Day 1 at Selva - yeh!

No thanks to the fun that is jet lag - I woke up at the somewhat ungodly hour of 4am.

Breakfast at the Hotel Olympia was a contential affair. You know - the cold meats, the cheese, the somewhat stale breads and the total lack of any toasting instruments. To add something to the strange mix that is European Contential breakfasts - they were serving a somewhat strange concoction of a stale crossiant with a (wait for it) marmalade inside - yes it is the worst of English breakfasts crossed with the best of stale French pastries which results in a bit of a European road crash.

I take my family to the nearby hire place (I was scoping out prices the previous day and this was the best I could find) - and my mum, dad and myself pick up some skis and stocks which were all pretty modern and fancy (and cheap- 70 euro for 6 days). Meanwhile - Sacha and Taeko find a snowboard hire shop and get some snowboards (my brother skis but he thought he would give it another go).

We make our way to the ticket office (after trying to buy tickets from the Gondola - but they don't sell the superpasses apparently) and pick up some 6 day lift passes for the low low price of 180 euros. The lift pass not only includes the Selva ski area - but all the adjoining ski villages. The price makes Perisher Blue seem like a total daylight robbery in comparison.

Anyhows - after we get all of our poo together - we all catch the Ciampioni Gondola up to the top of the Selva mountain. When we get to the top - we discover that Taeko suffers from motion sickness and felt somewhat nauseous after the gondola ride.

Although the weather was blue skies (and quite warm no thanks to global warming) - the visibility was really poor as most of the mountain was in shadows. Our first run was a black run - not because we wanted to be challenged before even warming up - but Selva was suffering from a total lack of signage...

To be continued...

Escape to Witch Mountain (aka Selva)...

I had a really bad night sleep (after travelling 40 hours to Italy) - waking up at 1am no less... I manage to get back to sleep - only waking up at 6am by my alarm on my phone...

I get dressed and go to a nearby sleazy ATM to get some euro mulua out, pack my stuff and check out.

I head down to the train station and attempt to buy my train ticket to Bolzano from a couple of places (including the ticket information booth - who don't sell tickets) and work out which actual train I should be catching. I was going to stoop low and have McDonalds for breakfast at the station - but believe it or not - Maccas don't open until after 8am in Italy. Instead - I stalk a few customers at a cafe in an attempt to work out how the fudge u order a couple of crossiants and coffee. After about 5 minutes of stalking - I work out that you need to go to the nearby 7-11 and order and pay for what you want - then take your receipt over to the cafe for the booty (logic ahoy). I order something that I could say in Italian (believe it or not - but Itallians don't call Crossiants crossaints - they call them broiches or something unprouncable).

I board my 8am train to Verona (I have to change there in order to get to Bolzano) and it was a semi classy train - complete with train reservations and the like. After a bit of a bitch and fight with a local (who was trying to get my seat) - it was a smooth trip to Verona (home of Romeo and Juliet people!) and an even smoother change over to the train to Bolzano (it was on the next platform). The train to Bolzano seemed a bit less classier (none of the seats were reserved and it was a bit smelly). No one sat next to me (which probably meant that I was smelly= and it was a fairly scenic train thru the Dollamites to Bolzano.

I was very anxious about my transfer to Selva (where we were staying to ski Val Gardena) - just ask Ant. I had spent hours crying over the internet thinking that transferring from Venice to Selva was extremely hard... but in all honesty - it wasn't too bad. When I got to Bolzano - it took me 1 minute to find the bus stop for my ride to Selva. And two minutes for the bus to arrive. Things were looking Milhouse indeed.

The bus to Selva was pretty cheap (5.50 euros) considering it was over an hour long. Despite the smooth trip thus far - I had to screw it up somewhere - and I did it via getting off at about 4 stops too early on the bus. I got off the bus at the town before Selva (St Christina) - and I pretty knew this as soon as the bus started moving away from me at the bus stop. I checked my bus timetable - and it would be over an hour for another bus to turn up - so I said fudge it - i will just walk the rest of the way to Selva. For this trip - I had taken Ant's big wheelie bag - great for flat footpaths and roads but not so great for snowy roads... For about 20 minutes - I hiked with my 20kg bag before the road ran out of footpath - and I headed back to the bus stop in defeat... Only to catch a skiier transfer bus 5 minutes later which took me the rest of the way to Selva and I get out at the right stop.

