Can't leave home without it...

The minute the ink was dry on my offer letter to start work in Belgium (in January of 2008), the wheels started spinning with travel ideas. Paris? Rome? Barcelona? Nah. Too overdone. Need to do something different. Something my mountain-loving BF would find extra special.

Somehow a ski trip in Austria popped into my head. With the always-reliable source material of movies & tv shows, I conjured up images of hot chocolate, quaint chalets, wool sweaters, furry boots, snowy Alps and apres ski amongst worldly Europeans. Could there be a better vacation for our first winter in Europe?

(BF and I skiing in Telluride this past winter. Had we taken this trip in 2008, perhaps I would have been capable of planning a ski trip in Europe.)

SO. For Christmas that year I bought BF the "Lonely Planet Guide to Austria" and bookmarked "Innsbruck." The Olympics had been held there twice. Surely it would be good enough for us?

Well, yes, it probably would. If I had ANY idea how to plan a ski trip.

Unfortunately, at the time, my experience with these things was rather limited:
a) I had never seen a proper mountain
b) I had never been to Austria
c) I had never been skiing

(Also, it should be mentioned I had no idea what "apres ski" was. Having never seen it spelled before I actually thought it was something along the lines of "a-PRAY ski" and involved religion. Turns out it involves drinking. Lots and lots of drinking. Which is totally similar.)

I searched dozens of websites, read articles, guidebooks, etc. but was completely and hopelessly lost. Between the German and French descriptions of resorts and chalets and confusing reviews and absurdly expensive packages... my head was spinning. So. I promptly booked a weekend in Paris (so much for original) and... well, let's just say that THREE years later, we still have not been skiing in Europe together.

However, thanks to our amazing friends, Janey and Jeroen (who are old pros when it comes to booking European ski vacations), we will finally be going on our Austrian ski trip! We leave this Saturday and will be staying there a full week with the aformentioned Janey & Jeroen as well as another two friends.

Which brings me to the point of this post... Belgian shopping lists. You see, we will be staying at a chalet with a full kitchen so the idea is that we will stock the place with basics for breakfast, lunch and a few dinners and then supplement that with a few dinners out. As they aren't sure whether or not there will be a reasonably-priced grocery store nearby, our dear friends pulled together a grocery list of ESSENTIALS for a week away. Many of the items would have been on my list (toilet paper, spaghetti, cereal) but there were a few that I feel are uniquely Belgian:

Still Water
Sparkling Water
Nutella
Baking Butter
Butter for Bread
Chocolate Sprinkles
Icebags (these are plastic bags you fill with water and then freeze. Like ice trays but disposable.)
Koningingenhapje (also known as "Flemish Stew" or "Beef Carbonnade")

Amazing, no? I love that two kinds of water and two kinds of butter are required. I can't wait to see what constitutes butter for bread. (Perhaps they mean stick butter and margarine? Somehow I think it will be fancy schmancy dairy butter vs. supermarket brand baking butter) Nutella should require little explanation but chocolate sprinkles??? Really???

Want to know why I love Belgians so much? They can't survive a week without chocolate sprinkles.

(The chocolate spread aisle at the local grocery store. The yellow boxes at the top left are Sprinkles. To the left of those are "Matinettes" - bars of chocolate that are meant to be spread on bread. The rest of the jars are Nutella, gourmet versions of nutella and "Speculoos Spread" - a bread topping made of speculoos cookies. It's a big deal here in Belgium.)