Skiing frenzy

In order to start new year in proper manner me, my brother and my two high school friends decided to go skiing. As I am pretty sure most of you are not interested in description of what I did on 1.1.2010, I guess you can take this as a recipe for cheap skiing.

We decided to go to the Slovakia's highest mountains - Tatras. There we planned to ski on one of the longest (if not the longest) ski slopes in my home country at Strbske Pleso resort. Of course, there are many other options to ski in Slovakia but me and my brother had very good experience from past and my friends were glad to tag along. Furthermore, in combination with special promotion with Slovakrail (personal rail transport provider in Slovakia) it was by far the cheapest option to ski on New Years Day.

In price of EUR 27 you purchase return ticket from any railway station in Slovakia, return ticket for Tatras' electric tram servicing cities in Tatras region, one day skipass (separate EUR 5 deposit is paid for skipass), 20% discount on rental of skiing gear in local rental shop and a tea at ski hut on top of the ski slopes (those less experienced can receive 10% discount on ski school). Similar promotions are available for various ski resorts across Slovakia (different conditions apply) and can be found on Slovakrail website.

Main idea was to go skiing on "day after" immediately upon opening of chairlifts when everybody will sleep off long celebrations (it also means that our celebrations were of very limited nature :) ) and we would enjoy empty slopes. Our predictions came through (at least for first two hours) and we enjoyed high quality skiing and incredible weather - perfect inversion. The best feeling is when you ski above clouds - little more worisome is feeling you have when skiing into that cloudy milk...

Anyway after good five hours of skiing we jumped on train and returned home tired like dogs (who wouldn't be after spending these hours cutting curves with knees bent). Wonderfully eventful day provided us with much needed activity after days of abundance and price made it even more awesome. One day ski pass outside of this promotion costs EUR 26.5 during high season and EUR 22 since Jan 4, 2010 till early March (outside of season one day skipass costs EUR 16). Hope at least somebody will find inspiration in this (at least Czech ski resorts and railways operators :)