Paragliding in Germany

Last weekend I went for a crash (haha!) course in paragliding in Wasserkuppe, Germany. I left at saturday, 6 in the morning, from Amsterdam, drove for almost six hours together with three colleagues and checked into our hotel. The village turned out to be nothing more than an airstrip, two hotels, a flight-school and a few touristy shops, and the quality of the hotels was…lacking. I was staying in a room with two other colleagues, and while the room’s size was a lot better than any of the other rooms in the “hotel” the quality of the furniture was poor. But whatever, right? I was there to do some paragliding so as soon as we were all installed, had some lunch, we walked over to the flight-school to get some basic instructions. Guess what? The mountain-people of Germany speak maybe three words of English if they tried, and they never try, so even the young, hot-shot instructor couldn’t be arsed to elaborate some things in English when our collective knowledge of the German language fell short. We quickly decided to just “wing it” (haha!) and see how far we’d get.

We soon realised, as we were accompanied by about 20 other paragliders, that our private lessons weren’t going to be so private, but again, our indomitable spirits wouldn’t allow us to be down about it. So, within two hours of arriving, we all got a chance to glide down a gentle hill, practice taking off and landing. We were informed that it would be beneficial if we had good shoes that protected our ankles, because landings, when done wrong, could be rough. Of course, I just had some sneakers on me, and while I could’ve done with some extra shoes by the end of the weekend (more on that in a bit), my ankles held up pretty good and I had no trouble there. Sadly, my colleague Remco wasn’t so lucky and he sprained his ankle pretty badly on his first flight of the second day.

So, the first day I learned how to take off, land, pick my parachute back together and walk back up the hill. Every flight from that low, sloping hill took about a minute, tops, and during that time I was only busy checking to see if I was doing things right, so I couldn’t really enjoy it. So after that minute, you grab everything together, and walk back for about ten to fifteen minutes. Then you take a few minutes to catch your breath, you lay out your parachute and start untangling the wires. That takes another fifteen minutes. Then you await your turn to go, which is another fifteen minutes, so all in all, you get 1 minute of flight for about 59 minutes of preparation.

We were all paired up, but seeing as how I was in a higher weight-class than any of the others, and thus got a bigger chute, I was by myself. That’s good in one way, not so good in others. Good; you don’t have to take turns flying. Not so good; you have nobody to help you unfuck the parachute and get ready.

By the end of the evening, when the sun started to set and the thermals of the hill and valley started to change, I had done about four flights, and I was pretty tired of walking up the hill. We packed things up and walked back to the flight-school. After some confusion regarding the starting time the following day (7 o’clock), we left for our hotel to change and shower. Before we got to our hotel, the flight instructor invited us to dinner at a youth hostel, in another village, with the entire group. That sounded peachy keen to me, but somehow the others decided we’d go to another village where there was a kartofelsalat festival. I don’t know what was wrong with them, but reluctantly I agreed to go with them.

When we got to the next village, it turned out to be completely dead. They had a few “restaurants,” and a stage on which, during the day, they had live music, but was empty except for some kids climbing on it. We found a restaurant and had some dinner. We all ordered our drinks, and that must’ve been the most exciting order the woman had ever had, because it consisted of more than just beer or wine. I asked for a tequila tonic, and when she came back with the drinks she informed me that they didn’t have tonic, because “well, we’re not a bar, we’re a restaurant.” I suppressed the urge to explain to the woman that this was barely a diner, let alone a restaurant. I ordered a Jack and coke instead.

The dinner was pretty terrible, but we had fun making fun of the place, and all encompassing misery turned out to be a source of great entertainment. We headed back to our hotel as soon as possible to drink ourselves into a stupor in the bar there. Sadly, the hotel had closed because it was past 10 o’clock. What the fuck!? We went to the other hotel, which was also closed, but with a little bit of convincing, we were able to buy some things. Anton had brought all kinds of things on the trip because he doesn’t understand the concept of traveling light, but it turned out to be a good idea. He had chips and snacks and even a bottle of Bacardi with him, which we drank – together with the few things we managed to buy at the other hotel, like red bull, coke, a bottle of Australian Cabernet – at my hotel room, which was the biggest.

At 2:30 it was time for me to go to sleep, because I had to get up at 6. This was one bottle of rum and two bottles of wine later, and we were just down to three people, while one had put earplugs in and was snoring away in the room. I knew the following day was going to be painful…

…but it wasn’t. I got up rather easily, showered and got dressed. I went exploring in the hotel while I waited for the others got ready, and found the hotel be even more sad and depressing than I had initially thought. When we came downstairs there was a pre-made “breakfast” waiting for us. It was terrible. We went to the flight-school where we grabbed our stuff together and were driven to another (steeper) hill on the same valley that we flew in the previous day, and while the sun was coming up in the east we did our first few flights. And what a flight it was for me.

So, the valley we flew in was mostly grass, some trees and bushes, and here and there some patches of swamp. Now, when you’re not so great at spotting these wet-spots, and when you do you find that your control over the chute isn’t so great yet, you might find it hard to avoid these swampy areas. My first flight ended with my soaking my shoes and trousers with muddy water. There were some splashes on my shirt as well as my jacket, but most of it were my shoes and trousers. Then the trek back up the hill started. I have to admit I cursed a bit before starting that trek in wet clothing. Luckily it was going to be very warm that day, so I thought I’d just let it dry.

When I got back up the hill I was the laughing stock of all my colleagues for a few minutes, before I went to prepare my parachute again for another flight. I wasn’t going to let so swampy water and soaked shoes ruin my enjoyment, though I did have to sit down and let my trousers dry a bit to prevent chafing.

The hill was a lot steeper, and being there that early in the morning, while the air was warming up, it gave us a really good look at the way thermals help the flight. The flights took longer, went further, and higher and were generally scarier and far more enjoyable. We got some company from some delta-wing fliers and generated quite a bit of onlookers because we were along a popular hiking trail.

By lunchtime our session was over, we gathered up all our things and left for the flight-school. Once we got all the equipment back in its proper place I went to change and put on some dry clothing (which made a world of difference) but was still stuck with my damp shoes. We had some lunch at our hotel, checked out and drove back home.

All in all it was a great weekend, very exhausting, and besides some bruises on my arms and ego, I didn’t get hurt. There are tons of pictures, which I’ll put up soon. :)