The Italian Trip								Thursday 18 - 2 - 99

Day 1 - Sunday 31/1
So there we were in Dublin airport at 5:40am. A desperate time to be up and about. Everyone was tired and having spent most of the previous day in the pub watching the Ulster match (it was quite a long game) I was feeling the beginnings of a horrendous hangover. There were five of us gathered to head out to Italy for a weeks skiing in Sauze d'Oulx in the Alps above Turin.

Donogh, who like myself had skied in Andorra the previous year, and had packed a large supply of 'sweeties' for the little girls in Italy. Mark, who had come direct from shift work in Clonmel and was probably worse off than I was, had skied in Livigno. He was overdue his third snow & ice accident following the Switzerland and Connemara incidents. The smart money was on him being avalanched. On the nursery slopes. And there was Fiona and Aidan a work friend of hers who both were snow virgins. And then there was me, society drop out, student, Limerick man and unemployed person. Following check in it was off for the last decent breakfast we would have for a week 

So off we headed on the Ryanair flight to Turin. The pre trip reports I had heard were worrying, talking of a good skiing resort, but with loads of English and few women. Added to that was a dreadful snow report of 'difficult and even dangerous skiing'. And to top it all we had forgotten the bivvy bags again this year! Things were not looking good.

The flight cheered us up though. We flew in over the beautiful snow covered Alps with almost all the range visible on a clear cloudless morning. We weren't on the best side of the plane but we still got great views and played 'name that peak'. Landing in Turin we were met by Mikala the Panorama holiday company rep. A nice blonde English girl who definitely knows a good then when she sees it as she is going out with a Limerick man. She gave us the good news that it had just snowed and the resort was 'in condition'. There was a short (one hour) transfer from Turin to our resort where for the week we were to stay in the Hotel des Amis in Jouvenceaux.

Jovencaux is a village just outside Sauze d'Oulx at about 1500m. The runs were from about 2500m down to Sauze, but the big plus was that the one ski pass covered all the resorts in the area. Between Sauze, Sansicario on the other side of the mountain and Sestriere in the next valley there was more skiing than could be done in a busy week. The hotel had about 50 people staying (about 40% Irish) and was owned by an Italian ski instructor Mauro and his English wife Leslie. Our first impression was that it was going to be an Italian Fawlty Towers. The rooms were nice enough with a balcony view of the mountains. But the bathroom had to be seen to be believed. There was about 15cm between the front of the toilet bowel and the shower. Some interesting contortions were needed to get sitting on the device.

Having arrived and grabbed the beds, Donogh took some time to do a vibration test on his. It was agreed that a sock on the door handle was the signal for "Hah, I got lucky. Clear off and find somewhere else to sleep tonight!". The next thing we needed to do was get lunch. So we headed on the town. Outside it was -4 degrees with plenty of snow and ice on the ground. The Carbinari (the Italian gun totting police named after a popular pasta dish) were outside but they weren't looking for us. We wandered into the village looking for a restaurant which had been recommended, through quaint cobbled streets, barely wide enough for the Fiat Bambino's everyone seemed to own, which were paved with sheet ice. After a few slips and bruises we got to the Etoile de Neige which became our local for the week. The owner Fabio was great craic, the beer was cheap and they did probably the best pizza I have ever had. The pizza was so big it nearly needed to be served on a manhole cover instead of a plate. After lunch we collected our gear from the rental shop and headed up the hill into Sauze itself. People were skiing into the town itself on what looked to us to be a treacherous steep run and turned out to be a beginners run.

We were late back for the Panorama Reps pep talk and introduction to the resort. But unlike the Panorama talk in Andorra (which we gate crashed last year) there was no free booze. The apres-ski entertainment for the week was covered, the highlight to be Tuesday night and the pub crawl, ending in Banditos with two strippers. Donogh said he did not approve of this type of entertainment. During dinner we tried to guess the occupations of the 6 girls at the next table and settled on nurses. This brought a mischievous glint to some of the male eyes at our table.

Then it was back up to the Etoile de Neige for a few beers, where Fabio entertained his guests by putting out cigarettes in their clothes. And we listened to MTV playing Offspring's 'Pretty fly for a White Guy' continuously and watched a corny 'World's Coolest Skiers' type video.

Day 2 - Monday 1/2
On Monday everyone was up bright and early for our first day on the slopes and our skiing classes at 10am. Mark looked extremely hip with his black ski outfit and matching orange skis and poles. He was 'Pretty Fly for a Ski Guy'.

