Lame, right? But even my boss told me "Yeah, Trysil is the best for skiing, but Hemsedal is the party place" . No need for more words, who loves skiing and having fun joins. So I did.
The trip was organized by comrade Ion (quiz question - which one on the picture is Ion?) for the late November/start of December 2013. On Thursday, the day of departure, we enjoyed the unique feeling of leaving work 2pm, leaving behind uncompiled code and unfinished code reviews to make room for other thoughts, e.g. "why the hell did he die when the music stopped!" .
We arrived to Skarsnuten village (part of Hemsedal connected to the slopes by a chairlift) as first of our group and possibly also amongst the first customers of the season. In other words, the resort was dead and far from the liveliness we imagined. That's however not something that should stop us, party starters, from rocking and rolling!! No! What stopped us was that we were tired.. : -)
Anyway, we were still waiting for the rest of the cabin crew which arrived later that night and on Friday evening. Meanwhile the beginners in skiing and snowboarding made mile-steps into becoming professionals, mostly led by Ion's non-beatable grit and determination, which eventually led him to conquer the highest slopes in Hemsedal. Mada, Paulo and Anna stayed loyal to the smaller downhills by the Alpine lodge and a nearby ski park, where numerous Norwegian kids were doing backflips and 360s with the simplicity of a Soviet war veteran ex-ing a bottle of Vodka. I got inspired by them (the kids) and tried some tricks myself, but all I managed was a weak-barely-180 and a discouraging fall on a ski-box rail .( :( ). But it was fun!
So you're probably asking - where is the pizza? I'm getting to it (but don't worry, this is not a "How I met the pizza" type of story, pizzas do not carry yellow umbrellas after all) . That very night, by historians known as "the great Hemsedal party of 2013", November became December and we became the coolest people in the world. Not only that, we basically started the party in a bar called Bar(t), but since this is a pizza blog, we will leave out the party starting details and will concentrate now on the hunt that took place a mere hour before in the neighboring Hemsedal Cafe.
| Me, Ion, Ian and Mada |
Even though it's a cafe, they serve pizza and even though pizza is terribly expensive in Norway (as everything else), it was not so bad here. And we were starving. I've ordered Chorizo pizza for 135NOK (about 16 euro), others went for similarly priced Parma and Pollo (as far as I remember). The waitress and waiter were really professional and helpful, but they failed to see the seriousness of this pizza hunt and thus my (repeated) questions about the temperature and type of oven were left unanwered.. :( .
Pizzas were finally delivered after standard 15 minutes and they looked wonderful (reading this praise, please bear in mind that the only pizzas I had for past few months were the first-price frozen ones from supermarket). The crust was of the thinner, quite crunchy and crispy. Chorizo looked to be the real thing, and together with the tasty (not burned!) onions and jalapenos they formed a very nice flavor combination. But the best thing was definitely the sauce - it is not often that the sauce forms a dominant taste ingredient on a pizza, at least it's the first time for me...
Overall, this was amongst the better pizza hunts. Perhaps not aspiring for the top positions, but hey, this is Norway and I was glad I did not get a half-frozen pie on my plate, which (I admit) was something I expected. Hemsedal Cafe was, however, worth it. And if you come around to the resort, you will not make a mistake by stopping at this place.
And we will come back. There's still some parties to be started and some slopes to be tried out. Stay tuned, Hemsedal.
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