Some things are inextricably linked with particular places. The colourful sari which looked so exquisite in Bangkok looks embarrassingly over-ambitious in Munich. The garlic sauce which was so delectably piquant in Gomera tastes like rabbit-skin glue in your own kitchen and the hilarious songs you blurted out so ardently last weekend in the Austrian ski lodge bar sound distinctly suspect when played to your girlfriend in your living room. Your girlfriend's expression is one of deep consternation and reads break up.

Honestly, it's not what you think, sweetheart.



All photos taken at the Schatzi Bar

It's like this. Everyone goes to the ski lodge bar. Literally everyone. Old, young, sporty, non-sporty, people with old-school puffy overalls and girls in the very latest snowboarding blouson stretch. Some don't even ski at all, but everyone's in ski boots all the same. Everyone, literally everyone is having a good time. Not only the so-called under-educated classes. Okay. There's no denying alcohol plays a role. Lots of it. This year's most cherished combinations: absinthe with pineapple juice; the "Flying Stag" (Jägermeister with Red Bull); and the all-time classic: "Little Wings" (red vodka with Red Bull)

You can't help it. Even the most sober skiing involves imbibing so much fresh air – the oxygen flash is almost enough of a drug in itself. The further you leave sea level behind you, the faster alcohol goes to your head. Ischgl and Idalp for example are 2,000 metres above sea level. And yet people still drink themselves into a coma. And the doctor has to come to the rescue – on his snowmobile.

I mean, piste and pissed even sound the same. The bar doors on the mountain open at 3 in the afternoon. It all feels very after-work. There's a sense of achievement, pride. Did you see me go arse over tit? Yeah, it looked like agony. An evil patch of ice. Skis rammed into the snow like victory signs outside the door. Inside, of course, it's jam packed. Put your hands in the air like you don't care. Some gangly guy in a fake cowhide hat holds his beer glass up-side down in front of his mouth like a microphone and yells in the direction of the DJ, "Cheers, arsehole!". To which the DJ merrily replies, "Cheers, arseholes". And he plays "Get your tits out" one more time." Sometimes the ladies even oblige. There are go-go dancers in red and white checked dirndls on the tables, with euro notes sticking out of their suspenders.




Its loud and sticky. There's no point in talking, the music says it all. "As long as it's got a slogan," says Ingo the DJ in the Schatzi Bar in Ischgl. He describes himself as an institution. He refuses to give his second name, out of fear that it would damage his reputation as an advanced electronic DJ. Ingo can tell you all you need to know about Ibiza, Studio 54, Paradise Garage, the whole DJ theory thing.

There's only one rule for Apres Ski, Ingo says: you have to sing along. Choruses like "I think it's starting again" (Willi Herren & Markus Becker), or "It's so great, so f***ing great, so f***ing great to be like us!" (Peter Wackel) or "Hiphop is half gay" (BB Jürgen). Sometimes all you need is a bit of onomatopoeia, like the recent hit by the Zipfelbuben, "Kedeng Kedeng". They describe themselves as the Tokio Hotel of Volksmusic, or the Backstreet Boys of Apres Ski. And woe be to anyone who confuses them with Zipfi Zapfi Buam from Tirol.

So what music is playing. Crossover. AC/DC is suddenly in again, but only the big hits. Dance Pop from the early nineties is always a winner: Snap, Dr. Alban, Culture Beat. But also Crazy Frog, the Sugababes and Madonna. "Today's hit material" says the man from the record company EMI who dispatches trend scouts every winter to the ski huts, the Schatzi Bar, the Kitzloch, the Kuhstall in Ischgl or the Crazy Kangaroo in St. Anton, to sniff out the must-haves for the "Apres-Ski Hits" compilation. But more often than not the scouts only confuse the poor man with their expertise. "It's hard to predict", he says with a sigh. Nevertheless, the sampler has always gone straight to Number 1 in the Hit Parade Compilation Charts, just like the Mallorca Ballermann Collection does every summer.




Apres Ski is a bastardised genre. It creeps over into Volksmusic, embraces Euro Trash, Hard Rock and of course, Ballermann (the stuff that blasts from the Balneario Nº 6 beach bar in Mallorca so beloved of German tourists - ed). In other words, Balllermann, Wiesn Musi (Munich Oktoberfest music) Karnavalschlager (German carnival hits) and Apres Ski music are identical quadruplets. To help you tell them apart the bit that says "going South" is poetically rewritten as "going to the slopes" but they are otherwise interchangeable. There are rarely any explicit references to snow. Except with songs about "ice bears" or "snow-white slappers". Most are songs for all seasons. "Viva Colonia" for example by Höhner. Nobody knows where this was sung first, at Carnival, in Mallorca, at the Oktoberfest or in the apres-ski bars.

Simulation, trying to recreate the feeling in your living room is impossible. It's like this: the apres-ski compilation is to genuine apres-ski what cheap porn is to an intoxicating night of love. My girlfriend understands.

*

The article was originally published in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 27, 2006.

Translation: lp