It was a short walk to the Jouvenceaux chair lift where expert skiers (those who could stand up while in skis) had to 'gear up' for the ride to the intermediate station. Donogh and I managed to get the skis on and hop into the chair lift. Getting out was more difficult and I skied/fell from the chair lift into a snowdrift and earned the honour of the first fall of the week. Never mind only myself and Donogh saw it. Undaunted by this, the three of us who had skied before were determined to get a quick run in before the first class, if just to see could we remember which end of the ski went forward.

Another lift ride to the top of the mountain and we decided to head back on the path marked 'Beginners'. There was a little confusion on the best way to start so Seamus said "this way, follow me" and headed down a steep section, where I looked good for about three seconds before claiming the second fall of the trip. Several falls and scary bits later we arrived to the ski school in time to be late for our first class.

The instructors then set about splitting everyone into different groups based on our incompetence and lack of skill. [What is the collective noun for a group of hopeless Irish Skiers?, a disaster zone, an embarrassment?] 

After and hour or so we had been properly sorted into groups with a good 10:1 student:teacher ratio (INTO & ASTI eat your heart out). Other than Aidan and Fiona we had all been split into different groups. The instructors then spent the rest of the morning crying in despair at all our bad habits. How do people who only ski once a year get the chance to pick up so many?

We finished in time for lunch and everyone met up for the choice of pasta, tomato and meat combination that is Italian cuisine. Again we were treated to Offspring and 'Pretty fly for a white guy'. There was more toilet fun when we ran into our first squat toilet. And like Andorra the previous year there was a big shortage of toilets, only one for a restaurant of about 400 people, so there was a lengthy queue.

We finished about 4 and headed back to the hotel for dinner. This was livened up by Donogh -"It's a little known fact but vegetable are actually bad for you"- Lang expanding some of his theories on good nutrition. Despite Donogh's objections I booked us on the pub crawl and strip show for the next night. The Reps were holding a quiz night in the hotel so we fled to the Etoile De Neige where Fabio was giving the beer away. We amused ourselves with a discussion on the Sauze Skidoo problem. You can never get one at night, the queues are dreadful at the skidoo ranks. We felt the problem was that there are too few licenses and really the government should de-regulate the skidoo industry.

Day 3 - Tuesday 2/2
Despite being provided with only marginally more bed clothes than a Playboy centrefold we slept well as the rooms were very warm. Outside the temperatures were picking up each day and by now it was up to about 0 centigrade.

During the day my skiing instructor Oswaldo or Ossie (whose moustache was one of the most impressive pieces of face furniture I have seen in a long time) gave us the story of a nearby mountain with an unusual flat peak. It had been a fort which the Italians had spent 25 years building and then the French took it in 2 days as they had paid more attention to advances in Artillery technology. The mountain now lies in France.

Lessons in the morning and personal skiing time in the afternoon. At the end of the day we returned to Cicci's for an end of day cappuccino. This was a nice bar/restaurant halfway down the mountain at the chair lift intermediate station. In exchange for holding on to our gear at night we agreed to load up on coffee and beer there at the end of every day. Like most things in the area the owner also owned a bar and hotel in the village and his brother was a ski instructor, who was married to the sister of another ski instructor who owned the other bar and the gear hire shop, and his brother... The Italians don't have corporations they have 'Families'. The Mafia really is just a PLC involved in various illegal activities.

That night was the pub crawl in Sauze so the shifting shirts came out and the hair was brushed. Five bars with some free drink and more of it at half price. In the Boogieman we got dancing on the tables. In the Schuss bar there was dancing everywhere and sometime after 12 we made it to Banditos where the strip show was on and the dancing was naked. The night was a great opportunity to get to meet all the people in your ski-group and hotel. We also got chatting to the girls from the next table in our hotel. We had been nearly right, there were 4 nurses in the 6. They were a few years older than us so Donogh was immediately turned off and went to look for some school girls (he had brought the jelly babies with him). Mark was drooling at one of the nurses - Catherine, and I displayed my preference for older women (lock up your Grannies) by following the blonde Sheena around. Regrettably we have nothing to report.

The highlight of the night was to be the strippers. The women of Sauze were strangely quiet for the male stripper, no orgasmic, hysterical or humiliating screams or laughs. Just before going the full Monty someone tossed him a napkin (not a very big one by all accounts) which he used to defend his modesty after removing the last of his underwear. I left for home before the female act, but Mark reported that she was amateurish and who am I to argue with him in this area. Someone did say the next day that there were complaints that the woman went all the way and the man didn't.

Day 4 - Wednesday
This was recovery day. I had been home first at about 2am the others came back later still. Ossie could see we were suffering and we were told "well done" just for getting up to the top of the mountain on the chair lift in the morning. It was noticeable by now that the snow was thinning a bit with the rising temperatures. There was a small amount of high cloud but the chances of it snowing were greater in Dublin (oddly enough this was true). Big snow ploughs were running every day moving snow from the hollows and off piste onto the middle of the runs to keep the surface ski-able. But the bare and icy patches were becoming more visible.

