As I write this, I am on a flight from Switzerland to Belgium having recently wrapped production in Val D’Isere for a show you will see on The Ski Channel in the near future focusing on the Alpine World Championships. VDS is remarkably beautiful and you have to be there to get a true appreciation of how vertical the mountains are, seemingly rising straight up from the valley floor in all directions. Once you’re in the village, you feel like you are engulfed by the peaks and start to wonder how anyone ever stumbled across this place and figured it was a fertile area to start up a town. Our bus ride up the twisting mountain road past Tignes was harrowing enough, so I can’t imagine how the first settlers rolled in.
The results so far speak for themselves so I’ll spend this time just filling you in on our time in the French Alps and what was happening around town. After a long trip from St. Louis that included a ridiculously long terminal transfer in London, I arrived in Geneva only to find that my bags did not. Shouldn’t of surprised me given that it took me almost a half hour to get between gates at Heathrow that the baggage folks were not as intent as I was on making my next flight. So after four hours waiting for my bags at the Geneva airport, I was finally on a bus for the three hour drive to the hotel in Bourg St. Maurice whis is a little town about 45 minutes short of Val D’Isere. Upon my arrival that night, no one could seem to tell me, either in French or in broken English, exactly where the hotel was located. Many in fact never even heard of it. Not a good sign. Even more frustrating at the end of a long journey when you are mentally shot and problem solving becomes an increasingly difficult challenge.
Since there are only so many directions one can take from the round about in a small town, I figured a few minutes of walking would eventually get me there. Unfortunately, I was right. The place was everything a European hotel in a tiny mountain setting is purported to be: no lights in the hallway, no shower curtain in the bathroom, light switch for the room at my ankles, musty old comforter on the bed and no one who speaks even a hint of English at the front desk. It has never taken me song long to ask for a bar of soap in my life. After they tried to give me soup, the thought of smelling like Tomato basil the rest of the day led me to call off the search. I stopped asking for things altogether at the hotel once I failed to get a wake up call. Not that they forgot, just that they never bothered to grant the request in the first place. You see, a wake up call for me would have required them waking up to call me and they were just willing to do that.
Needless to say, I was happy to leave for Val D’Isere itself early the next morning (after waking up on my own many times throughout the night, stressed that I would oversleep). It was a 45 minute bus ride up tight and turny alpine roads with sharp switchbacks and impatient other drivers who insisted on passing our bus even on blind corners…the type of moves you can only watch through one partially closed eye it’s so close.
Oh, I forgot. To get on the bus, you had to get a free ticket from one man standing next to the door and immediately hand it to the man standing next to him. I never even looked at it. Must be a rigorous French security measure.
Our limited time in VDS was extremely busy, but there was a cool vibe throughout the picturesque village. They take their skiing seriously there and have a genuine appreciation for the history of the sport. Having such a prestigious event in such an historic location to begin with, makes it all the more compelling. We met some fine people and even shot a segment with Norwegian skiing legend Kjetil Andre Amondt among others…and many of them in a bar no less. I know, what a surprise! It is one of the many different stories you will see on the World Championships show here on The Ski Channel. Look for it later this month.
Our departure from VDS late that first night did disappoint in keeping the drama alive. Packed into a bus with a hoard of drunk Frenchmen ringing cowbells, we were late to leave. When we did pull out, the bus driver ran smack into a stone pillar, blowing out a rear tire. You can imagine the over the top reaction from our French companions who cheered as if Jean Claude Killy had just come out of retirement and won the downhill. So we disembarked and proceeded on to another bus for the fun filled frolic back down the mountain. And this was after we realized our television equipment had been accidentally locked in the bus depot requiring a 90 minute round trip journey back here before leaving for good.
All in all…good times overseas. Europe is always an adventure and travel to remote alpine destinations is never easy. The more splendid they are, the harder they seem to be to get to. It’s part of the beauty of the sport and the elegance of its atmosphere. Val D’Isere has been a terrific host for these world championships and everyone from the athletes to the fans seem pleased.
After a day seeing the Old Town and the lake in Geneva, it’s on to Belgium before the long trip home where I have just been denied a second cup of coffee on my flight to Brussels. Now that is serious travel trouble for ya.
