Reading Week 2006 – Day 4

Marieke’s Birthday! And we finally got some snow in the mountains! Everyone slept comfortably, but we all felt in the mood to sit around indoors for a while. In the campground restaurant, we watched some cross-country skiing on the big screen, and drank innumerable cappuccinos (each only about 1$, compared to about 7$ in Copenhagen). We had planned to do a bit of hiking, but ended up just sitting around enjoying more Italian food.

That evening, we caught a shuttle bus up to our next Olympic event: Freestyle Aerials. As the bus climbed up the mountain, it began to snow. By the time we reached the event, it was really snowing. The big screen read “Competion Posponed until 20:00” (especially funny when read with an Italian accent). Unfortunately, at 20:00, it was still snowing as hard, so the event was further postponed, until Tuesday, after we’d left. Still, the two hour wait was really fun, talking with fans from all over the world and jumping around trying to stay warm.

By the time they told us to go home, it had snowed so much that the road back down the mountain was impassable. So, rather than wait in a line for them to clear the road, we walked to a nearby restaurant and had some dinner. By the time we came out, the last few people were just boarding buses (looking much colder than us).

We descended the hill, and decided to have some dessert and drinks in another restaurant (to celebrate Marieke’s birthday). The mixture of snow, mild temperatures outdoors, and warm restaurants meant that we were soaked. We decided to head back to the campground, and put our clothes into the dryer, and continue the party in the laundry room.

Unfortunately, we found that we couldn’t work the dryer without special tokens. We were unwilling to sleep outdoors in wet clothes, so we moved all of our sleeping bags into the laundry room, and slept indoors…