Skiing in Switzerland...or at least what I can remember

Since I went away to Switzerland this weekend without Heather, she is letting me be her guest blogger and tell you all about it myself.

I'm Karl.

I had the opportunity to ski in the Swiss Alps this weekend with my American co-worker, Greg Weber (as in Weber Grills). We drove down Saturday morning, January 27th. It's about a three hour drive to Grindelwald, Switzerland in the Alps. He rented skis and I rented a snowboard. From there we took a steep train up to the slops.

The view was fantastic! For the view alone the price was worth it. It was breathtaking! Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera up to the slops for fear of damaging it, so I have no pictures to prove it.

Greg and I were looking for simple hills because it has been about 10 years since the last time I laid foot on a ski slop. As best as I can recall, we did a couple of short runs, then, after gaining our confidence, decided to tackle something a little more adventurous. I vaguely remember selecting a slop and snowboarding down parts of it. But the rest of our day...I've had to depend on Greg for what exactly happened.

We decided to go through a more wooded part of the hill and, as we were trying to slow down, some ice caught the edge of my board and I fell backwards onto my lower back and the back of my head. Apparently, I hit my head VERY hard. Hard enough to cause a concussion and slight memory loss. Greg says that as we walked the rest of the way down the hill, he quizzed me on different things to help jog my memory and keep me talking.

"What country are we in?" "Germany."
"What's your birthday?" "May 20th."
"How old are you?" "I'm not sure."
"Are you married?" "Yes."
"Who's your wife?" "Heather. What happened? Did I hit my head?"
"Yeah, you hit your head. What's 4 + 6?" "10."
"What's my name?" "Greg Weber. As in Weber Grills."
"What year is it?" "2006."
"What day is it?" "I don't know. My head really hurts...did I hit it?"
"Yeah, you hit your head. Do you remember going out to dinner last night?" "We went to dinner last night?"

Basically, I had no short term memory. Greg returned our ski equipment and he decided he better drive me back home. First he called Heather.....

Let me jump in here for a moment, and tell you my end of what happened, since Karl really has no recollection of this part of his weekend. I, Heather, got a call from Karl at about 6pm on Saturday. The first thing he said was, "I have amnesia." "You do, huh?" (I'm thinking this is some joke.) "Yeah, I hit my head and I have amnesia." (Now I'm getting alarmed.) "What happened?" "Um...I'm not sure...you better talk to Greg." So Greg told me what happened and that he was planning to take Karl back home right away. I asked to talk to Karl again, but that didn't go very well. "What's the last thing you remember?" "Um...I'll have to think about that." He did not sound like Karl...he sounded very confused. I told them that they should probably go to a doctor right away.

A while later Karl called back..."Hi, it's Karl....Um...I don't remember why I called you." So I asked to talk to Greg. He had some questions about our medical insurance and then they went off to the hospital. Later that night Greg called back with the news that the hospital took some X-rays (which looked OK), put him in intensive care, and wanted to watch him for 24 hours. The doctor would look at him in the morning and decide if he could go home. So I had a stressful night.



It's Karl again....my memory gradually started to come back that night. The nurses woke me up once an hour to shine a light in my eyes and ask me questions like, "Do you know where you are?" and "When's your birthday?" I felt like I was in a police interrogation...but with nice police. The only thing I don't remember now is from about 15 minutes before the accident to about when we called Heather...though I don't remember anything I said to her. I met with the doctor at about 10:00 am and he told me I would be alright and I could leave at 4:00 that afternoon. Which we did.

Before driving home we went out to a lake west of Interlaken where Greg had eaten lunch earlier that day. We sat on the shore and enjoyed the amazing view. Eventually we got back in the car and headed north up to Germany, listening to Weird Al Yankovic on Greg's iPod.

The doctor instructed me not to go to work for a week, and when I was home, not to work on a computer (so I'm dictating this to Heather), to watch as little television as possible, and not read anything too intently. Basically, to let my brain rest. So this is a good week to give us a call (from January 29th to February 5th)!

And I've decided to swear off skiing and snowboarding forever. I don't need it.



View more beautiful Swiss photos here.