...with a special imprint on the back...

...and a special patch on the front!

One person on the picture does not look like the others :-)

Afterwards, we had a short walk through the little town of Hinterglemm.  On a green meadow, a little Snow-Mobile race course had been prepared for the collectors.  It looked a bit bizarre in all that green surrounding us!

Near the very nice Swatch The Club igloo, there were several snow mobiles waiting for us. 

Clear the track, please!

So, one after the other, we had a few rounds on the course, testing out the snow mobiles.  Some went slower than others but two or three club members went over the top and waayy too fast.  Fortunately, no one was hurt seriously.

your author in action!

Paco and his family

Later in the day, a little race was about to start.  Each country of the 14 participating nations selected a competitor.  For Germany, Matthias received the little patch "official pilot":

In the final, the pilot from Switzerland won against Austria.  The winning pilot received a starting slot at the Snow-Mobile race 2007!

After the race, Skander entered the little stadium with a brand new black hummer!  It was time to distribute the Xmas specials to the collectors! 

As we were anxiously waiting to received the special, two bandits arrived on the scene and stole the black Hummer car!  The Xmas specials were gone!  It all went soo fast that I was not able to take any pictures.  As usual, Michael was faster with his camera:

You can imagine that we all were very very seriously disappointed!  Can you think about a Club event without accompanying event special?  I cannot. 

As we were still sorrowful standing on the scene of the crime, the next surprise came up:  Two helicopters landed close nearby. 

One helicopter had a capacity of nine persons, the other one was ready to transport four persons.  So, one group after the other, we entered the helicopter, and we were brought to an unknown destination!  It was the first helicopter flight of my life, so this was really exciting and a great adventure.

Fellow collectors waiting for the next ones to arrive...

It turned out that we flew about seven kilometers to the Lindlingalm further up in the mountains:

We had an excellent dinner in the evening:  Cheese fondue and meat fondue, it tasted excellent!

After dinner, we had some "traditional" entertainment with...

...Alphorn music...

....dance...

...very fast cow bell music...

...and even a few happy collectors joining the band!  Matthias plays excellent washboard, by the way :-)

So we had a wonderful and relaxed evening at the Lindlingalm, and we almost forgot about the missing xmas specials.  We had a very nice torch walk back to Hinterglemm, really romantic. 

But in order to be able to search for the missing xmas specials, we all needed an agent training session.  This training was on the schedule for the next day.

See more pictures from the Saalbach Xmas event (outdoor agent training!) on page 3 of my report!

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