Thinking in possibilities
When I was around 22, I went skiing for the first time. A holiday in the middle of nature and being active at the same time… I was immediately hooked! There were more years of skiing holidays that followed. Every year I took lessons and enjoyed skiing, and of course, après-skiing, because that’s also part of it.
When we had children, we decided not to go skiing temporarily because it would be difficult with small children without a babysitter and it would also be expensive. Now, 12.5 years later, the desire to go skiing again began to grow more and more. Our children are now eleven and nine and can have fun together in a ski class. Still, we hesitated whether we should go, because since I started skiing, my vision has deteriorated significantly from 60% to 15-20%. Eventually, we made the decision to go.
And so we did. We went to St. Johann in Tirol, a beautiful place with beautiful blue slopes and not too crowded. The children took lessons for 2 days and we went up with the gondola on the first day without taking any lessons. I didn’t want to show it, but it was quite nerve-wracking. It went quite well, but I noticed it was difficult to go down the mountain with poor visibility. On the second day, we were back on the mountain and I had tears in my eyes. We decided to take lessons for the next two days, because there is a solution for every problem.
We told our ski instructor that I had poor vision, and she advised us to buy a vest and write BLIND on it. She and my husband also wore a vest. At first, it felt uncomfortable to stand out like that, but the idea of enjoying skiing was bigger than the thought of the noticeable vest. I was happy we did it because it was so much nicer to go down the mountain and follow someone when you have poor vision. The ski instructor gave instructions with her stick when she turned a corner, which may have seemed exaggerated and noticeable to other people, but was very helpful for me.
So, you see that you can actually do quite a lot if you just want to and if you look for a solution. We enjoyed this holiday and we will go again next year.