Brunni

Today didn't start out too well, with the camp director telling us that most of the resort was closed today for skiing due to very high avalanche danger. Actually, one of the other camp partipants was telling me about his avalanche experience yesterday when he and the instructor were going off piste. They were resting and heard a rumbling sound and saw two avalanches approaching them, one on the left and the other on the right, at which point the instructor said that it might be a good time to head on down.

As a side note, both the participant (from Austria) and instructor (from Switzerland) learnt how to ski when they were kids, and had school ski camps every couple of years, even if they lived in a city. My Swiss housemate told me that the camps were even paid for if you were from an underprivledged family. I guess it's like swimming, we all had to have swimming lessons at school back home. Although, I happen to think that swimming is a slightly more important skill to have than skiing. Having said that, I do know people in Melbourne who don't know how to swim at all. So there must be some rare Swiss people who can't ski, right?

Anyway, yesterday, the risk of avalanches was at four on a scale which goes up to five and where it is usually two or three, so some of the lifts weren't running, mostly the higher ones since skiers can trigger avalanches, but some of the lower ones also weren't running since they are in avalanche paths. Today, the risk must have been five, so they decided it was safer to close the whole north side of the valley and spend the day artificially setting off avalanches by helicopter bombing. We could hear the explosions all day long and saw a few in a evening on the way to the pub.

So skiing today was confined to the south facing slope, where there is only one lift and run, and it didn't start out too promising, as it was snowing and fairly windy and there were heaps of people. But the sun came out mid-morning and it was lovely, particularly since we hadn't seen any sunshine since Monday morning. All the more experienced skiiers went playing in the deep snow, leaving the slope fairly empty.

Another side note here, I still find it strange that the sun sits to the south of the sky in the northern hemisphere, meaning the south facing slopes get more sun and are thus less snow and aren't as good to ski on. This is where the brand The North Face gets its name from. I wonder if people learn directions here by facing south and then knowing west is right and east is left.

Speaking of things which are different from back home, I did not realise that we have different world maps at home. I can't remember what we were discussing, but somebody was drawing the continents to illustrate a point, at which point they confused me because of the order they were drawing them in. Supposedly, most world maps have America on the left, then Europe, Asia and Australia is in the bottom right corner and this is how most people see the world. I'm used to seeing Australia near the center, with Europe and Asia to the left and America to the right.

Anyway, here is a photo of Engelberg taken on the cable car on the way down from the slopes. The building to the right with the tower is the Benedictine Monastery, now a school. According to the resort's winter brochure, the founder of the monastery heard an angel's voice telling him to build a "place dedicated to God" and when it was finished, while they were thinking of a name for the monastery, they heard angel's voices and looking up, saw a choir of angels and that is where the name Engelberg, mountain of the angel, comes from.