Livigno Italy

In January I went to Italy to learn how to snowboard in the Italian Alps. Well so far this has probably been one of the best weeks of my entire exchange. The basics of the event was that about 20 exchange students joined a group going to Livigno, Italy for one week to go skiing there, or snowboarding in my case. This started with me getting on a train at 6 in the morning and taking the 9 hour ride to Gorzów Wielkopolski, the city where one of the exchange students from a city near Chicago lived, Luis Cepeda. One of his Polish friend’s dad was the Rotarian who organized the trip for us. So we went to Gorzów the day before we left and were given temporary host families for the night. I stayed with a nice old lady and one of the Brazilian exchange students. That night they gave us a brief introduction to the trip and then let us spend a few hours going through the city. The next day, we had several hours before our bus to Italy left so once again we explored some of the city. One ironic thing was that we found a restaurant selling “New York Hot-Dogs” which, after 6 months away from home, excited the Americans. But after we bought them we found they put Bigos on them, which is a Polish stew made primarily of cabbage. They were good, but obviously not actually American. Then after going shopping for last minute things, like ski pants in my case, we boarded the bus for the 16 hour bus ride through Europe to Italy. We went first to Germany, then to Austria, then on to Switzerland, and finally we went down a narrow tunnel through a mountain and came out in Italy. From Austria to Italy though we drove through the mountains, and this was some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. I’ll post some pictures at the end to prove my point, but I only have so much room so I can’t give a whole lot of them.

Now for the first day, we did very little. We walked through the city of Livigno, rented our skis, or snowboards in my case, and pretty much talked about what we hoped to do the next day. Then we had dinner at our hotel, which was a kind of buffet and it had the first decent steak I’ve eaten since I came to Poland. They also had several other things that were delicious, but I don’t know what they are called, and I don’t want to waste too much time talking about food, I’ll do that in a moment. Anyway, the next day we traveled up the mountain, which makes P mountain look like an ant hill. One of the exchange students who went with us often snowboarded in the US, so he agreed to teach me and the Brazilian guy how to snowboard while the other beginners went with our skiing instructor. After a lot of falling, and having to take my snowboard off a few times, I finally got to the bottom of the first run. I learned a lot that day, but had trouble putting it into practice. The most important thing I learned is snowboarding is hard and that it hurts. Eventually me and my snowboarding partner were tired and cold so we had lunch in the restaurant at the top of the mountain. This was the second steak I had after coming to Poland, though not quite the last. After this we snowboarded a while, got tired and cold again, and then decided to wait for the others when it was time to go back. Though after no one returned we went down the ski lift and waited with the Rotarians, though once again no one returned. After the ski lifts closed we called someone (we didn’t want to before because it was very expensive to use Polish phones in Italy) and found out that everyone else had gotten bored and gone back to the hotel earlier. After dinner that night we went out in the city to see if we could find something entertaining to do. But we also found out that night that in Livigno everything closes very early and there wasn’t much to do.

The next day I decided to stay at the hotel and go see the city with Luis, who was injured and was not allowed to go skiing for the whole trip. We had slept in quite a bit, and just as we were about to go out to find something fun to do, Felipe (the Brazilian) walks in with Pablo (The Mexican/ American [it’s a long story] who taught me and Felipe how to snowboard.). Apparently, Pablo had fallen and gotten a concussion, and Felipe brought him back to the hotel for help. So we took our concussed friend (who had a very comical memory loss) to the hospital, and then tried to get ahold of the Rotarian. It took a while, and a lot of bus/taxi rides, but eventually Pablo was ok, and even then we started playing with him and his memory loss. In celebration that he was alright, and, more importantly, to kill time, we went out to buy some pizza, it was Italy afterall. We found a nice restaurant there and settled in. It turns out though that our waiter was from Argentina, and since most people at the table were fluent in Spanish, we all had fun with the waiter. The waiter even decided to make fun of Pablo and his inability to remember events that had happened five seconds before. The food was absolutely delicious, I had a spicy pizza with something similar to pepperoni and some other stuff on it that was the best pizza I ever ate. And then Felipe ordered a steak, that we realized when they brought it out it was bigger than my head. Not only that, but it was a very delicious steak. I ended up ordering one myself the next time I went to the restaurant, the day before we left Italy. The rest of the day was rather uneventful, so afterwards we went snowboarding the next day. I actually have a video of me snowboarding, but since it is mostly of me falling, I won’t be posting it. If you really want to see me falling and rolling around in the snow, then email me at coycrf70@gmail.com  saying so and I will send you a copy of the video.

Plainly put though, the rest of the trip was just snowboarding, snowboarding, and more snowboarding. I won’t waste your time writing about how to snowboard, but I eventually got a bit better, and since leaving Italy I have gone snowboarding with my host family and I’ve actually gotten pretty decent at it. To end the story, right before we left to go home I bought a new balisong (butterfly knife for most people) and it so far is my favorite one. Then we had another long bus ride back to Poland, and I stayed one more night with the nice old lady from before, and finally ended with another incredibly long train ride back to Krakow.