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Skiing has become something of a yearly pilgrimage for our band of merry men. The problem is, so far we might as well have taken a trip to Farmfoods. Freezing cold, surrounded by sausages. I had imagined skiing to be all about smiling athletic girls with long hair and fur brimmed jackets. It was not. It was drunk men, with their chaps out, drinking beer through each others socks. Determined not to let this fate befall us again, I did some proper hardcore research. I Googled “ski night life”, “skiing hot girls” and any other keywords I thought would uncover a hidden haven. Many minutes of research suggested Austria may be were it’s at. I scrolled down through the results. Then I saw it. Söll.

Söll! A place called Söll. And we’re SOL! I lobbied the SOL Treasury (Mark) and the flights were booked. As per protocol, we substituted in a third man from our London base to increase diversity and boost the numbers.

Boarding the flight things didn’t look great. It seemed to be families, couples and annoying children. I could sense some disillusionment from the other two, but I still had absolute faith. I could feel it.

Several delays meant we didn’t roll into Söll til way gone 9. We dumped our bags and set out for food. The restaurant had a couple of large groups in. Large groups of foreign men. Large Welsh rugby men on closer inspection. No matter. It would still come good. It had to.

After food we set out for drink. By chance we stumbled into the Whiskey Mule and made our way through to the bar. “Did you see that sign in the foyer?” Mark asked.
“No, why?”
“It said strictly over 16s!”
Crumbs! I looked around. The place was full of those elusive beings. Girls. We established ourselves at the bar and after a short while some girls encroached our threesome.
“Können wir diesen stuhl?”
Eager to encourage my compadre’s into action, I responded with insightful wit: “Sorry, pardon?”
“Can we use that stool?” said a girl, smiling to reveal braces.
“Sure, yes! Are you guys from Austria?”
They were from Austria; proper locals. And they were young. Boy, were they young! Their parents may well have dropped them off outside. They actually sat with us for a bit. It was probably when they realised we were cheapskates who weren’t going to buy them beer that they slid off the chairs and disappeared into the crowd. As the girls went there were actually mocking groans from some guys behind us at our perceived failure. But it wasn’t, it was quite the opposite.

“Told you guys! One night here in Söll and we’ve successfully spoken to more girls than in the entirety of our previous 2 ski holidays.”
“Cheers!” We clinked our 3 beers.

That business out of the way, we could now concentrate on drinking. In between drinking we squeezed in a touch of skiing:

Top Gun. A great film about hanging out with your best friend, taking a nice shower with all your chums, playing some sports and riding a big chopper. It certainly had quite an influence on me growing up. Whilst I’ve fulfilled most of those aspirations, one has alluded me. That one is driving a plane. But now, thanks to a sexy, kind benefactor that has all changed. I was a bit disappointed that my Goose wore corduroy trousers and was quite old, but I knew I would still get upset when he bumped his noggin on the canopy when we ejected.

Flying a plane is really cool. It’s like driving but in 3D. Observe:

I think I’m ready to join Scientology now!

With two of the SOL members AWOL or otherwise financially challenged I had a lack of resource in the wingman department. SOL is an international enterprise, so I put in a call to the London field office. The previous year we had inserted an asset deep undercover in London posing as a mild mannered office worker for a major metropolitan infrastructure firm. His motive was, of course, ulterior. Thanks to a ‘rubulation’ technique he had personally pioneered, all of his finger prints had been effectively removed (unfortunately it had left him with the permanent inability to open new Tesco bags). This meant he was the perfect man for night raid missions; untraceable. He could get in, do what he had to do, and get out, before anyone could raise the alarm. Or worse, get his telephone number.

However, his recent field reports had become a concern. Simply put, he was not getting the results we were expecting. We could’ve pulled the plug, terminated the mission. But SOL looks after their assets. We organised a 5 night training mission. Destination: Copenhagen.

I met Dave at Stansted for a mission debrief over a burger and a pint. He has a certain inimitable style when it comes to telling tales but for the sake of this, he indicated he had been harrying the Spanish. Unfortunately the Spanish in question had returned to Spain and intelligence was unsure as to whether she would be coming back. Without wishing to get too graphic, Dave’s options seemed to have dried up. We pondered Sophie Ellis Bextor’s improbably ginger children then found our SleazyJet flight to Denmark.

Our forward reconnaissance unit, Sherriff Davies, had flown out a few days prior to establish contact with the local fixers and arrange our Forward Operating Base. He had set us up in the Danhostel, a self awarded ‘5-star hostel’ and potentially target rich environment. We got ourselves established, requisitioned some transport and set about infiltrating the local populace. Once settled in, the Sherriff and I began to apply the training regime. To break Dave down we carefully applied pints of beer at regulated intervals. To build him back up we fed him burgers, lots of burgers. Each day was finished at 5am with Burger King’s aptly named ‘Night Meal 3’ consisting of a Whopper, cheeseburger, large fries and drink. For others wishing to follow the regime, it can be seen in further depth here:

Due to the stresses of his original training, Dave suffers from nightclub induced narcolepsy. Ordinarily this just provides many hours of entertaining coat buckaroo but I needed him awake for the training to work. We had our top men reconfigure the regime to account for this, cunningly building in a second period of monitored sleep late afternoon. This did the trick.

With the program well underway, we were able to explore the city. Copenhagen is well worth a visit simply to experience some of their excellent language. Here are some examples we particularly enjoyed:

One alarming feature of Copenhagen is the sheer quantity of TBJs everywhere we looked. Concealed TBJs, sneaky peaky TBJs, balls out TBJs, bike mounted TBJs; TBJs of every flavour. Perhaps as a result of this we noted an astonishing number of MILFs; fully fledged MILFs, sprog drop imminent MILFs, double pram MILFs. Honestly, it’s amazing.

The training seemed to be having the desired affect. Dave was as excitable as I’ve ever seen him. We put this to the test by taking him to Copenhagen’s many and varied drinking establishments. It was at one such area – the Meatpacking District – I was mooching about waiting for Dave and the others when a girl walked past me and said “At skjorte er den forkert kulør blÃ¥!”

I shrugged and pulled a confused face, but she came back over.

“Your shirt,” she said “it’s the wrong colour blue.”

It was my Captain Awesome T-shirt, so I knew there was nothing wrong with it.

“Err, thanks” I said.

“No, that blue is from last season, it’s out of fashion. Why did you come to Copenhagen?”

“Well, one of my friends used to live out here, so he’s been showing us around and I’ve got a friend with me, who should really be around here-”

She stopped me.

“No, why are you here?”

I tried again. “Well it’s just a sort of holiday, so we’ve been going out and stuff-”

“No.” She moved slightly closer to me, her chest millimetres from mine, “why are you here…?”

“I… oh”

I knew exactly what to do. I ran away to my bicycle, found Dave, the others and we went to find another bar. Phew!

Copenhagen is a party hard kind of a place, well worth a go. Dave’s mojo had been reinstated and had also enjoyed the supersizing benefits of his 15 burgers. Don’t go for the weather, but go for a good time and an eyeful of TBJs.