Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and breakfast again...

The food on our trip was unbelievable. Because the ski club has been returning to the same place for 25 years, the hotel lays out an amazing spread. Every day for breakfast we were greeted by mountains of homemade rolls, baskets of fresh fruit, pastries, cereal, yoghurt, croissant, boiled eggs and most importantly, vats of Nutella, from which I would only occasionally raise my head, mouth smeared with chocolate, eyes bleary from my sugar high.

We were left to our own devices for lunch on the ski hill, and then it was back to the hotel for dinner. First up was always a giant forest of a salad bar, with everything your salad-loving-soul could desire. Then in typical Italian style, we had the primi piatti followed by the secundi piatti. Our first course was always an enormous plate of homemade pasta – gnocchi, fettuccine, risotto… This was swiftly followed by the “main” meal, another giant plate of meat: pork chops, lamb, veal, chicken. I am incapable of leaving food on my plate, and when that food has been covered in garlic, soaked in butter and then doused in cream, I can actually be caught licking my plate, and the plates of my dinner companions.

Needless to say, my pants were much tighter after all of that frenzied eating. Luckily, the scales here are metric, and I haven’t bothered figuring out the conversion: I still just get a kick out of the fact that the scale doesn’t go into the triple digits when I step on it!

What made our meals truly special, however, were our dinner companions. We sat in the same seats every night, so we got to know our neighbours very well: Fred, a 73-year old retired Sabena aircraft worker, Paolo a 69-year old retired contractor, and Christiane, a 70-year old restaurant owner. All three skied every single day. Fred was a Franco-Belgian, Paolo was born and raised in Italy, before immigrating to Belgium, and Christiane was Flemish.

Fred’s wife didn’t ski, and Paolo had never been married, so the two men shared a room. They were a bit like the “Odd Couple,” because Paolo was grumpy and messy (Fred had to force him to brush his hair for dinner), while Fred was courtly and always immaculately turned out. Christiane was a tiny, birdlike woman, interested in everything and everyone. The three of them took an interest in Andrew and I, offering us advice on our marriage, our skiing, our appetites, our vacation choices, our clothing, our health habits and pretty much everything else we did.

Between Fred and Christiane, Paulo was usually pretty silent, although occasionally he would erupt in a rant. On one memorable occasion it was about how Yoko Ono ruined the Beatles. That’s what happens, he explained to Andrew, when you bring women into the workplace... They ruin everything.

While I’m not convinced that they ever knew our names, they always greeted us enthusiastically, by calling out, “Les Canadiens!” They seemed to have fond thoughts of Canada. Fred and Christiane recounted stories of being liberated by the Canadian army, and Chirstiane remembered her brother racing home with an armful of corned beef and chocolate, shouting the “Canadians have come!”

Fred only visited Canada once, but he told us in great detail about the two things he remembered about the trip: Getting stuck in the elevator on the way down from the Olympic Stadium Tower, and the strip joints on Ste. Catherine Street. Fred claimed to have no interest in the ladies, but was very impressed with the cheap breakfast provided. Andrew, alarmingly enough, proved very knowledgeable on the subject, and spoke knowingly of the “Eggs and Legs” special.

Hmm… Maybe I should have paid more attention to their marriage advice…