EverydayFrench – Ep. 6 : Le ski en France

Welcome everyone to episode six of Everyday French, a podcast to help you improve your French listening!

Just a reminder that you have the transcript in the description if you're having trouble understanding what I'm saying.

This week, I'm going to talk to you about skiing in France, because the season already started in early December, and I'm a huge skiing fan, so that's the topic I chose for this week.

Let's go!

So like I was saying, I really love skiing — I go every year, I must go at least four or five times a year. I'm lucky, I live near the Pyrenees, you know, the mountain range that separates France and Spain. In France, we have two well-known mountain ranges: the Pyrenees and the Alps. The Alps are better known because they're bigger — that's also where Mont Blanc is, the highest mountain in France. The Pyrenees are a bit lower, so it's true that if you really want to enjoy the snow in France, it's better to go to the Alps — the resorts are bigger. I think there's also a bigger welcome, more infrastructure, at the resorts. The Pyrenees are still pretty small, but hey, it stays family-friendly. I like it because it's an hour, an hour and a half from my place, so it's really convenient.

In France, you can do different types of skiing — we have downhill skiing, ski touring, and cross-country skiing too. When I was young, I did cross-country skiing. Cross-country skiing is when you basically go for a walk — but on skis. You move through the forest, sometimes there are descents, sometimes climbs, it's a nice outing to do. But now I mostly do downhill skiing. Downhill skiing is where you only go down — you take ski lifts to get all the way up, and then you ski down to the bottom. I've never done ski touring, though — ski touring, as the name suggests, is really like hiking: you go up on skis with special skis, and then you come back down. So I imagine it's very physical, because downhill skiing alone, when you really go fast and love making lots of turns like I do, is already very, very physical, so I can't even imagine climbing all the way up on skis and then coming back down. Honestly, hats off to people who do that — I don't think I'd be capable of it at all.

This year I haven't had time to go yet, because the conditions on weekends haven't always been ideal. We had a good start to the season in early December, but right now conditions are a bit less good, so I'm waiting for the snow to get better before I go.

So what about you? Can you ski where you live? Do you like skiing, or maybe even snowboarding, or other sports like snowshoeing? Feel free to tell me in the comments, and I'll see you next week for the next episode. See you soon.