BARDONECCHIA, Italy
In 24 hours I have traveled through 3 countries, went clubbing in Milan, Skitouring in France and Cheering for the American snowboarders at the Olympics in Italy.
I just got back this morning at like 12 AM from the Men / Final halpipe Snowboarding Competition at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games near Torino, Italy.
5 AM. Train from Milan Hostel to BARDONECCHIA.
9 AM. Arrive at the French border.
9- 11 AM. Skitouring in the French Alps.
11-12. But to the olymics back in Bardonecchia.
12-3 Snowboarding Finals.
4-6 tran to Torino.
6-12 Traveling back to Lugano, Switzerland
The beauty of this small Italian village at the foot hills of the French alp mountain range is what struck me first. It's almost desert-like, with grey rocky summits, sandstone hills, thin brown pine, and a striking perriwinkle blue sky. Not too much snow on the Italian side. The air is incredibly dry and cold, but the sun is so hot it feels like there is no o-zone. Both Will and I got severe sun burn. The ground temperature was 35 degrees Faranheit but the sun, in the stands made it feel lik 65. People were wearing t-shirts. in the stands. Only 5 miles away is the French town of Nevache, where the climate changes dramatically. Cross the border and on the other side of the Briancon to higher French elevations past the town of Nevache (I'm not even going to attempt to prounounce that,) you are left in a in a wintery fantasy land that reminds you of the front cover of the Evion Water Bottle. There are not towns between Nevache and leuzet, (again I can't spell French for my life). There are only the French mountains, in high elevations, with no civilization. A local tour group runs fairly inexpensive cross country skiing groups up to the hill and on the other side of the valley for a couple hours. A friend and I had to try it out.
A friend from Lugano and I rented some cross country skiis and spent a day exploring this wilderness with a group from Nevache, what we encountered I truly cannot express in words. Like the fool that I am, my camera ran out of batteries from all the damn pictures I took of the Italian side on the bus, that I had no room for the French side. Will took some pictures, but his camera was low on batteries as well and producing strange red beams across the bottom of the photos...
Later that day we took an hour bus back to Italy and caught the later-half of the snowboarding competition; the finals was probably one of the cooler events to attend (in my humble opinion), since seeing attempts at inverted 1260s (Yes 1260 degree) flips 50 feet off the ground of a half-pipe high in the alpine is cooler than watching people skate around in circles, or through oblong objects and watch them slide along ice. (I am referring to "Curling").
Plus, since a friend of mine here has a father that works for General Electric in Albany, New York, he set us up with front row seats for the event, which was located in a tiny Italian Village of "BARDONECCHIA," near the French border. GE is a sponsor of the games, so that's that.
If you look at the headlines this morning, you'll see coverage of the event. It was one of the more watched events, with Americans grabbing both first and second place medals. The Americans were Un-fucking-believable snowboarders, and blew away all the competition, to the dismay of the fervor in the audience, most of whom were Europeans. The first place snowboarder, "white," beat, who liked like a stoned "gnarly" californian beat out the Japanese, the Norwegians, and the Italians. White didn't make any mistakes, and was so far ahead in the finals, he didn't even need to run the last round of the finals. Towards the end of the competition, A man from Finland was competing for the top spot against the Americans, and when the judges awared the fin fewer points than he needed to compete for first place, there were Eurpean men who started sobbing, frustrated with the American Dominance (I'll get to that later). A tiny contigent of wealthy Americans traveling from the midwest would dangle their ubiquitous stars and stripes in stereotypical American patriotism, while Europeans had far more unusual methods of rooting for their respective countries. In Austrilia for example, the Aussies screamed "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy!" The fins just screamed loud scandanavian obscenities, and the French, well, they waved their itsy bitsy blue, red, and white (don't confuse that with red white and blue) lil' flags around in the air and grabbed their heads in dismay when they're french snowboarders fell down on every attempt. (The french snowboarder was awful.)
****
Saturday night I went clubbing (and subsequently didn't go to bed because of it). I've stumbled over myself quite a bit, being in an unfamiliar place, stuck out like a sore thumb (tan greasy italian guys wear furry north face coats, mullet-mohwaks, and stonewashed jeans with sun glasses), so my night was... interesting. The girls in Milan are the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life - they made the few relatively good looking american girls look horrible.
On the train back from Turino I had a humbling experience, which has since impacted me less than it did when it happened...
NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.
Illiteracy Count: 45
James: A tiny contigent of wealthy Americans traveling from the midwest would angle their ubiquitous stars and stripes in stereotypical American patriotism, while Europeans had far more unusual methods of rooting for their respective countries. In Austrilia for example, the Aussies screamed "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy!"
Me: HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA he's stupid
9 AM. Arrive at the French border.
9- 11 AM. Skitouring in the French Alps.
11-12. But to the olymics back in Bardonecchia.
12-3 Snowboarding Finals.
4-6 tran to Torino.
6-12 Traveling back to Lugano, Switzerland
The beauty of this small Italian village at the foot hills of the French alp mountain range is what struck me first. It's almost desert-like, with grey rocky summits, sandstone hills, thin brown pine, and a striking perriwinkle blue sky. Not too much snow on the Italian side. The air is incredibly dry and cold, but the sun is so hot it feels like there is no o-zone. Both Will and I got severe sun burn. The ground temperature was 35 degrees Faranheit but the sun, in the stands made it feel lik 65. People were wearing t-shirts. in the stands. Only 5 miles away is the French town of Nevache, where the climate changes dramatically. Cross the border and on the other side of the Briancon to higher French elevations past the town of Nevache (I'm not even going to attempt to prounounce that,) you are left in a in a wintery fantasy land that reminds you of the front cover of the Evion Water Bottle. There are not towns between Nevache and leuzet, (again I can't spell French for my life). There are only the French mountains, in high elevations, with no civilization. A local tour group runs fairly inexpensive cross country skiing groups up to the hill and on the other side of the valley for a couple hours. A friend and I had to try it out.
