2001 – A Cool Bus Odyssey

New Year. A time of reflection. A chance to look back over the past twelve months, to review your accomplishments and reminisce over great times passed with friends and family, whilst looking eagerly forwards to the coming year…

Anyone doing that right now? No, me neither. Truth is, there has been some great experiences in 2020 but it’s harder than usual to pick them out from the lows. It’s certainly not going down in the annals as an all time classic.

1st January 2021 see’s Cool Bus start it’s 20th year in business. To be honest ‘in business’ probably deserves some quotation marks. We’re certainly expecting to do less airport runs this January than we did with one van back in 2002. But it has got me thinking about years gone by. The passage of time doesn’t always register from day to day. Even from one season to the next, not much seems to change, but when you look back over a couple of decades the differences become a lot more apparent.

MONEY

When I drove out to the Alps that first December, I paid the motorway tolls in French Francs. Imagine that. A currency that now seems like a token of a bygone era, like paying for the Dartford crossing with half a crown. 

France switched to the euro on the 1st January 2002, and at that point you could get 1.65 euros for a pound sterling – a whopping 50% more than you get these days. And a euro went a long way. After the switch, a litre of diesel was priced under 70 cents. That was the sterling equivalent of 42p!

14 francs and 80 cents that we found down the back of the Cool Bus office sofa. Enough for 3.5 litres of diesel in 2001

When I arrived in France one of the first things I bought was a mobile phone, my first. Naturally it was a Nokia. It cost 400 francs with a SIM card. I had to get the guy in the shop to show me how to use it.

The Cool Bus Office in 2001

Cool Bus already had an internet presence. Even back then it was important though obviously not to the extent it is these days. Our basic website was built by me, not using Word Press or Square Space, but just basic HTML code. It had words on it and some colours.

The booking process was very simple:

1. Send us an email
2. Wait for a response (1-2 days) with a quote
3. Post a sterling cheque to my Mum in the UK
4. Wait for Mum to do the weekly run to the bank and pay the cheque in
5. Receive your confirmation email

Not as convenient as contactless

The entire process could be achieved in just ten days! These days you can book a transfer on our website and receive a confirmation in just a few minutes.

Cool Bus didn’t own a computer in those days mind you. At least, not one that was portable enough to bring out to France. Bookings were hand written in a diary that was made of paper. In order to check emails and send responses I had to pay a visit to Bar Mont Blanc in Vallandry where they had a paid internet terminal. Back then you could have a pint and a cigarette at the bar while you browsed the world wide web.

The original Cool Bus in 2002 and one of our Tesla’s last week

The Cool Bus fleet consisted of one Mercedes 508 minibus. It was overweight and under powered. On top of that there was no motorway between Annecy and Geneva so transfers took a lot longer than they do these days. As a distraction technique I had a small fridge on board containing a dozen bottles of Lidl’s finest Fink Brau beer. I also tried to keep clients entertained with 2 GameBoy Advance handheld consoles that you could link together to play Mario Karts. Cutting edge at the time. 

This qualified as ‘advance’ in 2001

The Mercedes boasted a six disc CD player and a tape deck meaning I could load up nearly nine hours of music before setting off from Geneva. Popular albums with our clients in 2002 included the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ Californication and one from a new band called Gorillaz. These days our vans have ten times as much music on an SD card the size of a postage stamp or, in a Tesla, stream Spotify or radio stations from around the world.

And this, kids, is how we used to buy music!

Outside work I lived in a hostel in Nancroix, a lovely little hamlet nestled between Les Arcs and La Plagne. Of course, back then there was no double decker, 180 person Vanoise Express shuttling back and forth between the two resorts over our heads. There’s a few more chalets in Nancroix these days but it still has the same quaint feel as it did. One downside of course, was the lack of evening entertainment. There were no bars in town (unless you count Macca’s illegal drinking den). 

HOSTEL LIFE

Evenings in the hostel generally involved either playing SSX Tricky on the Playstation 2 or watching snowboard films. Most of these were actually on VHS, DVD’s still being quite new fangled at the time. I remember in particular The Resistance by Forum got a lot of airtime. We also watched regular films and it wasn’t unheard of to watch a good one twice through in one sitting. Decent movies around then included Fight Club and The Matrix.

Many hours were spent staring at this game

Of course there were bars further afield. Bar Mont Blanc was certainly a local favourite (and still is – good to know some things don’t change). Having a minibus meant I was often the designated driver which saved spending money on beer. Otherwise, it wasn’t unheard of to walk the 5km or hitch home with an inebriated local. 

Another hostel resident, Matt had a job in Arc 1800, in a bar called Benjy’s and we would occasionally accompany him on his commute, a journey on foot of 7km, with 2 of those being on a piste. The owner of Benjy’s at the time was a friendly Frenchman called Eddie, who actively discouraged French tourists away from the place to leave more space for thirsty British and Belgian seasonaires. Long term Bourg local, Chris Cracknell (founder of Chill Chalet), DJ’d in the bar once a week so it was a popular haunt along with the nearby scene of much debauchery – The Red Hot Saloon.

Hostel accommodation in Nancroix was six to a room, all in bunks. The bathroom featured a ‘sit-up’ bathtub. The lounge just about had space for the 16 odd residents as long as you didn’t mind sitting cheek to cheek or spending a couple of hours on a hard stool. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place. It was friendly and cheap and the close quarters did mean we all got to know each other very well indeed! 

Actual photos of ‘Maison de Quatre Balcons’ hostel in Nancroix circa 2002!

And I’m happy to say I’m still mates with many of them. Now mostly in our forties, and with a few grey hairs and wrinkles, I’m not sure we would take so well to living in such a confined space these days. To be honest, I’m not sure your average current 18 year old seasonaire would be impressed but these were different times. 

SEASONAIRES

Speaking of which, the word seasonaire wasn’t even in common use back then. In fact, it might surprise you to learn that the word doesn’t even feature in the English dictionary today! With its origins in the French, saisonniere, the Anglified version was the name of a brand run in Bourg St. Maurice by David Parr – seasonaires.com They catered for people from the UK who wanted to spend a winter in the Alps on their own savings. 

Back then it was considerably harder to arrange things like travel and accommodation on the internet, so they filled a gap in the market. Seasonaires actually went on to buy the Pink House in Bourg, which is now Cool Bus HQ. Radio 6 Music DJ Tom Ravenscroft was among those that spent a winter at TPH courtesy of seasonaires.com!

You could say the seasonaire experience has changed a lot over the last 20 years but to be honest that doesn’t really cover it. The entire concept, at least from a British point of view, is set to disappear as we move into 2021. Much has already been made of the loss of automatic rights for British passport holders to work in the EU after Brexit but it goes much further than that. After the 1st January, the maximum stay for a Brit in the EU will be limited to 90 days in any 180 day period.

If you arrive in the Alps as the lifts open in mid-December you would need to leave by the middle of March, a full month before the end of the winter. Can you even call yourself a seasonaire if you haven’t spent a full season skiing?

So this genuinely is the end of an era. Twenty years ago, being British offered you the opportunity to pack up your bags and jump into a minibus to the Alps to seek your fortune. Or to fill a camper van with Pot Noodles and drive to France to spend the winter as a ski bum. There were no forms to fill in, no limits on your time and you had the freedom to head anywhere in Europe. I count myself extremely lucky to have had these blessings which have ultimately led to a rich and fulfilling life in the mountains. Sad to think that the current generation will not get to experience the Alps in the same way we did 20 years ago.