Slumped in a chair in Geneva airport at 8pm on Saturday evening, I surveyed the scene around me. Hundreds of travellers flocking around this very small airport. Normally you can spot a few sunkissed faces with a smile or two as they recall a memory of a great holiday, the cocktail they had by the beach or when they pushed a friend in the pool and laughed and laughed. Not true at Geneva airport.
Hundreds of skiers and snowboarders walk through the halls - tired, broken, battered, all of them. And I was one of them. A madman who imagined that it would be fun to go on a holiday which included 6 hours of strenuous physical pain each day. Risk of injury is high; comfort levels are low and the French/Swiss will force more cheese on you than you could possibly ever need or want. What sort of a holiday is this?
To get from Geneva airport to any ski-able area, you first have to embark on a journey of such magnitude that Aeneas himself would have sent you a postcard to congratulate your fighting spirit. For me however, he did not.
You arrive at your "chalet" where, from the warm feelings the name connotes, you might expect to find log fires and bearskin rugs, but the reality is that you have to pay an extra 15 euros just to secure rental of your bed sheets (just one of the many stealth taxes that a Ski holiday keenly enforces).
Then you sleep on your wooden plank, get up at 8am and dress yourself in one of the most uncomfortable outfits you are ever likely to wear. The ski boots make you walk at a forward angle as if you are a gorilla. It's amazing how humanity has advanced so far in this past three thousand years. I'm quite sure that when a Gorilla arrived at the cave, threw down two wooden planks with foot and fist holders and pumped his hairy chest, the other gorillas threw him out of the cave and he rolled down the mountain, never to be seen again until his French Neanderthal cousin did the same 3,000 years later and it took off from there.
It's a bizarre concept for a holiday, but those that do it (myself included) can't seem to get enough of it.
And so, as I sat slumped in Geneva airport, sipping a hot chocolate chocolat chaud which cost me around 10 swiss francs 20 english pounds, and I surveyed the wreckage of all other travellers, I thought i'd never return to this mess again in my life a small part of me knew that i'd be back in the same place again next year.