February. February A month filled with nasty coughing people on public transport, flu vaccine discussions and perpetually snoring children. In the midst of this cascading vomiting of germs, families with school-aged children are expected to take a week off and go on sports holidays. Preferably on an active sports holiday with skiing and long car journeys where everyone must be healthy and migraine-free and get up early in the morning and happily butter cheese sandwiches and make homemade chocolate for the perfect picnic on the slalom slope. The utopia of the perfect sports holiday. Well, guess what. A bit like they say that "after rain comes sunshine", you can probably say that "after stressful work in February, the germs hit like a letter in the post during the sports holiday". You've probably already guessed it. My sports leave was not as active as I had hoped. I have spent a skiing holiday in Switzerland under a blanket in a hotel room.
Coming up with the idea of having a vacation during February doesn't seem so smart in retrospect. Keeping the whole family healthy during one and the same predetermined week should be statistically impossible. It's almost like you should isolate yourself from the outside world for a whole week BEFORE the sports holiday. Eat canned goods like a true prepper, overdose on hand sanitizer and avoid crowds. No thanks to the cinema, subway, dinners with friends and children's parties. All hot spots must be avoided at all costs. But it's always easy to have hindsight. When I lay there coughing my lungs out in one of my sweaty fever attacks and desperately trying to pinpoint who had the guts to infect me (wasn't it the guy in the checkered shirt who coughed like that in the baggage claim at Arlanda?), I was probably actually mostly angry that my germs also stopped the rest of the family from skiing. All the family snuggles that I looked forward to with rosy cheeks, freshly groomed slopes with crisp corduroy and Kaisermarrn in the sunshine instead turned into a series marathon on Netflix and room service.
Maybe next year you should simply skip the sports holiday and invest in an Easter holiday in the heat instead, when all the viruses have been withered by the healing rays of the spring sun and our bodies have started to replenish their stores of vitamin D again. Dare to say "no thanks" to vacations in high-risk times and invest the long-awaited vacation days on a safer card later in the spring. What do you think? Is it really worth the risk of sports leave?
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