The Differences Between Skiing in America vs. Europe

Okay, so I'm an avid skier and I went to Europe to go skiing and it was like stupid crazy. So I wanna explain to you in this video the differences of skiing in the United States versus skiing in Europe. So let me go through each one of these things and I'll tell you about the differences and some funny stuff that happened to us. Also, this is like not totally, but totally not a business video. So I'm just doing it cuz it feels like fun. So, uh, let's talk about skiing. All right, so I started snow skiing, well, back when I was like 16, right? My parents took me on a ski trip because I'm a I'm a good Texan and that's what Texans do. We go to Colorado and we ski. And so I've been going up there and skiing across the United States for years, but I'd never been to Europe. But, you know, typically thing number one that happens in a ski trip in the United States is it's an athletic endeavor. Like people are out there, like, it's like, let's go hard, let's go home. Here are my buddies and I skiing last year here at Copper Mountain in, in the US and like, It's 8:30 in the morning. Like, if you look back here, this lift behind us, like, hasn't even opened up yet. Like, it is like, let's go hard, pack some sandwiches, we're gonna push ourselves today. Now you compare that to the European experience, and here's a video of me and some of my buds going down the hill. Like, it is much more of an experience. The skiing is involved in having just a nice pleasant day and getting out on the mountain, being in some nice scenery, but it's not about go hard or go home. It's not like your personal X Games, which, which to me and my buddies going to Europe was like, okay, let's go and do American-style skiing. And, uh, we show up and everybody's just like super chill and not about the athletic endeavors. That's difference number one for sure. Okay, let's talk about the food difference. So you go to the United States and you want to get some on-mountain food. Like they have lodges on the mountain and if you're lucky you get something that maybe looks like this. This is just kind of a crappy pulled pork sandwiches with some pickles and a crappy beer. Like that's if you're lucky in the United States. But a lot of other times you're paying $25, $30, $40. And you're getting frozen chicken fingers with frozen french fries, and if you're lucky, you get some ketchup. It is not a gourmet experience in the least. And because, you know, again, this is an athletic endeavor here in the US, so a lot of people are just showing up and trying to get some calories in so they can get back out there and shred, dude. So let me show you what some of the meals look like in Europe. Remember, like, it's more of a chill experience. Like, people are like doing their stuff, and it's really totally different. For example, this was a typical meal that we would get on mountain. Like, this is in a lodge on the side of a mountain in Europe. Homemade lasagna, homemade apple strudel, some kind of pasta. I think it's rigatoni, sparkling water. Oh, and a couple of very civilized espressos. Like, this is what meals should be when you're on a mountain and you're paying €30, in this case €30 a person for this food. But it's like really good. And the thing about it also, when you see people sitting around eating this food, they're not in a rush like us stupid Americans. They're sitting here actually enjoying their meal. They're visiting. And again, it's about skiing, being in Europe, much more of a day experience. Rather than, well, like, how much can we shred and create our own X Games? And the food reflects that. You can figure out which one I like better. Okay, so let's move on to difference number 3: the terrain. You go to a U.S. ski resort, you'll see something like this. This is from, uh, Vail Mountain, which is widely regarded as one of the best ski resorts in the United States, and you pay for it too. We'll talk about that a little bit more, but you can have everything you want here. There's a little bit of everything. There's something down here for the kids and easy stuff, and there's some nice long blue cruisers that are groomed. Well, depending on if you go to Vail Corporation stuff or not. Sometimes they're not groomed. And then you have bowls and you have all these double black diamonds, very neatly organized, spread across the mountain. You're going in and out of trees potentially, uh, but you know, you remember we're in America, we're doing this personal X Games approach to skiing, so you get to pick what you want. But you go to Europe, it's a little bit different. You end up with something like this. This is called on-piste, which is like on the trail. It's a nice groomed wide area. It's a nice meandering trail, might be several miles long, and it all looks like this. You can have any run you want as long as it's a nice big blue cruiser that's been groomed recently. And here's my buddy Andy making his way down the mountain. This was delightful. Anyway, you can have any territory you want in Europe just as long as it's a nice cruiser and you can go down at a medium pace. The number of employees. If you go to a US ski resort, clearly we are infants in our ability to get on and off ski lifts because every single lift has 3, 4, 5 people working at it. There's employees everywhere whenever they're running these mountains. There's somebody to put you in the chair, to press the red button if you fall down. Like, it is just ultimate ultimately a crazy thing. Go to Europe, and we were in Switzerland, it's a crazy thing. You would never see any people. Like, everything's automated. You could go a whole day and you'd see like 4 or 5 people working on the mountain. And it's just different. Like, people there, like, they just don't fall down when they're getting on the ski chairs, and like, they don't do stupid stuff. So it was just mind-blowing how few people were running at these locations, especially in Europe. Like, in the United States, they would have 10 times the number of people. It was just crazy stuff. In the US, remember, we've gone hard. We're doing our own personal X Games whenever we're skiing. Athletic endeavor. We're trying to cram our total brains into the double black diamonds, man. We're shredding. And then what do you do at the end of the day after that? You're totally tired and you go back and pass out in front of your TV after getting in the hot tub. Like, that is the American style of skiing. After that, what blew my mind is you would ski down where we were in Switzerland and you just start passing clubs. Like, people put après-ski— like, so after-ski drinking clubs on the side of the mountains. And like there'd be like 1,000 people in these things, like