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Snowboard Canada
How I Spent My Summer Vacation:
Silvia Mittermuller
Since tearing my ACL at the Abominable Snow Jam in July, I knew my summer wouldn’t follow my original plan anymore. Once again I wouldn’t see New Zealand and Australia, but instead would have to go home to Germany and undergo surgery. In a way I was lucky to have a different surgery procedure where the recovery time is a lot shorter than for regular ACL surgeries, but to ensure that my knee healed properly, I had to wear a splint for six weeks. To make those six weeks shorter, I really wanted to go on vacation but didn’t feel like torturing myself on the beach. I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting at the beach watching friends surf and not being able to go in the water.
Further, I couldn’t sit on a chair normally with my straight knee splint, so a long-haul flight was completely out of the question. So, no beach vacation, no far distances by jet, nothing by car (I can’t drive a car with the splint, not even sitting in the passenger seat), nothing that is focused on sports, especially swimming.
It sounds like a really sad summer, doesn’t it? But I managed to find my way out of it and went to Paris with a good friend of mine for a week. The flight was only an hour from Munich, I spoke French all day (I thought I forgot how but it still worked), there was a ton of cool things to see, amazing shopping and the only bakeries in the world that can keep up with German bakeries. To make it short, I had my first sightseeing tourist vacation of my life, and it was awesome. A lot of café au laits, baguettes and metro rides, exploring the Louvre, the Eiffel tower, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc De Triomphe, Notre-Dame, the Catacombes, the Place de la Concorde, and the gardens at the Tuileries.
Solid advice for anyone planning a trip to Paris:
- Pack light: Don’t bring a lot of luggage if you plan on travelling by metro. Elevators and escalators are rare, so you’ll find yourself carrying all your stuff up and down stairs all the time. You´ll be thankful for not bringing your entire wardrobe.
- Pickpocket: Always be conscious of your purse or whatever you carry with you—the more tourists in a place, the more thieves as well. They’re really good and work in teams so pay attention.
- Hydrate: You can drink the tap water pretty much everywhere.
- Treats: The bakeries are amazing and cheap. Dare to eat something you’ve never had—you wont regret it. Going to a bakery is also good for lunch; it´s cheaper than a restaurant and you’ll be full with good food.
Paris is definitely worth a trip; it has so much history and impressive places, plus the French were absolutely against all existing rumours and really nice to us all the time. Vive la France!
