Skiing for scrubbers

I’m not ashamed of it: I am a self-confessed Withnail-and-I-style scrubber. I reuse my teabags. I print on both sides. I drink Lambrini. Like most students, I like to travel on the cheap. So when my hall mate suggested we pop over to Italy for a spot of skiing, I felt my internal alarm go off, the one that is magically linked to my overdraft. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can do it for under £300,” she said. Colour me stunned, but she was right.

Okay, so we did cheat a little. Handily, a flat was waiting for us in the ski resort of Bardonecchia free of charge courtesy of her parents. Before that though, we had to find flights, insurance, and a cheap hotel in Turin. After shopping around, STA Travel surprised us with the lowest priced insurance just in case I broke both legs skiing into a tree or falling from a chairlift. Ryanair provided the plane, and we cheated their add-on costs by shoving our heavy items into one suitcase to avoid paying for two lots of luggage. Watch out for the pesky £20 card charge though (unfortunately Ryanair does not accept payments of chocolate or love). Oh, and the 6.55am departure time did help shove the price down. Why waste a night sleeping when you can spend the night in Costa Coffee at Stansted airport? You can sleep when you’re dead.

Next up on the bill was the hotel in Turin, or as we affectionately renamed the city, Little Bosnia. For a few euros we caught an airport bus to the Hotel President on Via Antonia Cecchi. It’s hard to tell when booking online exactly how attractive your surroundings are going to be. We had accidentally chosen for our first few nights a neighbourhood which made Coventry look positively sparkling. The graffiti, rubbish, and firecrackers going off in the street had already unnerved us before we found our hotel, a grey building that could have just as easily been derelict. As it transpired, our digs were a bit like Steve Buscemi: ‘fugly’ on the outside, rather smart on the inside. A twin room plus breakfast set us back around £25 each per night, the same as you would pay to stay in most hostels in Europe, except that we had a TV, a fridge, an ensuite, and less chance of catching crabs. Breakfast was a self-serve buffet, so obviously we stocked up for the next week.

Eating out on Via Po didn’t cost us a fortune either though. The pizza and gelato were so good and so cheap (around £10 in total) that we vowed never again to pay for Domino’s. Student tickets for the Museo Egizio and Mole Antonelliana, that is the Egyptian Museum and National Museum of Cinema, only cost us a few euros each and killed a whole day. Yes, it’s true, there are no Egyptians in Turin and it isn’t exactly the home of cinema either… but both museums are top-notch. The National Museum of Cinema has a boggling central hall about the size of Copper Room One. The main floor is occupied by lots of chaise-lounges you can lie down in to watch the big screens, while surrounding the room are teeny tiny replica movie sets with theme-appropriate clips playing inside. If you’ve never seen that bit in The Exorcist where Linda Blair’s head becomes confused about which way to face, then avoid the dungeon set.

Sometimes going with the flow is as rewarding as planning your sightseeing. On our first wander around the various palazzos, we decided to follow a crowd of people we had spotted. A few minutes later we were inside the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, looking at the infamous Turin Shroud. Or, I should say, we were looking at the box that contains the Turin Shroud, but the serendipity of the moment still made us smile.

To stumble upon museums and restaurants in the beautiful central part of the city we had to walk for about thirty minutes from our hotel in Little Bosnia, and once there it was possible to forget the firecrackers and graffiti surrounding our accommodation and admire the beautiful architecture. It was time to hit the slopes however.

In the interest of skipping the bus fare, we decided to walk from Little Bosnia to the train station. This took a little longer than anticipated – nearly an hour – but we concluded that the best way to see a city is to go for a walk, so in a sense we had done some extra sightseeing. Five euros and an hour later we were in snowy Bardonecchia. Obviously we had a sweet deal regarding the bedtime situation, but a quick peek online shows that if you pick your dates cannily it is possible to get a room for around £30 a night each. We spent £60 on food and drink over 6 days, so if you needed this cash for accommodation I’d suggest swapping the restaurant pizzas for supermarket goodies. Too much pizza is only going to make it harder for the paramedics to carry you off the slope anyway.

As for the ski gear, Centro Rossignol-Rossi Sport kitted us out for two days with skis, boots and poles for around £25 each, thanks to their handy online booking. Now, I may have cheated slightly on the rest of the outfit. I already owned a warm waterproof jacket. My mate lent me a snazzy pair of salopettes to keep my legs toasty and dry. Most of us have an ancient pair of woolly socks and thermals or a fleece top knocking around at home. Yes, the fashion conscious have Killy and Peak Performance jackets worth £300 a pop… but if, like me, you are learning on the baby slope then the six-year-olds are not going to care what you have on. They will be far too busy crashing into you with sleds while their parents laugh and point. The only other accessories I’d recommend are sunglasses, your favourite beanie, and waterproof gloves. No one intends to fall over a lot when learning to ski, but somehow your hands keep plunging into the snow anyway.

What can you learn in two days? I’m athletically challenged. In fact, I often walk into walls and doorframes, but I somehow managed to learn how to snowplough and turn without injuring myself or any Italians (the English were not so lucky). Now, if you have undertaken this endeavour without a friend to teach you the moves, the cheapest lesson tip I can suggest is to stand really close to an instructor and listen in. (You might have to learn Italian first). Alternatively, I suggest borrowing a ten year old whiz and asking them for some pointers. If they can do it, how hard can it be? Try not to get arrested for talking to the little sprites though. You don’t have room in your budget for bail money.

Is only two days in the snow worth going at all? Well, we were in Bardonecchia for three, but for one of those days we went for a walk and admired the white stuff. Granted, we’ve had a lot of snow lately, so it might not seem such a meteorological wonder any more, but making a snowman in Italy is still cooler than making one in your back garden. Two days was enough to give my legs a good workout and my toes have only just returned to their original shape. If you’re not sure it’s something you’re going to enjoy, a few days is plenty of time to give you a taster before the novelty wears off.

Once we were all skied out, we hopped back on the train to Turin, this time staying as close to the station as possible. Hotel Urbani on Via Saluzzi turned out happily to be identical to Hotel President. Yes, if you go cheap, it often means you go the way of the chains, but if that equals good digs and twelve pots of jam in my pocket, I can live with that. The next morning, we said goodbye to Turin just around the corner from our hotel as we climbed back onto the airport bus. Ciao Italy… now to remember this mantra: I will not eat Domino’s, I will not eat Domino’s…

Here’s our budget breakdown for our week in Turin: insurance £16; return flight £75; hotels £90; two-day ski hire £25; food £60; souvenirs £10; trains and buses £20; sitting down in the middle of a ski run because you haven’t yet learnt the correct way to stop: priceless.