Year: 2013

We got up at 6:00am. After so many hours of sleep I should be awake…but I was not. All the others were still sleeping. We just packed our bags and left the “bedroom”. I just had to go back once to put the blanket back into the cupboard…oh my god… I think it is always like that…better don’t go back if you left once! The air inside could have been cut into half… We left the Bivaccio – without breakfast – again. And I realized how much I need a coffee in the morning! Again, the weather was very strange this morning. There were huge cumulus clouds already at 6am…and parts of the sky were in red. This usually is not a good sign. But what to do? Resign again? Drawback again? This kind of weather really sucks…it takes away all the fun and creates very unpleasant situations. In fact all we do always and absolutely depends on the weather. At home the weather maybe is not nice…but I can ignore it or not. It does not make a difference. Here it is essential…and nobody can control it and in the mountains it is often even hard to predict it. Many words…anyway…we decided to climb up this time – about 700m. When we arrived at the pass the other side was completely in clouds. We climbed down a few meters and were right inside the fog…and so we were not able to observe the weather any more. God how I hate this situation. You don’t know if you should hurry or not – you are just like blind. Usually we check the weather reports every morning using the smartphone but since we arrived at the Bivaccio we did not have any signal…and asking others for the weather didn’t work for us – at least not in Italy. In fact many people just don’t know because they don’t care and often we heard the same thing: “It’s okay…it’s good like today…maybe. Some rain maybe in the afternoon…maybe not…”. In other words “I don’t know and I don’t care.”. We climbed down through the fog. Actually we both needed a break but we did not want to stop. Luckily no rain and no storm came today. So we made it safely to Usseaux – according to the local marketing (again) “one of the nicest Italian cities”  . After we had a shower (it was absolutely required after our night in the Bivaccio) we went to the only cafè we found. There were quite some people around. We were just ignored for 10 minutes. Then we started to waive. We were still ignored for 10 minutes (it was no self service  ). At home I would have already left the cafè..but here in “one of the nicest villages of Italy” I can’t just leave  Suddenly a woman came and asked if we want to eat. I said “duo cafe latte per farvore”…and what is cake in Italian…???….”and do you have cake”? I know this is  not nice but the waitress just turned around and went to another table…and ignored us for another 10 minutes. Then we left – without coffee and without cake… Anyway.. The dinner tonight was great. We sat together with a family from Switzerland, four others from Germany and a woman from Finland who spoke 7 languages fluently… scary  Everything was made from local products. We spent a nice evening on the hut and went to bed at 10pm. According to the hut owner the weather will be fine tomorrow…if we can believe that?

Today we made a second try going to Bivaccio Orsiera. The path was one of the most boring. We started at 7am – even at this time it was already very hot! Today it was very very hard to continue walking upwards. The bag seemed to be much bigger and heavier than usual and the path led through a forest almost all the time. Still it was hot – and we did not have a good view on other mountains. Arriving at the Bivaccio we were exhausted. We put ourselves on a bench and slept for almost 3 hours. We then realized that more guest arrived at the Bivaccio – now all 10 beds were in use. Then we slept another 2 hours. Probably the body takes its time for rest if necessary… Our highlight today was the cooking – we had pasta with cheese and salami and chilli powder. It was great! We went to bed at 9pm and slept another 9 hours. We not even realized when all the other guests came to the bedroom.

We tried to walk from Susa to the Bivaccio Orsiera on 2000m. But the weather seemed to be quite unstable…and so we finally decided to give up the ascent…and walk down all way back – almost. This is how we finally came to Bussoleno. This day was a pain! It was really hard to decide what to do. We made a safety decision here…but in the end the weather was still fine. You never know in this case. Still I think we would make a similar decision in this situation. The night we spend in a very “Italian” one star “hotel” – actually a restaurant but they had a room for us. We were the only guests… At least we found some interesting things in Bussoleno.

This morning we climbed down to Susa – a “bigger” city. Here are hotels, super markets, restaurants, pharmacies, traffic lights, cash machines…even a train station. God I never thought I will like a city that much  Today it is hot in Susa – 34°C. Actually I think this is quite normal here but in the mountains we often do not realize that it is that hot in summer. The temperature drops about 1°C per 100m upwards. Now I think I know again how people in Germany currently must feel with temperatures around 32°C…and I heard some companies do not even spend the money for an air conditioning… When we arrived in Susa we went along the train station. When we passed a group of people a girl held her nose and waived her hand in front of her face…and laughed…and watched after us  I guess there is not much room for misinterpretations… Tonight we have a room in a 3 star hotel – with shower and bed and balcony and air conditioning and TV  This is great  The next action: shower! Luckily the hotel also had a public washing machine. We used it two times! In the afternoon we walked through the old city of Susa – once built by the Romans. And there are really some concepts, buildings and roads which remind me of Rome. Susa has about 6600 citizens. My personal impression is that international tourism is no big topic here. This evening we decided to go to a pizzeria – and we enjoyed it to determine ourselves what we want to eat and when, even ordering in Italian was no problem. On mountain huts there is often one fixed time and only one meal to “choose” from. We had two pizzas and a big salad and 1 litre of water and half a litre of white wine – all together for about 23 euros. I think this is a quite good price  Tomorrow we plan to walk further to the south…