(Almost not) skiing in Maribor

After much ado, huge snowfall and freezing weather which swept across European continent, I have decided to continue my tradition of skiing in Maribor, Slovenia. Although little off the map of usual ski loving population Mariborske Pohorje hosts FIS women slalom competition (‘Zlata Lisica’). The whole arrangement is very comfortable for me as I exploit good heartedness of my friends from Maribor, whom i met during my stay in Rotterdam, Netherlands as an exchange student.

Of course as usual with my travels complication caught up with me fairly soon. This time I hit the bump even before start of my journey. My perfect plan of 14 hours train ride (with four aimless wandering hours in Murzzuschlag incorporated) from Prague to Maribor fell apart as a house of cards. Of course, that also meant half a day less of skiing so instead of two full days I faced reality of mere 1.5 days of skiing. Anyway, thanks to train delay in Germany I would have missed my next connection in Vienna and as such I would have been forced either to spent a night in there or take a later train. Of course I choose the more comfortable way and enriched my brother's Friday evening by complaining about everything, eating all what was left in his fridge and forcing him to prepare crepes for us as a dinner of last resort.

This whole delay thing turned out to be sort of a blessing in disguise as 2 hours spent on Vienna Meidling train station (i.e. nine platforms without any station building or heated waiting room – in fact the least equipped train station I had pleasure to spent time on - including all those Chinese barnhouses) were maximum of what I could have taken in below zero weather. Vision of four hours of wandering around Murzzuschlag in case my original train would make it was pushed deeply in the dumpster of memories.

Making long story short – after my arrival to Maribor we went for afternoon skiing session. Heavy snowfall helped to provide us with the edge between lacklustre experience and memorable ski day. Shortly after dinner we gathered all who is important in Maribor and went for night of sports and hot wine. Plezka was word of the day as my hosts decided to introduce me to small wooden stool nailed to c. 60cm piece of old ski (meaning ski without any curvature) - home made skibobs we should say.

First ride was introductory (for me who was only one not familiar with this concept) with lights for night skiing on (yes we did ‘skate’ on the main slopes in between legs of skiers). Second ride was planned after some drinking session at skiing hut with the loudest music (not that we did not drink during first ride). At this hut we earned reverence of ‘Sef’ (a.k.a. the boss) to such an extent that he started giving us food for free. Of course our continuous ordering of 10 kuhano vino (hot vine) and liquer-weak colourful form of blue berry schnapps (Berentzen sort of mouth glue) greatly helped our cause.

We joined or better forced ourselves into attention of private party held at this hut. It turned out to be party of the most popular TV channel in Slovenia (POP TV). We danced shouted and drank till late late night and when all slope maintenance machines finished their work we tested our skating / sliding skills on newly woven manchester :)

Speeding downhill on wooden seat with no breaks (other than your feet and mouth), no steering mechanism (besides your feet and careful shifting of weight) and no lights (other than the stars and moon) turned out to be great fun. Of course prudent of you would argue that after litres of hot wine anything dangerous and crazy would look like great fun. Believe me, the sight of Maribor and its lights from the top of the slope was all worth it. With snow in any conceivable part of you clothing we went to bed happy and cold.

Next day few of us followed initial plan through and went for skiing as early as possible. We fully exploited fresh snow and newly built gondola (built only and exclusively because the old one literally fell down in fall last year - pun intended) as well as newly cut Pisker ski slope (one year old 40m wide ski slope with ultra quick chairlift and virtually no people). The monotonous up and down cycle was occasionally interrupted by hot tea breaks (somehow after excesses of previous night we could not muster any desire to drink hot wine). Monotonous because we literally had to hop on the chairlift as there were no people in line whenever we bothered to ski down :) We will see what will happen to this paradise when plan of prolonging Pisker ski slope to the bottom of Pohorje will be followed trough this summer. It will end its seclusion from main slopes of Pohorje (Stadion and Bellevue) by net of sophisticated connections. On the other hand lost gems of slopes between Areh and Bellevue will be even more forgotten (you can easily ski on perfectly maintained ski slopes by yourself) – which makes me giddy even thinking about it.

Anyway, after last ride down the icy trails we had our last dinner (best pizza since I came back) and I started my train journey to Prague. Besides one small feud with co-travellers about their need of keeping lights on after 2.00am journey was as boring as it can be :)