Fasnacht, the Basel carnival, took place in early March, turning everything upside down. But in the interests of catching up, we’ll postpone our description of it until next year when it will happen again in all its madness.

The week after Fasnacht, we undertook our first family skiing trip, driving across Switzerland to Damüls, Austria, where Sabine, Edgar and Lea were also skiing. Damüls is allegedly the snowiest town in the world, averaging 9.3 metres of fresh snow per winter. Given about 20 centimetres fell every day we were there, it is easy to believe. We had no trouble building an igloo using the snow on our balcony, even though the balcony only measured about 3 by 1 metres and was covered by an eave.

Loxon and Wiki tried their first pairs of skiboots and skis, and lined up for lessons. In theory, parents could drop off their kids and head out to ski themselves, an idea that had both Marion and Mark dreaming of gliding away over smooth snow in an ecstacy of freedom. In practice, things were rather different. Although Wiki and Loxon were keen on the idea of skiing, it turned out to involve much more effort than they had expected, and they were soon tired and emotional little skiers. This meant that Mark and Marion were required to remain with the class for support. If that sounds like your idea of fun, try crawling around on your hands and knees in the snow, lifting up 15 kilo kids every 30 seconds and having helmeted heads smash alternately into your stomach and then your groin at high speed for, oh say, an hour. After a few days of this we were ready to go home for a holiday. But at least the snow was powdery and beautiful, and we did get to do some skiing too.

Wiki and Loxon also made plenty of progress. They can now stay standing as a gentle slope accelerates them to rib-cracking speed, and even make turns, if a little unpredictably. Perhaps this year they’ll work out how to brake as well. They were proud to participate in the class race at the end of the week, for which they were announced as the Australian contingent. And neither of them laughed even once as giant blue bunny rabbits handed them their medals.

Unfortunately, March ended on a low note when Wiki got his hand caught in our apartment door. Loxon was waiting outside and decided to pull the door closed just as Wiki reached out to grab the door from the inside. For insulation reasons, Swiss doors are cut extremely precisely to match their frames. The tip of Wiki’s right ring finger was almost sliced away as a result.

So it was that we came to test the emergency unit of Basel’s children’s hospital, where Wiki waited patiently for about 6 hours for an operating theatre. He then had 6 stitches under general anaesthetic to neatly sew his fingertip back on. The first time he awoke after the surgery, he screamed at the top of his voice until the nurse pumped some more anaesthetic into him. The second time, Mark had some string puzzles to show him as he came to. Thus distracted, he regained full conciousness without distress and was able to go home for the night. It took another six weeks of doctor visits and disinfectant baths before his hand was back to normal. The only sign left of the injury now is a small scar across the pad of his finger.