At this stage Fiona and Aidan's beginners group had come on enough to be let loose on the upper slopes and we were running into (and over) their group during the day. The big event for the day was Fabio had come out on the slopes with a video camera and was recording our antics to show in the Etoile de Neige later that night. So we all got the chance to ski by while strutting our stuff in an attempt to show we knew what we were doing.

That night after dinner we headed up to the bar to watch the show. There was a big crowd, standing room only and when everyone was suitably warmed up the video was put on. And the first thing on it was me failing miserably to get out of the chair lift on Monday and going head first into a snow drift. My embarrassment was very public. Fortunately it was short lived as we were treated to a succession of moronic skiers and loons with the Oscar going to the guy who held onto the chair lift and got dragged by it. We all got to see ourselves going down the slope as well. Fiona and Aidan made a good account of themselves though the lady had the edge in terms of style. My own instructor had declared during the day "Seamus, he have no fear, lots of how you say, courage. But he have no style". He also made some comments on my skiing.

Day 5 - Thursday
For a bit of variety all the non beginner classes were taken to the next valley and the Sestriere resort for the day. This meant going to the top of our mountain, skiing part the way down the far side and then getting a bubble car into the next resort. Sestriere was larger and busier but had better snow than Sauze. It had been developed in a big way by Fiat and is being touted as a location for the 2006 Winter Olympics. There was some fine skiing and we got to try out the World Cup down hill run. The pros can get up to 100mph on this and take about 2 minutes to do the 800m (vertical) descent. We took a more leisurely 20 or 30 minutes. The top of the resort gave great views into France and the Dauphine Alps. In the distance Ossie pointed out the Barre des Ecrins, that noted stomping ground of the club, which was about 30km away.

Back in Sauze the big event for the day was the Andy Capp race, reputedly the largest in Europe, where every sort of amateur gets to show their incompetence at skiing. There are prizes for fancy dress and reports had it a group of lads entered last year wearing only socks. We missed the race but saw the prize giving as we hunted around Sauze for a cash machine. When we found it we learned of the benefits of the €uro as it took our bank cards and printed the slips in Lira and Euros. Back in the hotel we heard the story about an incident in the hotel the previous day involving an Ulster man who was staying there as well. He had gone on a 2 day bender after the pub crawl. Wednesday evening he woke up from his drunken stupor and tried to head up to his room. Unable to open the door he kicked it in and went inside where he started to get violently sick all over the beds and bags before collapsing asleep. The fun part was that it wasn't his room at all. It belonged to two English lads who came home to find 'Goldilocks' or should that be 'Goldilocked' asleep in their beds. He was lucky they didn't kick several shades of shit out of him.

We had decided to eat out for the night and Fabio's was the obvious choice. What followed was a display of gluttony on a par with the last days of the Roman empire. We went for everything, anti-pasta, pasta, meat dish and desert. Donogh had a steak so rare it could only have been shown a picture of a cooker. The four lettuce leaves it was lying on looked like they were bleeding. There was some speculation as to the nature of anti-pasta, would it be annihilated with a massive release of gamma radiation if combined with pasta? We were thoroughly stuffed and couldn't even fit "wan leetle wafer theen mint". Great nosh and even with the wine and all it was less than £16 per head!

Day 6 - Friday
This was the day the weather turned. Walking up to the chair lift station in the village it was noticeably colder and overcast. The mountains on the opposite side of the valley were in the cloud and the tops the trees were waving in the wind. Riding up to Cicci's I was regretting not wearing my Gore Tex that day as the breeze picked up the higher we went. Up on the mountain things were miserable. It was windy enough that the lifts to the top of the mountain were closed. And today was race day where each class would be racing for medals and a cup! This left us with only three ski-able runs down to Cicci's. There was no improvement in the weather over the morning so the race was run on the beginners slope. This meant for experienced skiers it became an exercise in pushing with your poles. Ossie considerably helped our spirits by passing around his hip flask which had some form of alcoholic home brew that tasted of apples. The rest of the days skiing was poor but the hope was that the clouds we could see across the valley in France would come over and give us some fresh snow. But despite the winds blowing from that direction there was no sign of them budging all day.

That night we went to another of the hotels for the prize giving and we intended to make a session of it. Our pretty fly ski guy Mark, led the field and won the trophy in his ski group. We amused ourselves by taking it apart and seeing how many pieces we could leave out when we put it back together. Then it was back up to Sauze and to the Schuss bar for more dancing and drinking. One of the nurses, Liz provided great entertainment with a one woman show that enthralled Mark and Donogh for over an hour, with things like explaining her sister Sheena had had 10 face jobs over the years and how if you lifted her fringe you could see the scar lines. I wimped out early again and headed home but the rest of the gang continued late into the night.

