August was ending, and I had not done my monthly "turns all year" skiing yet this month. And now Lufthansa had a major failure (as they every second flight I take with them ...) This wrecked my plan to ski in two indoor ski halls in The Netherlands. But, I managed to still make it (barely) in time to the Montana Snowcenter and back to the airport. August - Check!
And no, Montana Snowcenter is obviously not in Montana. They are in Kempervennen, Westerhoven, Netherlands. Couple of hours from the Schiphol airport by car.
It is a wonderful, ski-club feeling. Lots of kids practicing skiing or training for racing. And then me.
There's also a nice restaurant with views over the slopes, an outdoor terrace.. and the center is right next to a holiday park, sports complexes, and a water park. Well done, Netherlands! And this is by far not the only indoor ski place in the country. There's plenty!
See the center's home page here.
The Lufthansa failure was a technical problem on the evening's last flight from Frankfurt to Amsterdam, which they tried first to fix by resetting the equipment, then two attempts to fix by maintenance crew, and ultimately we were doomed by Schiphol not accepting us to be few minutes over their evening curfew time. In Lufthansa's defense, they put us to hotels and also paid the 250€ EU compensation. But, as noted Lufthansa has a far too high likelihood of having these kinds of problems in my experience. And, they refused to refund my nice spa hotel at the Amsterdam, my failed rental car booking, or the other ski center's ticket which they didn't refund. Sigh.
And all this caused a problem for my skiing because I had only few hours left in Amsterdam before my next flight back home would leave. And I couldn't move that because I had a work appointment coming up. On the good news side, the flight home from Amsterdam was on Finnair's A350, and I managed to get an upgrade on vouchers that I get every year. Very nice service!
Skiing:
Flight home:
This article has also been published at Planetskier.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
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