France Round 1: Tignes

                My last post finished up with me leaving Spain about a month ago, so I’ll begin from there. My flight pulled into the gate at Frankfurt Airport and I got off and walked outside, loving the lack of airport security within the Schengen area. After a 2 hour flight sitting next to a guy with terrible English, I was feeling pretty confident about my German, and was excited to be back in a country where I could somewhat understand what people were saying to me. I got on the bus to Darmstadt for the millionth time, but it was only this time that I found out I could have been getting a student discount all along. Upon arrival in Darmstadt, and stoked about the 4 euros that I saved for having a Pomona ID with no expiration date, I treated myself to Germany’s greatest cuisine, the döner kebab.

                My entire purpose for returning to Germany was to apply for a visa extension so that I could stay in the Schengen area (central and western Europe) for an extra 6 months. I had an appointment scheduled with the consulate two days later, and had quite a bit of paperwork to get done in the meantime. Somewhere in the midst of that paperwork, I started thinking to myself, “fuck it, this isn’t worth the time, energy, or money necessary to get this visa.” And I booked a cheap flight from Lyon, France, to Marrakech, Morocco, deciding that I would skip my visa appointment and just get out of the Schengen area for 90 days instead. I calculated it out so that I would have just enough time to go to France for a couple days, travel around Greece with my sister, and then have a few legal days left to collect my belongings which I’ve left at various friends’ houses around Europe. While I waited for my 90 day visa to reset, I would split my time between Morocco, the Balkans, and Israel.

                I had already been planning on going to France to ski with a friend, Alexi, who lives in Lyon, so it worked out perfectly that there was a cheap flight from there to Morocco. The next day I hopped in a blablacar and got dropped off in Chambery, France, which was right on Alexi’s way from Lyon to the mountains. With absolutely no idea where we were going, who was coming, or where we were staying, I waited in the train station for Alexi to pick me up.

                Half an hour later I saw the giant, bearded, smiling Frenchman that is Alexi walk into the train station. I jumped into the van which was piled to the brim with 6 people, snowboards, gear, booze, and a whole array of traditional alpine French foods including raclette, some sort of cabbage sausages, and I don’t even know what else. But not baguettes, because in France you only buy baguettes from the bakery each morning so that they’re always fresh.

                It turned out that the family of one girl in our group, Gladys, owned a cabin in Tignes, one of the most famous ski areas in the Alps. By some amazing streak of good luck, I had somehow, for the second time in a month, found myself on a ski trip in the Alps with someone who owned a cabin on the slopes.

                We woke up the next morning, had some fresh baguette for breakfast (these bakeries really are something that America could use more of—freshly baked bread in the morning is infinitely better than that shit white bread that we eat with breakfast in the states), and headed out to the slopes. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate and the entire mountain was covered with fog so thick that it was impossible to know whether I was still on the piste or headed straight towards a 1000ft cliff. By the end of the day I was bruised up from hitting giant invisible icy bumps, losing both skis, and tomahawking down the mountain several times, but I was looking forward to raclette for dinner and a better day tomorrow.

                An amazing cheese-filled meal and a whole bunch of beers later, we fell asleep and woke up the next morning to a magnificent sight: sunshine! We wolfed down some breakfast and hit the slopes as quickly as possible. I spent the rest of the day being absolutely stunned by the breathtaking beauty of the Alps.

Cyprien and I headed up the top of the glacier, a journey spanning about 4000 feet of elevation, resulting in some of the most incredible views in the Alps and an exhilarating nonstop 4000 vertical foot ski run.

The rest of the day was spent exploring as much of Tignes and Val D’Isare as we possibly could in one day (so, maybe a tenth of it, if that). The conditions were phenomenal and the vast alpine landscape, entirely above tree line with nothing but white fluffy snow and monstrous jagged rocky peaks, was otherworldly.

That evening we returned to the cabin, completely exhausted but still full of adrenaline, and had an amazing meal of French sausages and a dish that was something similar to mac and cheese, but with little square bits of pasta instead of macaroni and much better cheese. And, more importantly, bacon. We went to sleep happy and woke up the next morning still full of post-adrenaline excitement from the day before. Unfortunately the ski trip was over, though, and we headed back towards Lyon, dropping me off at the airport on the way so that I could catch a flight to my next adventure: Morocco.