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Published: March 16th 2009
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At the weekend I took part in the "largest student sporting event on the snow", in Bolzano/Bozen.
Snowdays 2009 organised by the students of the University of Bolzano for 350 other students from France, Germany and Italy. Activities included midnight sledging, skiing, a snow-volleyball tornament and lots of general celebration. I went with 16 other students from Bologna, and we were decidedly the coolest and best team, as we were beautifully co-ordinated with very fashionable sunglasses (see pictures) and everyone was always very energetic and cheerful despite most of us not sleeping more than about 5 hours in the entire three days. We went on the regional train (it cost about 13 euros for 200km) and were hosted by the Bolzano students and everything was heavily subsidised so the trip ended up being extremely good value.
On the first day we arrived and met our hosts and were shown to our accommodation. We were also given goodbags complete with t-shirt, wooly hat and brochure for buying special snow machines that turn mountains of snow into pistes... just incase we ever feel compelled to turn our back gardens into ski-resorts. That evening we headed to the mountains for sledging in the dark
down a 5km downhill piste into a blizzard of snow. It was great fun though, especially with the sunglasses to block out the snowflakes and chance of seeing anything. Afterwards there was a party in a mountain hut. Complete with wonderful german apres-ski music and mullled wine. We were scheduled to return to Bolzano about about 2.30 allowing us almost 3 hours sleep before the breakfast at 7am next morning.
The weather on day 2 was really terrible in the mountains, although it definitely added a certain element of suspense to the skiing, as I never knew as i sped uncontrollably between moguls unable to see anything at all with skis skidding in deep slow whether or not my fall was going to be a bad one. I had many falls, but fortunately none were bad. It was actually lovely because everyone went much more slowly because of the weather, and falling down didnt hurt because there was so much soft thick powder snow on top of the hard piste.
We paused for lunch to eat massive panini on little tables in the snow to the sound of pounding dance music played by the Snowdays dj the whole day.
At least it helped everyone keep awake.
In the afternoon we did more skiing and then headed back to Bolzano. After dinner there was time to do a little tour of the city, which I am really in love with. Bolzano/Bozen is bilingual in Italian and German, and was part of the Austro-Hungarian empre until after the first worl war. It seemed to me that German was more widely spoken than Italian, and I probably amused the locals with my strange hy-brid of the two. The city seems extremely well run, as well as being spotlesslly clean and virtually crime free. The expensive designer boutique store have external shop-windows, literally glass boxes nestled between the
portici housing 500euro shoes and the like. In Bologna the expensive items are removed from the shop windows, and metal blinds pulled down to protect goods, whereas it seems in Bolzano a few milimetres of glass is enough to deter thieves. The taxi-service also seemed like something out of the 22nd century. One only had to call a number, state the location to an automated system and confirm with "yes" before about ten seconds later a shiny taxi with glass roof pulled into view.
Taxis in Bolzano are half price for women travelling alone at night, another detail which seems extremely civilised. The architecture of the city is Tyrolean and definitely feels much more Austrian than Italian. It lies upon a river and is surrounded on all sides by snowy mountains.
On the third day, we drove to a village outside Bolzano which was incredibly beautiful. Surrounded by mountains, the little wooden houses were all buried beneath several metres of snow. The weather was fantastic. Here the day was spent playing snow volleyball, drinking far too much coffee and attempting a passeggiata in the snow, but failing miserably when it came up above our waists and even crawling didnt make much difference. It was really lovely and inspite of the exhaustion we all felt in really good humour. Bologna team did pretty well considering we were mostly all snow volley novices and were playing against Bolzano's first volleyball team. Unfortunately I cannot pretend I contributed greatly to our successes but I hopefully could provide good encouragement to those more able players.
That evening we returned for a lovely traditional South-Tyrolean meal in a locale with the rest of the Bologna team, as
well as some exciting rounds of
Mafioso, a game a bit like the ones you play at primary school where il popolo have to discover the mafia before they are all killed in their sleep. Sweetly, it was equallly innocent. That night there was the Farewell party in a cavernous venue at least 10m below the city. We were all pretty tired however, and didnt stay too late.
The previous weekend (also spent near Bolzano) also deserves a mention. Mainly because I got to watch Manuel preparing meals for his dogs. One enormous 50+kg St Bernard type and a tiny 5kg pug. I have never seen anything like it however. The two of them sitting patiently on the kitchen floor while Manuel washed carrots, peeled carrots, chopped carrots. Put on two saucepans of water to boil. Weighed rice, put rice to boil, put carrots to boil, defrosted top quality mince before mixing neatly on a plate and seasoning with fresh Parmesan. The dogs devoured it all in about two minutes, and he seemed quite suprised when i said that most english children are not fed so well. For breakfast they had toasted panini with prosciutto. I had toasted
panino senza prosciutto 😊
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Jane Bird
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Love the glasses! Jx