Skiing

I grew up skiing in the Canadian Rockies, but all but gave it up when I lived in Ontario.

Thus, when I first visited Krakow, one of the many things I was excited about was its proximity to the mountains and the popularity of downhill skiing.

Today I took my first ski runs outside of North America. And just like everything else in Poland, skiing here introduced me to several new things.



This is a picture of the main, and only, run at the small ski hill we were at today. Although it seemed odd to me (and a little boring) to have only one run at a hill, apparently it is quite common here.

Yet for such a small operation, the ticketing technology is far advanced of the North American slopes. Instead of buying a paper lift ticket to attach to your jacket, here you purchase a magnetic card, and load it with the number of hours you plan to ski. You can purchase anything from a single run to an hour to 8 hours of skiing. In order to enter the lift line, you swipe the card at a turnstile.

And, nearby, a larger hill contains a 6 person chair lift, on which you entry through some sort of conveyor belt. I can hardly wait to try that out sometime in the next few weeks!