Skiing!

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Hallo hallo!

I just got back from a weekend holiday of skiing in the Alps! My broken computer has been debilitating to say the least, my fingers are crossed that I can get it fixed this week-- and then I will finally be able to upload my amazing pictures from Venice, Vienna, Budapest, Prague.

So skiing in the Alps was a bit different than skiing in the States. First of all, the only people I saw falling were my friends. Even the smallest children looked as though they learned to ski around the same time they learned to walk. We had a really fun time though; I forgive my friends for exaggerating their skiing skills. All I can say is thank god we didn’t rent a place that was ski to door-- something we seriously did consider. If we had chosen a place that was ski to door there is no doubt they would either be dead or still trying to work their way down the mountain. In their defense though, Savignon was not a very beginner-friendly ski slope, plus all the signs were in German! What good does that do us?

We woke up super early and took the 6:12 am train to Bellinzona, where we caught a bus, and then another train, and then another bus, and 3.5 hours later we were there! Sometimes I think I’m in a scene from Planes Trains and Automobiles. The bus dropped us off at a snow covered post office, where with out hesitation we walked in to ask for directions to the ski shop that Philipe (the Englishman we were renting the apartment from) recommended to us. We’ve long given up trying to navigate on our own, after the Venice debacle where we wandered the streets for hours searching for our hostel we’ve found its much more time efficient to just own up to our tourist nature and ask for help. Enough trying to blend in, if our confused looks don’t give us away, our 50 pound backpacks certainly do- the jig is up.

While we were asking directions, a man walked in and the woman helping us spoke to him about giving us a ride to the shop. I assumed that he worked for the ski shop or perhaps a shuttle service, but no, he was just some local man named Paolo trying to mail a package. Oops. I quickly learned that Savignon is a very trusting place. They didn’t make us fill out any paperwork for our skis or pay a dime up front they just gave them to us. How refreshing!

Renting skis and boots was quite an event. I always feel a little guilty when all 8 of us roll up into a small store like that. Perhaps we should send out some sort of warning: Hurricane America coming through. The man that worked at the small shop very kind and tried his best to be accommodating even though he didn’t speak a lick of English. It has to be a headache enough to try to fit ski boots on anyone from a different language, but 8 American girls all trying on shoes at once just seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Somehow I found myself buckling everyone’s boots, I felt just like my father because I kept asking “Are they tight are they tight? They are supposed to be tight!” Anyway to make a long story short, our boots were very tight and we hit the slopes.

We put on our skis and everyone seemed fine; no one fell immediately and we just hopped onto the lift and took off. Natalie was the only one who confessed that this was her first time on skis, so I rode up with her. When the lift reached the top of the mountain I said to her “Don’t be afraid to stand up, its better to just get off and fall than to get stuck and have to go around the lift again.” Good advice right? In hindsight, I should have been a bit more specific because as soon as the lift got remotely close to the ground Natalie just jumped right off. Not in a "Wow look at that girl go, she's only a beginner?" I mean like she jumped with about 5 feet of air beneath her skis and the ground onto the cement incline and started sliding back down the mountain. It was amazing, I've never seen anyone do that before. So of course our lift keeps going and I have to shut one eye because I think we are about to witness our friend get decapitated before our very eyes. I start yelling at her to put her head down and obediently she eats snow in her panic and we sail right over her. She is scrambling to get up and then the next chair comes and ducks and in a moment of panic grabs onto a stranger's leg and holds on for dear life until she is pulled up the mountain. Once she was safely back to us, I almost wet my pants but thankfully I contained myself (it was pretty cold at the top of that mountain).

After we dust her off and have a good laugh, we meet up with the rest of our group and ski maybe 100 feet down a mini hill to another ski lift. Actually I skied, and just as I turn around to see where they were and I tursee Natalie completely face plant at my feet. Then Raleigh falls down on her back but her skis were still on so she slid down to me and then Mary did the same thing, both with there arms stretched out and poles flailing. Megan skied right into the gate and fell and Emily like inched her way down and when she finally made it all the Swiss people sitting at the lodge started cheering. That is when I realized that no one knew how to ski. It was funny really, we were all there in jeans and our wool coats, there wasn’t a waterproof article on our bodies. It looked like we just happened upon the mountain and the only way to get down was to put skis on and go for it. I'm sure they were all just thinking to themselves what the hell are these girls doing (in German.)

So we take another lift and we start going down and let me tell you I have a much better appreciation of all the times Dad stood at the bottom of a hill and tried to coax us down. Poor girls, it really wasn’t a place for beginners. Natalie had a good attitude though she just went for it every time and just accepted the fact that she was going to bust her ass. It was fun. I could go on and on with stories of everyone falling but I don’t want to bruise their ego’s too badly (their bodies are already bruised enough haha)

After a day of that (I think we went down the entire mountain once, and they took the lift down for part of it) we went to our little apartment in Tinizong, which was perfect for us. Literally looked like a page from the Ikea catalogue, and it was so nice to just relax and eat and drink and be merry. Some might say we had too much fun. Sunday we slept in and everyone was sore and over skiing (thank god) and they decided to give sledding a try (although I heard it ended up being just as treacherous as skiing). Melissa and I (who also can ski but left the group yesterday to ski on her own) went back and skied Sunday. We went to this really nice part of the mountain that was sooo beautiful. I have pics, which I will upload eventually but we literally were on the top of the Alps it felt like. We were skiing in this huge bowl, it was beautiful. The slopes are a lot differently marked, there were many times on Saturday that I held my breath because I thought one of my friends were about to take a tumble down a cliffside. Also, they aren’t groomed like at home, it was like off road skiing, SO FUN. Melissa and I skied all day and we missed our bus home, and no taxis on Sundays. Oops. It wasn’t too far of a walk back to our apartment, we walked there in the morning but we were tired. We ran into Natalie and Monica so we went into a store to ask if there were ANY taxis and they said to just hitch a ride everyone does, so that is exactly what we did. No Paolo this time but I'm alive to tell about it. Sunday night we had slumber party part 2 and then this morning we got up at around 7 and left and made it back to Lugano at 11. I am really happy we did that, it was SO fun and we couldn’t have spent a semester in Switzerland without skiing in the Alps!

I am SO exhausted today (and sore) I missss you!

Ciao!
Liza

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Photos

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top of the lift

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me, emily and raleigh

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one of many falls

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megan