saving of 30 euros. 

True to form and history, the emails from Air France started flowing on Tuesday afternoon warning of upcoming disruption due to strike action from Parisien air traffic controllers on the planned day of his flight. We suspect the reason for the strike was that they hadn’t had a strike day in a few weeks and the snow forecast was particularly good in France that day and enjoying fresh powder was more enticing than directing air traffic. 

After 2 hours on the phone, Anthony eventually managed to move from Air France to KLM who actually planned to fly that day (how novel), albeit at 6am and via Amsterdam (not exactly on the way, but at least it would get him there). The alarm clock had a 3 in front of it when it went off, the bus a ‘4’ and boarding a ‘5’ – not ideal considering he didn’t have to be in Zurich until that evening. 

Ultimately, ground staff in Marseille helped allay fears that he might have too much time to himself  in Zurich by delaying the departure out of Marseille, resulting in a missed connection in Amsterdam and allowing Anthony the pleasure of an impromptu 4 hour layover in the wonderful Schiphol Airport. 

Despite a high level of internal whinging, Anthony ultimately touched down in Zurich some 12 hours after leaving home in Aix and met with Dave. (You could almost do a return trip on the train in that amount of time). 

After a quick stop at home we headed out, Dave showing off his new city (somewhat briefly), before we got down to the important business of catching up over a few beers. Later in the afternoon Matty joined us from Geneva and we made our way from the bar to the restaurant for some delicious but reassuringly expensive Swiss steak and red wine. Later still Dan came for a quick catch up and Marky snuck in through the back door, making the wise decision to catch up on some sleep rather than make up for the 6 hours of lost drinking time he had missed. 

The forecast for the weekend looked amazing. Blue skies, no wind and warm temperatures (way too warm for this time of year) on top of a base which had grown by over a metre in the last few days. Blue skies and fresh powder beckoned on probably our favourite resort in Europe. It would be our first time back as a group in 13 years. Broad expanses of free riding awaited us. We had even arranged a guide for a day to show us around. The unasked question ‘could we still handle it???’ 

After the excesses of the previous evening, I was not sure. 

We somehow managed to pack 4 adults, snowboards and bags into Dave’s VW and hit the road for the easy, 90 minute drive to Laax. 

To complete our trip down memory lane, we had booked to stay at ‘Riders Palace’ – which was effectively an upmarket youth hostel for snowboarders. Over the last decade or more Riders Palace had received a facelift and a new name. The Riders Hotel was now catering as much to adults as to millenials and now included a decent restaurant, great breakfast and gym/games room (perfect for table football and table tennis championships) to go with its busy bar. Perfect (provided our room was far enough from the bar to let us go to sleep at 11pm when the bar was just getting going). 

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Over the next 3 days Laax did not disappoint. Both the weather and the snow was as good as the forecast and we were soon at 3000m carving fresh lines through the powder that awaited us even just off the sides of the established pistes. By the afternoon we were venturing further afield and finding steeper and more challenging routes through the massive free ride area. 

One of the highlights was our time with Marco, our guide for Saturday morning, who took us hiking and exploring some different areas of the mountain with incredible fresh descents that we never knew existed. Challenging and so much fun. 

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By Sunday afternoon we were exhausted, satiated and a little bit broken. We had 3 great days riding, some fun nights and heaps of time to catch up. What more could you ask for for a long weekend? 

Meanwhile back in Aix Liz and the girls were enjoying a ladies weekend with a sleepover (another multi-lingual friend named Anouck) and pizza making.

Sunday night was back in Zurich building lego with Tahlia, enjoying a great Sunday night dinner with Lara and somewhat guiltily, watching videos of Ellie’s first gymnastic competition as they were sent by a team mate’s parents to us (yes, of course we’re here for the kids, but it turns out that we are also here for time with friends and fresh powder, so a parent cheering on at Ellie’s first comp took a backseat to this trip). From the look of the videos, Ellie did an awesome job landing her new moves (including a backwards flip off the high bar where we may or may not have been concerned that she was going to land on her head) and survived the competition unscathed. (Side note: there will be another gym comp later in the year, there may not be another weekend to go riding with friends in Laax. Who could disagree with our priorities???) 

The following promised to be another airline induced marathon. This time Storm Ciara was wreaking havoc across Western Europe and my flight had be cancelled, rerouted and rescheduled. The day started with a catch up with the PwC Zurich office at 8am, followed by a day meandering around both Zurich and Paris airports before arriving at home some 13 hours later. 

The train could have been there and back twice, and with less carbon emissions. When will we learn????