oosh, oosh, oosh music. And like, you know, because remember it's an, it's an experiential thing. You're there, you know, uh, to, for a week away and skiing is involved. Whereas for us in the US, it's all about the skiing. And these people are just going nuts. You know, whatever effort Americans would be spending on shredding, the Europeans were spending on, well, just having a few drinks at the end of the day. And these clubs were just packed. You're just like, you're just skiing down the runs to get back out of 'em. Uh, and it just blew my mind. Number 6, this is a huge difference. The American ski resorts, people are out there at like 8:30 in the morning. In some resorts, people pay for what's called first tracks. You pay to be somebody who gets to ski earlier than the other people. In Europe, this is not so much of a thing. Here's a picture of me and my buddies getting on the train to go up and ski, and the train is packed because— and it's like 10:30 in the morning, we had slept in, remember there's 7 hours difference. The train is packed, uh, cuz everybody's just getting a late start, you know, you're just rolling in after or before your first espresso. Uh, and that's the other thing you could do. You just go out on the mountain and everybody has a beautiful espresso bar. Cause so you can have your morning coffee and a scone. You can have a croissant, like all that's just part of the deal. Remember in Europe, it's about the experience. It's not about the shredding. Number 7, let's talk about the price. Look, there's a lot of talk about how expensive skiing is in the United States. A lot of people have figured out it's actually cheaper sometimes to go fly to the, to Europe and ski there because here in the United States, there's consolidation in these ski resorts. There's so many people working there, so many expenses, $269 for to ski at Vail if you just like walk up. Just crazy talk. Like if you do 10 runs, it's $27 a run at Vail. So let's talk about what it costs to ski at like a typical EU resort. 83 francs if you just step up and buy one, like just ridiculously cheap. So a third the cost. Okay, let's talk about the fashion. So when you get off the train in a lot of these ski towns and where we got off in a ski town, the first thing you see are all these like fashion stores in the EU. They're like different, like expensive, like ski shell brands and stuff that I've never heard of. Before where they're like $800 jackets. And what we realized as we started to go around is, remember, this is an experience. You're at a resort. It's not about shredding. It is about, you know, living your best life and making a statement while you're doing it. Like, everybody was like dressed to the nines, like super fashionable. Meanwhile, me and my buddies, like, we look like this— brown, fitting in, ain't much to see here. Like, we just look like everybody else except for this day. We wore rainbow suits that day. That's my son. He's killing it. He looks awesome. In the US, it's all about function because remember, we're out there shredding. In the EU, it's all about form. You got to look good. Okay, let's talk about number 9, the smells. In the US, by and large, when you're skiing, you're standing in the lift line or whatever, like the smells are bad breath. Like people have been drinking coffee, they ate some kind of power bar on the lift. And I'm like, do these people ever brush their teeth? They need to— they need to have some gum and go from there. There's a slight difference when you're in the EU, which is a lot of the lifts are enclosed. And so we're in things that look like these kind of of gondolas and stuff like that. And there's not a lot of air circulating. And it turns out everybody who goes to Switzerland, a lot of these places, they eat a lot of cheese. So I'm just gonna leave it there. But that does not, you know, the American skiing has problems with the mouth stuff. The European skiing has problems coming out the other end. And numerous times I had to hold back a gag reflex 'cause it smelled terrible. In the US, you go to Colorado, you go to Wyoming, all these places, and people are like, why are all these Texans here? Why are all these Californians here? Like, it is flooded with tourists especially like during spring break and stuff like that. And they're a nightmare. In the EU, it's a different thing. All the Europeans were like, why are all these Americans here? I was like, well, as a fellow American who's there, I was like, I have no defense. So it is what it is. But that definitely was the difference. Everybody worried about why there's a bunch of weirdos from some other place who turn up and just turn into total terrors the way they're doing everything from getting to and from the lifts to what they're doing on the mountain. And, uh, I was part of that. So yeah, guilty. Number 11 is how crazy people are in the lift lines. And it just drove me nuts. Okay, so here's how lift lines work in the United States. Basically, we queue up, there's nice little guardrails, and everybody waits their turn. Like, everybody's paying attention and making sure to give everybody space, and then everybody orderly progresses through lift lines. That is not how it works in Europe. In Europe, it is basically law of the jungle, every man for themselves. And after like the second day when I would be like hockey hip-checked by like 8-year-old little girls on snowboards to get around me to try to go ahead in the lift line, like, I suddenly was like, forget this. Like, we're being aggressive, I'm holding my spot. And everybody crams into these tiny little spots to try to gi the first to get on the lift light. It is total chaos. And I asked some Europeans about this on the chairs. I was like, why don't you guys just like be a little more patient in the lift lights? They're like, why would we be patient? So they just, they had no idea about it. Uh, but it just drove me absolutely crazy when I would be dealing with Europeans doing this. And by the third day I was cool. I had my elbows out and I was like, I'm 6'5", I'm 230. Me. Let's make this happen. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work with what God gave me. So, but, but yeah, it's just crazy. If you're gonna show up and ski in Europe and you're American, like, get your elbows out. You need to fight for your place, otherwise you're gonna be back in line. You never get on a lift chair. It was a once-in-a-lifetime bucket list trip that I had planned with my buddies for years, and I was honored to get to do it, uh, earlier this year. If I missed something that's the difference between skiing in the two different places, let me know. Otherwise, I just had a ton of fun making this video, so thanks for being here. Bye.