In reply to Stefan Kruger:
Just as a counter to some of the advice above, and I'm not really suggesting this is the best idea, but...
I did a weeks skiing as a kid, then about 10 years later decided I wanted to do some spring alpine routes, bought some touring skis, had two days with a friend who was a good skier as a refresher, and then launched myself off the midi. Had a terrible time with a heavy bag and my binding release DIN being set to my weight, not the combined weight of me+bag. I fell over lots, and was generally crap. But I didn't die, and we did some great routes and had lots of fun.
Personally, I think the hardest thing was transitioning to skiing with a heavy pack in really variable snow conditions. If you pick your routes well, you should be able to find ones which have pretty simple access/descent routes and you can cut your touring teeth on them, rather than picking climbs you fancy and then dealing with horrible steep descents to get to/from them.
As many others have already mentioned: be avalanche aware and make sure you know how to use your TSP.