EESTEC LC Zurich organised its first skiing weekend in 2011 and made it an annual tradition around 2015. 2020 wasn’t an exception and we enjoyed a weekend in Klosters/Davos in February. With the dates being the first weekend of the new semester, many locals (32) were able to join us as well as some internationals (14), even though skiing in Switzerland is for non-Swiss students generally too expensive.
Since all internationals arrived already on Thursday, we cooked dinner together at ETH and went to bed early in order to not miss our train at 06:37!
Arriving in Klosters, luggage was dropped off, some reserved renting gear picked up, and rather sooner than later, we were up on the slopes! It being a Friday meant that we had the slopes basically for ourselves. Over the course of the day, we only took breaks to eat our lunch packets and continued skiing/snowboarding until the lifts closed at 16:00. Coming back to the hut we had a chill après ski with a bonfire, followed by some Swiss Älplermakkeroni. Dinner was followed by relaxing our tired bodies in the Sauna of the hut. The evening program was calm as Saturday was a further skiing day. According to the dress code we were in our pajamas, playing board games.
As one might have realized, the weekend was actually the carnival weekend in Switzerland! To take part in the national traditions we all dress up Saturdays on the slopes! From unicorns, over giraffes, over Hula-girls, to a ghillie suit man everything was on the slopes! Long story short: The weather was perfect, few more people and the same amount of fun. Returning home worked the same as the previous day, the only change was Schnitzel for dinner. The night after the sauna however was less relaxed than Friday night: We hosted an EESTEC LC Zurich-style party using up the last of our remaining energy. Further, we teamed up with LC Bucharest (Romania) and JLC St. Petersburg (Russia), which held events of their own during the same weekend, to create a competition between the three events. As it turned out, our event even won.
Sunday we packed our belongings and headed back to Zurich. For the internationals departing on Monday, we cooked Fondue at ETH in the evening, to give them the last bit of Swissness.
From an organiser’s perspective, the event was a success, especially not having injuries was relieving. Further, from an LC’s point of view, the weekend was great to strengthen the bond between our veterans and freshmen. Last but not least, spending a weekend up in the mountains surrounded by friends was an amazing way to start the new semester after the stressful exam period!