Thanks to my overzealous preparation for this trip (eg: printing bus time tables, maps, bible passages) - I managed to find the Hotel Olympia in only the matter of minutes. I check in and discover that I'm the first of my family to arrive. My parents are coming from Libya and my brother and sister in law were coming in from Munich (after a month of European shenangians and satisfaction of Taeko's strange castle fetish).

After checking in - it was about 2pm and I was feeling hungry as I had nothing to eat for lunch yet. I wander into town - only to discover that the locals subscribe to the "Latino Time" religion (eg: nothing is open between the non-witching hours of 12-3pm). Feeling defeated - I head back and chill at the hotel until 3pm when I head down to the local Spar supermarket and get some bread and bananas and make some of my world famous (cough) banana sandwiches.

Selva the town is rather scenic (with all the Dollamites surrounding it) - and there are even bonus statues of baby jesuses around town (Ant would be in 7th heaven).

My parents arrive around 4ish (surprise surprise my brother is last to arrive). To rub in the BA economy 1 piece of luggage policy - they arrive with 6 pieces of bags (damn their first class tickets!). I show them the nearest supermarket - where they go on to buy copious amounts of red wine (alcoholism runs in the family).

We have a couple of drinks before Sacha and Taeko arrive at around 7pm. Good old Sacha organisational skills - he caught the wrong bus and had to transfer to Selva.

After checking in - we head down to the restaurant downstairs for dinner (yes - no need to buy food for dinner as it comes included with the room!). We were greeted by a Borat style waiter (same accent, same mannerisms) - he would like to say "It's nice!" and obsess about Taeko in a truly strange manner. Here in Italy - it seems to be the norm to have pasta for entree - which is what we had - some lagsane. Mum said it was the best ever.... word to your mother!

Escape from Heathrow...

I was getting pretty irritable at Heathrow. When I had some lunch (aka stale English sandwiches) - there were all these noisy kids mucking around - piercing screaming into my skull...

A couple of hours later after lunch - I decide to kill some time playing some Sudoku in a local newspaper... This almost drives me to sleep - and after spending almost 10 hours at the airport - I ironically almost miss my flight. I thought my flight (according to the BA lounge screens) boarded at 3:40pm - but that was the departure time (not the boarding time). I checked the monitors about 3:30pm and I see the "final call" flashing against my flight. I mentally go "oohhh poo" and I grab my stuff and sprint about 2km to get to the gate. The gate was totally empty and on my way - someone over the PA said "could Mr Plowman go straight to gate number 111 FOR IMMEDIATE DEPARTURE".... I was the last one onto my flight - yay!

The flight to Venice was quite full - there were a couple of annoying Brits sitting next to me who liked making bad movie references and the like when all I wanted to do was sleep.

Upon arrival at Marco Polo Venice airport - everyone pretty much raced thru immigration. I had spent a whole 5 seconds showing my passport to some dude - who couldn't care less if I was a drug dealer entering into Italy or not...

In Canberra Airport style - everyone waited about 20 minutes for their bags to arrive on the carosel.

I pass thru the non-existent customs (note to self - next time I'm going to Italy - take half a kilo of heroine) and make my way to the airport shuttle and get myself a 3 euro bus ticket into town (pretty cheap).

Waiting around for the bus - I notice that people here don't queue... About 15 minutes later - my bus arrived and it was about a 20 minute ride to Mestre (where I was staying the night). On the way - I noticed an H&M store (I had printed out the address before I left Australia). Hopefully - I would do some great shopping there upon my return to Venice.

The Mestre train station was quite seedy - there were a couple of requisite druggos and deeros following me off the bus as I was trying to get my bearings.

I didn't have too many problems getting to my hotel - the Hotel Delfino (luv u Mike from Desperate Housewives)...

After a somewhat frosty reception from the staff - I checked into my v. retro 3 star room. The kind where there is a 1950 bathroom with a toilet right next to the shower type hotel room. I dump my stuff and head back to the train station - because I wanted to get my s££t together for my train ride tomorrow to Bolzano.

