Traveling abroad is a luxury that few of the world’s people get to experience. To do so for skiing can only be described as a dream come true. But what is really the most memorable part of such trips? Is it really the skiing or is it something more?
I have had the great fortune to have crossed the pond several times in my life, but this last season was the first, and second, time that I did so to ski. Strangely, these two trips seem to have left a more memorable and elated experience than all of my other excursions to Europe.
Sure the skiing conditions were… Okay …They sucked most of the time. In Stubai, Austria I had some of the worst frostbite of my life because of the heinous winds. Ischgl, Austria had the most frightening on piste ice I have ever skied (which turned to slush promptly at 1300). Livigno, Italy was knee-deep glue one day and water skiing the next. Yet, they still were some of the best memories that I have of skiing. Where else in the world can you pop a wheelie on three-inch thick crust so fast that your toe plate bends? Even more amazing then the torque a person of my stature can put on skis, is the backdrop that skiing in the Alps offers. At the top of the six chair in Stubai (if the weather is clear) you can see straight into Italy over the jagged Dolomites, some of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen. The gondola ride at Ischgl follows a series of towering waterfalls in a luscious green valley that you would simply have to see to believe (it was April).
But what I remember most was the lifestyle. After a long plane flight over the Atlantic, you somehow have to find how to get to… Neuisteff? Livigno? Tiny towns along winding alpine roads that if you’re not paying attention will be passed in just seconds. But they are there. Small hotels dot the two (but only big enough for one) way roads, cafés stick out from every corner, and beautiful women with fur coats and moon boots spring up from the bounteous perfume shops. And this is where you will stay. The hotels are quaint and you wake up to fresh jams, breads, hard-boiled eggs, meats, and coffee. The church bells start exactly at nine, and if you happened to have stayed up until 500 that morning enjoying the rich nightlife, they are your nemesis. But after a long and hard day of skiing, and you are sitting on a café patio enjoying a cappuccino with some of my funniest, if not closest, friends, the bells seem to be echoing your joyous feeling of wanting to be nowhere else in the world. …With cheap, but the most delicious pizza for supper and some more nightlife, it is time to do it again.
At the end of the trip, when you are sitting in seat 40 F cramped next to the overweight gentleman and the old lady who has fallen asleep on you shoulder, you cannot help but smile. For you have just had the most perfect American European ski vacations.
Contributed by Josh Madsen