While Chanelle and I were hanging out on the Beach
in Marseille we were introduced to a crazy Italian gent named Luca. Also an outdoor adventure junkie, Luca used
to be a Burton sponsored competitive freestyle snowboarder before an
unfortunate accident crushed his dreams of making it pro. It doesn’t take much
for me to take a liking to
someone, but with Luca’s striking Italian features and a stomach that is the
definition of “washboard” abs, it was especially easy. The only difficulty we had was one of a
language barrier. Growing up in Brixen,
a small ski resort town in the Alps of northern Italy, he speaks English just
about as well as I speak Italian: Non lo facciate (I don’t).
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| Luca |
Desperate
times call for creative measures, and the day took an interesting spin as we
all got to know each other by playing Pictionary in the sand. It was
ridiculous, half the time we just ended up laughing in utter confusion at our
terrible drawings! Fortunately I did
manage to make out an invitation for us to come be his guests in his hometown.
Luca was catching a
train home the next morning, but he wouldn’t leave until he received
confirmation that my sister Chanelle and I
would come visit so he could take us “extreme hiking” in the Alps. HELLO!
Is our last name Despins?!? You
had us at extreme!
The next thing we knew we were catching the
train to Northern Italy to stay with Luca in the most visually striking small
Austrian town located in a lush valley at the base of one of the greatest
mountain ranges in the world. How do I
get into these situations?
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| A castle 5 miles outside Brixen |
I’m referring to this town as Austrian because although located in Italy, more than half of its inhabitants have emigrated there from Austria, and German has become its primary language. Their annual Sommerfest happened to be taking place in the village the first night we arrived, and everyone from the town gathered under a huge canopy in a beautiful meadow, sporting the traditional German attire of green capris suspenders for the gents and braided hair with “Little Bo Peep” dresses for the women…no joke. We couldn’t stay long though because Luca said it gets quite rowdy as the sun goes down.
“You
don’t drink Luca?” I
asked.
“Si,
yes, 3 or 4, but them drink’in 14....15 maybe…and then, how you say...big
fight!” he replied.
And were leaving!?!? How funny would it have been
to see two German guys in wooden shoes and suspenders having a full out brawl
next to the live polka music stage!
Maybe next year….
We
made it back to Luca’s house just in time to meet his entire family. Got to love those Italians, the most hospitable
people in the world. I’m not sure who
exactly lived in that house and who was just coming and going, but
there was his parents, his grandmother (best cook in the world), his uncle and
aunt, what seemed like 30 cousins, and their dog Bubba (who only understand
commands in Italian and German). None of
Luca’s family spoke any English, so we were always in a constant state
of dramatic sign language and charades, but ironically enough, 80 percent of
the time we managed to get our point across. Who needs language when you can
have theatrical performances all day?
I’ll give you a quick example of what makes the language barrier so
wildly entertaining.
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| Bubba |
One
night we were outside getting dinner ready when Luca comes up to me and says,
“Lenai, you have fire on you.”
“I DO?!? Where?!?”
He looks confused, as I’m frantically looking
to see if the back of my clothes had caught fire.
“I need fire.
I cook dinner...pollo,” he says.
Pollo...oh chicken! “You
mean do I have a LIGHTER on me to start the barbeque Luca?"
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| Dinner in the yard (Chanelle Luca and Bubba!) |
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| The stream beside Lucas house |
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| Strolling barefoot through the soft grass |
After a 7a.m. wake-up call the next morning, Chanelle Luca and I set off for what was indeed an extreme hike. I probably should have taken into consideration the fact that I’ve been averaging 5 hours of sleep a night for the past month before agreeing to the 1000m vertical climb. I think I was more afraid on the way to the mountain than I was climbing it. Five minutes into the car ride Luca looks at me and says in his broken English, “You know, driving sometime make me nervous.”
You think?
“Maybe it wouldn’t make you so nervous if you would stop passing gigantic trucks
at 120 mph on these narrow winding passes.
You can’t drive down the mountain the same way you snowboard down it
Luca.”
He
of course doesn’t understand a word I said, but starts laughing anyway. I think he simply laughs every time Chanelle
or I say the word snowboard.
The hike we did that day was called Tre Cime di Lavaredo (The Three Peaks), and is
the most famous hike in the region. I
could see why, because when I die I
hope that’s what heaven looks like.
Enough of those silly English countryside rolling hills of the Lake
District. Give me the most terrifying, overpowering, blood pumping mountain you
can find.
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| Chanelle's beautiful photography on the hike |
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| Chanelle Luca and I near the Tre Cime di Lavaredo |
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| Luca and I |
I
find that when you travel there is a huge difference between seeing the culture
and experiencing the culture. Over the past three days, Chanelle and I were so
deeply absorbed in our Italian surrounding, we became the culture. I
made it a point to greet every hiker we passed with the local way of saying
hello, “Gut”, in hopes they would confuse me for a local. If on the off-chance they did say a short
sentence of reply like, “Nice weather were having here” or any other statement longer than one word where I
actually had no idea what they were saying, I’d just give them my heartiest
laugh and continue up the trail. At
least that way they were less likely to assume I was a tourists (who have earned a fairly bad reputation in
the area). I can’t blame them because this is paradise. If I
lived in heaven I’d be selfish with my land too.
Before
we knew it, our 3 days had passed almost as quickly as they'd came. Chanelle
and I found ourselves saying a teary goodbye to Luca, his charading family, and
the amazingly scenic Alps. I couldn’t
help but wonder if language barrier is one of the main reason people don’t
travel as much internationally as they should. If so, it’s a shame. As human beings we are all programed with a
universal language that all too often seems forgotten; self-expression. What language do you laugh in, cry in, or
love in? If I had chosen to let
arrogance get the better of me, and look the other way that morning on the
beach in Marseille when I first met Luca because of something so trivial as not
speaking the same language, I would have missed out on this entire amazing
experience. The best kind of travelling
holds no room for fear or judgment.
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| Chanelle at the train station in Brixen |
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| Journaling on the Train back to Milan |
