Happy 2018!

I love winter so much! Off-piste skiing and climbing on ice is something I really can’t live without. I love the cold, I love fruity teas with a pinch of cinnamon, and “sarma” (a traditional Slovene dish), which is my favorite dish of them all. Short days, a few months of the year, I really like that. I can easy lie on my couch with a good book in my hands or watch a movie in the middle of the day, without feeling guilty. I have to put on almost 5-layerd armor on my little girl, so I usually wake up 5 minutes early, but the sound of children’s laughter is truly priceless. Yes, winter is amazing! But I still don’t particularly like December. I don’t like the huge lines in supermarkets, I don’t like Jingle bells or kitschy Last Christmas songs, I simply don’t like the fact that Christmas turned from a silent and peaceful family holiday, into a euphoric frenzy, and how the whole month is typically spent with shopping chaos everywhere. People are everywhere, eagerly running from one shop to the other with their full grocery bags. Thank God for online shopping, where I can at least find things cheaper than in stores.

Each year I also remember my December runaway in 2009 on Aconcagua, on to the 6959 meter mountain and the biggest mountain of the American continent. I lead a group of 14 English people to the top. We went just before St. Nicholas Day and during the short stop in Madrid I even bought some Santa hats for everybody, so we could put them on and wait for Christmas day to come, where we would wait on the very top of the mountain. We were cheerful, and sincerely happy from the bottom of our hearts, although we didn’t have much food in out basecamp that day. But the next day we eagerly moved onward with no effort at all. We packed up base camp, travelled a nearly 2000m descent back down, straight to Mendoza. We flew back home on Silvester night, equipped with a few kilograms of vacuum packed Argentinian beef in our backpacks. In the company of friends we then eagerly ate the goods just a few hours later. December was over before I even knew it; without any of the described stressful events and consumer-like excesses! A truly ideal December!

My first born child, who came into my life in that year and her sister a few years after, are the reason I don’t try to escape December anymore. I really hate all the things I stated, but the Christmas holidays once more got their true meaning back, because of them.

To every reader of the Beehive I wish pleasant holidays and may you be aware of its true non-materialistic meaning, and many, many good things in the year 2018.