Since I defaulted on the Google Disneyland trip back in February of this year, I suddenly became eligible for the annual EMEA ski trip in my current home office of Zurich. I guess in years past the Zurich office has gone skiing in January, but due to technicalities that I’m still not sure about, we were all dumped on a train and sent out to Sölden, Austria, to go skiing on a glacier in the middle of April.
The truth is, I’ve never been a stellar skier and I know nothing about skiing in Europe, much less about glaciers. I packed all my winter gear, including my thermal underwear, but I was never fully prepared for how damn cold a glacier really is. Now, the skiing was marvelous, even for a weenie like myself — Sölden sports huge, wide open runs that were not too insane and not too flat, super luxury lifts with windshields, miles of gondolas, decent food (for a ski resort), and a little downtown area with more clubs and strip joints per acre than I think Vegas can boast.
I had the unique opportunity to leap off an out-of-control snowmobile James Bond style (for the record, no I was not driving at the time, but I also won’t deny that I had some involvement in it going off track), fly off a tube that went off course (do you sense a theme here), and survive a terrain park with the biggest jumps I’ve ever seen (ok, I only did the small ones). Lunch was spaghetti, schnitzel, apple strudel and pools of vanilla sauce – a serendipitous find when you’re used to fried food in Tahoe.
Google of course put on a show for us after dinner which we didn’t expect (you never really know what this company is going to come up with next), and above the life size Aztec temple they’d built out of snow, they put on a no holds barred fireworks show, completely choreographed. I will admit, we had never been so cold in our entire lives, standing out there watching that fireworks show, and while we were somewhat embittered about being a captive audience on the top of a glacier during a snowstorm, no one quite had the balls to claim that the fireworks show wasn’t hugely awesome. Of course, this could have been because everyone’s genitals were encased in ice at this point, but I reiterate, it was a kickass show.
The rest of the Google EMEA ski trip gallery is here.