A friend from Lugano and I rented some cross country skiis and spent a day exploring this wilderness with a group from Nevache, what we encountered I truly cannot express in words. Like the fool that I am, my camera ran out of batteries from all the damn pictures I took of the Italian side on the bus, that I had no room for the French side. Will took some pictures, but his camera was low on batteries as well and producing strange red beams across the bottom of the photos...
Later that day we took an hour bus back to Italy and caught the later-half of the snowboarding competition; the finals was probably one of the cooler events to attend (in my humble opinion), since seeing attempts at inverted 1260s (Yes 1260 degree) flips 50 feet off the ground of a half-pipe high in the alpine is cooler than watching people skate around in circles, or through oblong objects and watch them slide along ice. (I am referring to "Curling").
Plus, since a friend of mine here has a father that works for General Electric in Albany, New York, he set us up with front row seats for the event, which was located in a tiny Italian Village of "BARDONECCHIA," near the French border. GE is a sponsor of the games, so that's that.
If you look at the headlines this morning, you'll see coverage of the event. It was one of the more watched events, with Americans grabbing both first and second place medals. The Americans were Un-fucking-believable snowboarders, and blew away all the competition, to the dismay of the fervor in the audience, most of whom were Europeans. The first place snowboarder, "white," beat, who liked like a stoned "gnarly" californian beat out the Japanese, the Norwegians, and the Italians. White didn't make any mistakes, and was so far ahead in the finals, he didn't even need to run the last round of the finals. Towards the end of the competition, A man from Finland was competing for the top spot against the Americans, and when the judges awared the fin fewer points than he needed to compete for first place, there were Eurpean men who started sobbing, frustrated with the American Dominance (I'll get to that later). A tiny contigent of wealthy Americans traveling from the midwest would dangle their ubiquitous stars and stripes in stereotypical American patriotism, while Europeans had far more unusual methods of rooting for their respective countries. In Austrilia for example, the Aussies screamed "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy!" The fins just screamed loud scandanavian obscenities, and the French, well, they waved their itsy bitsy blue, red, and white (don't confuse that with red white and blue) lil' flags around in the air and grabbed their heads in dismay when they're french snowboarders fell down on every attempt. (The french snowboarder was awful.)
****
Saturday night I went clubbing (and subsequently didn't go to bed because of it). I've stumbled over myself quite a bit, being in an unfamiliar place, stuck out like a sore thumb (tan greasy italian guys wear furry north face coats, mullet-mohwaks, and stonewashed jeans with sun glasses), so my night was... interesting. The girls in Milan are the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life - they made the few relatively good looking american girls look horrible.
On the train back from Turino I had a humbling experience, which has since impacted me less than it did when it happened...
NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.
Illiteracy Count: 45
- halpipe
- But to the olymics ("But" should be "Bus")
- tran to Torino
- perriwinkle
- o-zone
- 35 degrees Faranheit
- made it feel lik 65
- wearing t-shirts. in the stands.
- prounounce
- that,) you are left in a (Comma should go after the parenthesis)
- left in a in a wintery
- leuzet (Needs a capital L)
- leuzet, (again I can't spell French for my life). (Needs to lose the comma)
- some cross country skiis
- Nevache, what we encountered (Period after "Nevache", new sentence)
- 1260s (Yes 1260 degree) flips (Redundant plural "1260s" or redundant word "flips")
- ice. (I am referring to "Curling").
- a father that works for General Electric ("who" not "that". Nitpicking?)
- located in a tiny Italian Village of "BARDONECCHIA" (Should be "the" instead of "a")
- Italian Village (Do these words need capital letters, really? Nitpicking?)
- "BARDONECCHIA" (Really?)
- Plus, since a friend... has a father... he set us up with... Italian Village ... near the French border. (Whole sentence is a hot mess.)
- to the dismay of the fervor in the audience, most of whom were Europeans (Most of the fervor were Europeans?)
- "white," (Nickname needs a capital W)
- "white," beat, who (The word "beat" shouldn't be there. Unless reasons?)
- who liked like a (Should be "who looked like a")
- californian
- competition, A man
- awared (Should be "awarded")
- the fin (Should be "the Finn")
- Eurpean
- contigent
- the midwest ("Midwest" is usually capitalized)
- while Europeans had far more unusual methods of rooting for their respective countries. In Austrilia for example ... (This is more a case of You Fail Geography Forever than illiteracy.)
- In Austrilia for example, the Aussies... (The mis-spelling is probably an intentional play on the Australian accent, so it doesn't count. However, he's talking about some Aussies who were physically situated at the Winter Olympics in Bardonecchia, Italy, so to say they were "in Australia" is still a MISTAKE. Again, not actually an illiteracy thing.)
- The fins
- scandanavian (Needs a capital S)
- scandanavian (The spelling too)
lil' (Usually "li'l". But not necessarily though. Actually, this one doesn't count.)
- when they're french snowboarders fell (Ugh.)
- french snowboarders
- french snowboarder
- tan greasy italian guys (Missing comma)
- italian guys
- mullet-mohwaks
- american girls
James: A tiny contigent of wealthy Americans traveling from the midwest would angle their ubiquitous stars and stripes in stereotypical American patriotism, while Europeans had far more unusual methods of rooting for their respective countries. In Austrilia for example, the Aussies screamed "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy!"
Me: HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA he's stupid
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