There was about a 15 minute walk to the Train station from Hotel Delfino - and I get my bearings. I have some Euro Kebabs for dinner (3.50 euros) - the guy was desparate to upsize my meal to a 'maxi' - but that sounded like a tampon so I passed on the upsize.

Part 3... Jo'burg to Gatwick

After posting my last blog - I checked out the BA website (to check what movies were on my flight). On their site - it had a news flash saying that a BA flight was involved in an incident at Heathrow. I did a quick check of the BBC news website - and apparently a BA jet had to do an emergency landing at Heathrow... Neyice...

My flight from J-Burg to London was probably one of the freakiest flights I've ever been on... For the first hour - the jet was flying right through an electrical storm. It would have looked great - but I was getting s%%t scared that the jet was going to get struck by lighting.

I slept fairly well (for me) - with maybe about 4 hours sleep on that flight. I watched a few crappy shows and the crappy Hulk movie...

The scenary over Africa was sort of freaky - hardly any cities or towns for that matter. For the most part - the moon - reflecting on the clouds - looked like a huge sea. Africa seemed like the opposite of Europe - as you cross the Medditerrian - there are heaps more cities and towns lit up.

Upon arrival at Heathrow - everything was wet. We had to sit on the tarmac - waiting for a gate or something - for about 1 hour... which was fairly painful. Maybe something to do with the accident the day before.

Heathrow - like always - is a fairly run down gloomy airport. As I was connecting to Gatwick - I decided to take the "express bus" to Gatwick - for a pricey sum of £17. The Central Bus Station was a bit of a rock show - I had to queue up for 20 minutes to get a bus ticket. The 0715 bus wasn't anywhere to be seen - yet the 0805 bus was just hanging around - waiting to go... I made my big mistake of the day and hopped on the 0745 bus. As we made our way slowly to Heathrow terminal 4 - Ant gave me a call - saying he was worried about the Heathrow accident - but realised that I wouldn't have been involved in it. It was good talking to him anyhows.

When the bus made its slow way to Heathrow Terminal 4 - the bus driver decided to stick around and announce that the windscreen wipers weren't working and we had to wait for another bus. It sort of pished off a lot of people - especially this dude who looked like the singer from Bloc Party. He started to sprout profanities at the bus driver (every second word started with f) and he was making the whole situtation more painful. 35 minutes later - the next bus arrives (probably the 0805 bus that I should have catched).

We were instructed by the bus driver to stay on the bus as we would have "priority" on getting on the next bus... Too bad for us as there was a big queue of newcomers flocking towards the new bus. The Bloc Party guy started to really lose his cool and started screaming at just about everyone.

Luckily for me - there was a third bus that quickly arrived after the second... So I went straight on to it and got on... I was sorting of thinking that this £17 bus ride (that price was after the BA discount) was a bit of a rip...

Anyhows - another hour later and I finally arrived at Gatwick airport... I was so early for my flight - that my flight hadn't appeared on the check in screens yet.

I cleared through security (which involved a pad-down by some ugly old guy) and several wands - I had forgotten to take off my belt (I'm blaming the 30hours + non-stop travelling).

I did a bit of shopping and bought a couple of PSP games from the duty free HMV - then headed over to the British Airways lounge for a shower (like J-Burg - they seemed to have the whole Texas style 8 shower head deal happening). Strangely enough - the tacky J-Burg lounge decor must be a BA thing internationally - as the lounge still looked like Montezumas...

Nick less Ant does Europe and Asia via J-Burg Part 2

I've arrived in Johannesburg - at about 1am Sydney time... and I had left Sydney about 10:30am and I think I must have had about 2 hours sleep on the flight - and I've got another 3 hours to kill at the diviest airport this side of the southern hemisphere....

At the Sydney Qantas Club - I gave Ant a few calls and he was telling me that I should demand to speak to the manager as the woman at the Qantas Club wouldn't give me an exit row. I had tried a couple of times but she gave me some fob-off story that only the people at the gate control the exit rows (which Ant knows it isn't the case).

Anyway - my flight was delayed by about an hour - but I guess it wasn't such a big deal as I was originally supposed to have 5 hours to kill at J-Brug.