Day 7 - Saturday
This was to be our last day on the slopes and disappointingly there had been no snow the previous night. The grey overcast sky held the promise of snow, and in Jouvenceaux there were a few flakes in the air. The temperature had dropped to below 0 again and the breeze was noticeable at the hotel. Accordingly I wore everything up the mountain, thermals, Gore Tex, fleeces, gloves, hat, and I was glad of it. The lifts to the top were open and I decided to get an early morning run in. On top of the mountain it was brutally cold with a sharp gusting wind which lifted all the loose snow. On the way down in some spots the wind had stripped the snow leaving ice or frozen earth which jarred as you skied over it, and in others the loose powder gave beautiful skiing but all the time into the teeth of a freezing wind. This was not pleasant.

The class started but the instructor nearly had a mutiny when we made it up on the chair lift. It was much too cold to be enjoyable and the wind was nearly blowing us back up the slopes. So we skied down to Cicci's and ordered the coffee and hot chocolates. It did give us the opportunity to tip Ossie. He had been great craic all week, with jokes, stories about the area and despite the occasional threat he never actually beat us with his ski poles. Like a lot of other instructors he had skied competitively when younger but gave it up after he broke his leg for the seventh time.

After the class we didn't do too much, people were still tired from the previous night and it was a pity that the week fizzled out this way. About three I took the lift to the top one last time and made a final run to Cicci's where we had a last beer or two and then headed down to drop the gear back. The plan was to meet up in Sauze that night for the last session but first we had unfinished business with Fabio. All week we had collected 'points' from each of our purchases and these were redeemable against booze or food. So after dinner we headed up and let Fiona negotiate 5 huge free deserts (because Italian men always have a soft spot for a pretty lady).

Up in Boogiemans we met the girls from our hotel and people from all our ski classes. I fell in with a bad lot, a group of Essex women who thought (despite my poor show of being first home every night) I was a hard drinker. My memories of the night become fuzzier as the evening wore on but we did head on to the Schuss disco bar. There was a desperate late night search for some sort of female company, we couldn't go home without someone scoring, but to no avail. Around 3:30 I realised the others had all left, so I had out lasted them on one night and I could go home with my honour intact.

Day 8 - Sunday
When I woke in the morning I was hearing voices in my head. Over and over they kept repeating, 'dancing, dancing, woo-ooo!'. That damn Bee Gees song which was playing the night before. All through packing and breakfast like bloody lift muzak it was running though my head. I had visions of going nuts with butter knife and 'the voices made me do it' would be my defence. It could have been worse, Liz was hearing 'Tragedy!'

Later that morning we boarded the bus and headed for the airport. The driver was an ignorant Italian and subjected us to some dreadful sub-Johnny Holiday music. But the rep guessed he spoke no English and slagged him off on the bus microphone. He did teach us one word of Italian which he was shouting at some other driver in the airport, see if you can translate it - 'bastardo!' The airport was busy but we raced up to the counter to ensure we got seats on the right side of the plane so we could stare at the Alps as we flew over them. The highlight of the wait was watching the baggage truck go out to the plane with someone's bag trapped under one of its wheels as the driver tore across the apron. We also got to see the weeks casualties in wheel chairs and on crutches getting loaded onto the plane.

So then it was up and off home. Unfortunately the whole of Europe was clouded over until we reached the channel so no long alpine views :(. Arriving in Dublin Aidan 'I think you have a drink problem' Madden realised he might be able to make a football match and having been stopped from jumping out over Malahide ran from the plane like a refugee with the guards in pursuit. The rest of us collected out bags (and his) and were left to say our goodbyes to Sheena, Liz and Catherine. Then we all headed home for some very overdue sleep. 

Postscript: 
The trip was pretty good. The skiing was great despite the deterioration in conditions at the end of the week. It was noticeable that the resort was much quieter than Andorra. There weren't hordes of people on the runs, lift queues were short and the Italians had much better queing manners than the Spanish. For a beginner there might not be enough blue runs. The night life was as good as Andorra the previous year though we were a little further out of town. There were plenty of English but they weren't like the Temple Bar larger louts. All in all it's a resort to go back to.

Coming home then was the hardest thing. We all got serious cabin fever and ski withdawal. I was back a week before I could make a start on this report. It is hard even to watch the sking on the TV with thinking about what you are missing right now. And all the papers and travel agents have those low priced deals which look so tempting. Maybe I could sell my car to go again, or quit my job and work in a bar out there, oh all the possibilties....


Seamus 'Tomba' Keane