Holidays in the Mountains (winter).

 Holidays in the mountains (winter). New blog, old story. I prefer mountains with snow. November 1981. Expedition in Val Gardena to rent an apartment for Christmas holidays. It's dark and we haven't found anything human yet: nothing affordable and nothing logistically viable. We're looking for 4 rooms at least and we're just young boys. Last but not least, we're in a valley of "crucchi", Germans... This tells you how impossible our mission is.       Exhausted, disappointed, we stop at a "speck stube" because we haven't eaten anything since that morning.     Going out we see a sign saying "villa Hartmann. Apartments and rooms to rent", written in German of course. The slope is steep, we let fate decide which of us will go up to inquire. Well, destiny chooses me. I stark walking, confident that up there I'll find exactly what I've been looking for... Bullshit. I curse about having to be the one to do the hike. I ring the bell, hoping they won't open immediately, leaving me the time to start breathing normally. A distinguished gentleman with snow-white hair opens. Herr Hartmann shows me the apartment, which is above their home. I've got a feeling I'm the victim of a candid camera show. I start looking for cameras, but I find none. The apartment is pristine, just being renovated, it smells of old wood just being repainted. Walls are immaculate. I go to call the others, still unbelieving. "He'll ask a lot of money" we think. We're wrong.     Dantercepies, Plan de Gralba, Ciampinoi, mythical ski slopes where we slalomed and fell in spectacular ways. But let me tell you some funny episodes rather then our skiing feats. We had some criteria in choosing who slept where. Giampaolo and Gianni were together because they were passionate skiers. In the morning, being up before everybody else, they had to listen to Herr Hartmann's'complaints. Well, the fact is that in the evenings we others played cards, ate and partied until dawn, and went skiing much later. Worth remembering is also Nanaglio's ready-made minestrone: days later, if you scanned its depths, it was still warm.  How about the "bariola" corner ? A wild bunch of dirty clothes in Marco's and Nanaglio's room, looking more like a giant African anthill than a human settlement. But if you didn't find something you went there and you found it miraculously. If I have to choose the most meaningful event of that vacation, I've got no doubts: it's'"Gianpaolo and the broken glass panel".  Gianpaolo was accused, rightly or wrongly, to bring bad luck. Since he was a good friend, I had always refused to believe it. One fateful day, somebody (forgive me for not remembering the culprit) pushed Nanaglio (he didn't see him because of his height) against the kitchen's door glass panel, breaking it. The problem wasn't changing it, but doing so without Herr Hartmann finding out. We did it, sort of Pink Panthers conning the German Clouseau.   While we were amiably discussing about how to put up the new glass panel, Gianpaolo disagreed with me. The friendly discussion ended with him saying: "may you get a glass shard in your finger".   Exactly two minutes later, when handling the glass, THE shard gets into my finger. After a second of a supernatural silence, I started calling the poor Giampi the widest array of names in modern history, starting with "they were right, then" and on like this to finish with "this motherf***ing bad luck is your fault". Afterwards I felt very sorry for all those bad words against a dear friend, but like my Roman friend Marco says, "quanno ce vò, ce vò!". Meaning, he deserved it. Needless to say, after being 7 in Hartmann's house for Christmas, the croud grew and we were 50 people from Mantova to celebrate New Years' Eve in Selva's medel... This shows that even without cell phones, computers, smart phones, facebook and so on we found ways to have fun in healthy ways. By the way, Gianpaolo and I are still great friend. Right, bad luck human magnet?