Thousands of parents in Bavaria have always been looking forward to a day: the day when their children are old enough to take a ski course. The vision of the future, that you hand your own children over to the ski instructor Toni in the morning at the lift wrapped up as Michelin men and only pick them up after the lifts have closed completely exhausted, keeps you alive. You then give them a schnitzel with fries and put them to bed, where they fall asleep immediately thanks to the all-day supply of fresh air and the high dose of daylight.
On days like this, you can slide down the slopes yourself without having to clean snotty noses every five meters or pick up lost ski poles. Because that’s what Toni is doing now. Toni also teaches the children the plow and parallel turns, while the adults are finally allowed to go to the toilet on their own.
In Bavaria it feels like every village has a ski club. You don’t even have to live on the mountain. Shortly after Regensburg, for example, ski lifts are installed at the gentlest hint of a hill. However, of course, they are all standing still. This puts a Bavaria-wide parental relief program in danger, because nothing else is the nationwide provision of ski courses for children from the age of three. At that age, most of them don’t even hit their own mouths with a spoon, but do they race down the mountain with a shot? Even parents who usually buckle their child in their tricycle will relax on the slopes.
Because a day in the snow goes by quickly, and that’s important in the cold and gray season. In summer you simply slide down the water slide in the outdoor pool 20 times, alternately eat fries and ice cream and suddenly the day is over. In winter you read 20 books, vacuumed eight times and played a hundred times before the sun even came up.
Unless it snows. Then you simply do exactly the same as in summer, only with the Zipfelbob on snow. But it’s not snowing. So what will become of the many ski clubs and desperate parents? In Schwandorf in der Oberpfalz they are now offering a “dwarf mat course”. The little ones learn to ski on white carpets. It probably won’t fill the day, but at least the kids can do it when they’re old enough to be sent up to Toni on the glacier. As long as there are still glaciers.