Siemens and their hobs, really!

I did the early morning run to buy croissants and bread rolls for lunch which worked much better this time now that I know that the shops open at 08:00.  I also threw the rubbish bags away which might seem a strange thing to blog about but things work differently in foreign countries and that, at least to me, is interesting.  In Livigno the actual rubbish bins are wheeled boxy bins which are located next to the road at apparently odd intervals and everyone takes their small bags of rubbish and puts them into the big bins.  There is no such thing as separating recyclables and the bins just sit there until a truck comes to empty them.  This would be like heaven to the rubbish bin scavengers that we have in South Africa.

After another breakfast of coffee and croissant we returned to the blue slope that we were on yesterday which doesn't have a name but does have a number 23 next to it on the map.  This is by far my favourite slope thus far and we spent the entire day on it only going home at about 15:00 when our legs started getting tired.

Because the slope we were on was a teaching slope there were lots of people learning and more than a few collisions.  Kirsten ran over an instructors ski's and then wiped out.  Alistair collided with a really good skier who somehow appeared in front of him.  A little girl skiing down with her father was run over by a young adult woman and I stopped to retrieve the little girls ski while the father gave the woman a tongue lashing - in Italian of course.  When he had finished and got back up to me he said "And ... she's Italian" implying that he expects better behaviour from Italians which while he might have found to be exasperating, I found quite amusing.  In spite of all this none of us was even vaguely hurt which can't be said for a South African teenager who fell and hit his head really hard (no helmet) and had to be carted off to hospital while he was having convulsions.  Why is it that anything which is even vaguely fun carries risk.

Because Livigno is a village primarily with skiing as an extra as opposed to a dedicated skiing village there isn't really ski-in and ski-out like one has in Avoriaz so we are spending quite a bit of time walking to and from the ski slope in our boots and carrying our ski's.  Definitely not as convenient as Avoriaz but one gets used to it.  The one nice thing about all the slopes pretty much ending in the actual town is that there is a string of bars and restaurants at the bottom of the slopes to get the odd hot chocolate and meal from.

Instead of walking all the way home for lunch we had a meal at the restaurant which is surprisingly, by european standards, affordable and we bumped into nikki and rob and organised our ski lessons for the next few days.  Nikki left the book that she had been intending to read behind so I sms'd her to say that we had it hostage and would give it back to her for a ski lesson.  "Ha, Ha" she replied.

I could really get used to the habit we are falling into of having a siesta every afternoon and as it was Laurie's turn to make supper we lazed around, drank some wine and had naps or read the rest of the afternoon.  At about 18:00 Laurie appeared to ask for help to .... turn the stove on.  As simple as that might seem to be it really isn't.  Their flat has a Siemens induction hob which has touch panel controls and it really isn't obvious how to work it and of course the instruction manual conspicuously left next to the hob is in Italian with no English section.  After a bit of fiddling I did manage to get it to turn on but it kept on turning off for some reason so we gave up and Laurie cooked on our gas hob instead.

After a delicious supper of penne arrabiata we all played a couple of rounds of scrabble and I am ashamed to admit that I miss spelled some words and even that didn't help at all.  One round I managed to score a miserly 17 points which is just hopeless.