Perhaps my Qantas Club membership was finally paying off - as I got my seat allocation (front of plane / aisle) - there was an empty seat next to me and a South African Harry Potter look a like (with the looks of Harry Potter and the charms of a South African... cough) - and the spunkiest ever Jebus freak I've ever seen in my life (although towards the end of the flight he was scanning passages of the bible against some God book as you do).

Our on-demand flight entertainment system seemed to be not so "on-demand" for most of the flight... The head steward had to shut down the system a couple of times during the flight (which meant people lost control over the lighting and the call button)... I saw a couple of "mmmeh" movies (1408 and Invasion) and watched the whole special of "the 25 greatest swimsuit moments". I would have thought ever the James Bond Dr No chick or the new James Bond Daniel Craig money shot scene would have been number 1 but they didn't even make the list. Some 80s movie with the chick from Gremlins won - where she gets out of a pool - flashes someone and then catches them whacking off in the bathroom...

Harry Potter got a bit chatty at the end of the flight... He liked to talk about "how the wings expand and crack during the flight" and "the recent Qantas incident with the water shorting out the flight computers". Great conversation when you are about to land...

It's raining at J-Burg and the international transfers seems to be a bit of an afterthought. You walk into this small room (where you think you are going to get mugged) and go through the biggest rock show that is J-Burg security screening. A bunch of anarchists could do a bit job organising airport security. I managed to get through with me liquids still inside my main carry-on bag. When you walk out of security - there is this dodgy 70s lift (where you think you are going to get mugged again). I braved the apocolyptic lift and went up to the main departure area - which is grungy 70s style...

I found my way to the basement British Airways lounge - where I tried to ask for an exit row. The response I got from the woman (who was ruder than the bitch at the Qantas Club) was "the flight is completely full" and "I don't control the exit rows@!"... despite me pleading that I've been travelling to Sydney...

The British Airways lounge is like a bizzare themed lounge - all of it really tacky (sort of reminiscent of that dodgy Mexican restaurant - Montezumas). They have a whole three computers (I'm hogging one right now) and the crappiest selection of lounge food in this hemisphere. They also have cans of Tab in the fridge - which is retro in a good way... Perhaps I might help myself to a can...

Nick less Ant's Holiday Diaries - Jan 08

Hello bitches...

It's only me this time - less Ant (who isn't such an avid snowboarder) - going to Italy to ski like a rich bitch at the Dollamites (not affilated with the Commonwealth Bank Dollarmite Accounts) then on to Venice for 5 days then onto Hongkers for 4 days or so or something...

To cut a long story short - I had originally booked a flight to Venice (via Hong Kong and London) which would have arrived at Venice at 2pm in the afternoon... When I did a bit of investigating on how I was to get to Selva - I realised that I would have missed the last bus from Bolzaro (some connecting town) and so a week ago - I gave the Qantas Frequent Flyer hotline a call and managed to change my flights to a day earlier (so I would spend the night in Venice before going to Selva)... But the only way they could re-do the flights was to fly me to Johannesburg - then London.

Ok - before you bitch at me about all the carbon emissions this holiday is costing - I've paid some money to offset the carbons of these ridiculous connections - so I'm planting some trees somewhere (which will probably die anyway due to global warming)...

Yeah.

Anyhows - both myself and Ant woke up at the crack of dawn today and he was so kind of him to drop me off at the airport. We both had some breakie at the Qantas Club (I've paid $500+ to join so don't call me a tight wad) and said goodbye to each other at the gate which was a bit sad...

The flight to Sydney was a bit funny - there were a couple of celebrities including the CEO of the DMO... Gumley - sexay... There was this cold arse woman sitting next to me who seem to have a case of permanent PMT. Anyways - I saw an email which was sitting on her lap - and she works at the Workplace Authority - so the whole cold hearted thing figures...!

Anyways - I'm here at the Qantas Club at Sydney typing this sh## before my flight boards. I'm trying to request an exit row but I'm not holding out too much for it. They are refurbishing the lounge here - and there are these new loungey seats with foot rests - I was hogging two of them. I think they are pretty new because the staff here seem to keep tyring them out.

I had better board my flight now...