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| The guy on the left spoke a few words Swedish and was very keen on Hammarby, a Swedish soccer club. |
We had quite a few visitors in those early years and this particular incident happened when our friend J came to visit from Sweden. He had come for work so he really only had one free day to do something fun and he said he was dying to go skiing. It was a beautiful day for it so we set off relatively early, or as early as you can with three adults and a three-year old and a three-month-old baby and all the skiing stuff. After having driven down from our mountain and half way through the city I asked hubby if we had brought the snow chains since there was quite a bit of snow. He stopped the car to have a look and sure enough we had forgotten them.
There was a nice playground nearby so me and the kids and the pram etc were dropped off there and hubby promised to try to make it quickly back to the house. At first we had a good time on the swings with another dad who was there with his little girl. They were from Iran and he told me his life story while we were sitting there. However after about an hour and a half it was getting cold and toilet visits were requested, so needless to say I was getting a little anxious. My new friend said he had to go home and that I was more than welcome to come with him. It was very tempting but since this was before the time of mobile phones I couldn't let hubby know where we were in that case so I decided to stay in the playground.
After another uncomfortable half hour hubby arrived. By this time I was furious and yelled at him. I asked him what had taken so long and he looked a little surprised. It turned out that they had picked up the chains very quickly but when they were driving down the mountain the muffler had come off and they had to quickly go via a Midas shop and see if they could get it fixed on the spot. They got it done in record time and they were actually quite pleased at how quickly everything had gone. When I vented my spleen they both looked surprised and hurt as if they wanted to say "But all you had to do was sit here in a playground and enjoy yourself"! As if, in -10 C and wondering what I would do if they didn't turn up. I hadn't even taken my purse so I had no money and I knew nobody in that area (well, aside from my new friend but he was gone by then).
Anyway we packed ourselves in again and set off for Chamrousse and a good thing we had the snow chains. We arrived at the station about an hour later. We had been invited to my friends Nizou's apartment for lunch and for me to have a base with the baby since I was not going to ski. Unbeknownst to us she had asked her husband, who had a restaurant, to bring home French delicacies, like frog's legs, and snails, and other goodies, so our foreign friend could have a chance to taste all these. You can see that it was impossible to rush through this meal and it really was very nice with the right wine with the right dish etc., but the result was that the boys didn't hit the slopes until just before three o'clock and they usually close at five.
I have to fast forward now to our return trip. I don't know how the actual skiing went since I didn't go, but I can imagine that it was a bit cumbersome to ski with all that food and drink in your stomach. They had also met some of our friends up there who had invited them for drinks after the skiing. They lived on the road down to Grenoble so we would be passing their house.
We all got ourselves into the car and started driving down. It is always a bit congested since everybody wants to get down at the same time. Hubby then remembered a shortcut he had been on the previous summer when he was hiking so we took this little road that would get us down to the main road before everybody else. The only problem was that during the skiing season it was made into a blue ski slope so as we started driving we relatively quickly started sinking down deeper and deeper into the snow. Hubby tried to reverse back up the hill, but that action just shot the snow chains off the wheels.
Hubby stopped the car and somehow we got out, maybe through the windows and then we dragged/carried the kids back up the slope to a little house where we saw a light. Luckily it was the control room for the big snow machines that go over the ski slopes at night and prepare them for the next day. The lady could almost not make the call to her husband who was driving one of these machines she was laughing so hard when she tried to explain that these English (!) people had driven a car with babies in it down a ski slope..!! Anyway, her husband promised to come and pull us out when he was finished and he did. Meanwhile we were welcome to wait in a tiny room where the drivers kept their boots and jackets etc..So we did that, with nothing to play with or read and nothing to eat or drink, we sat there for well over an hour. I think the adults were crankier than the kids. Our three-year-old son was very excited about the big monster machines though and the baby was sleeping, so they were happy.
After having been pulled back up to the main road we drove down in silence and completely forgot our after-ski drinks invitation and continued home. As soon as we got in the phone started ringing and it was our friends ringing to see if we were alive. They had been sitting there for hours waiting for us, worrying, and even calling the hospitals. Hubby told them briefly what had happened but I don't think he went into details about him deliberately choosing the short cut that turned out to be a ski slope.
Our friend J might not quite have gotten the day of skiing that he had hoped for but he got something that he could dine out on for years to come. Hubby saw him recently in Uppsala and he brought it up still giggling about it. The funny thing is that Hubby keeps on forgetting about it, and has to be reminded.
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