The tantrum in front of the press center

XY approached me – or rather snapped at me – but he didn’t introduce himself, so that’s his name now. The XY is a misanthrope by nature – somewhere between 60 and 70. He throws a contemptuous look at everyone who crosses his path. And when there’s a lot of rubbish to clear up again, he curses into his non-existent beard. And in such a way that you can rhyme together the content from the separate scraps of words, despite a manageable knowledge of French.

The combination of “merde” and “journaliste” makes it clear how great his aversion to the media industry must be. Against those who throw cigarette butts on the ground, dispose of plastic bags in the wild or simply leave empty or half-full coffee cups somewhere. This can then cause real sugar rushes that are addressed to God and the world. Or to those who happen to get in the way of the XY. For example me. “I’m good at bad timing,” ÖSV speed racer Cornelia Hütter said in relation to the flu she caught the week before the World Cup. Well, that probably applies to my encounter with the misanthrope as well. He waves his hand wildly around and asks me what I’m thinking about just laying my gloves on the wooden table in front of the entrance. By the time I made it clear to him that they weren’t mine, the hurricane of curses had long since broken out.

Forget it, the XY at least didn’t get physical, although judging by his convulsions he obviously felt like it. To a certain extent, the anger is understandable – you have to do something for the environment. Here in the “Trois Vallées” (“Three Valleys”) ski area, sustainability and waste minimization are rightly written very large, they told us that on the first day by handing us a cup – with the hint, same as to guard the apple of our eye. Because we wouldn’t get a second or third during the entire World Cup.

Only this one is the entrance ticket to free water and coffee, so to speak. In retrospect, this message was more for the sausages, because the machine gave up the ghost on the second day. The current state is unchanged – like the mood of Monsieur XY.