Olympics in Torino!!!

Last week I was in Torino, Italy, watching the 2006 Winter Olympics! The whole experience was overflowing with crazy fun, multiple fiascos, and surprises at every turn, and I would rate it as probably the best trip I have gone on all year. Almost all the praktikants had tickets to see something at the Olympics, the events I went to were with the Ziegelhau clan (Adrienn, Evan, Shane and Mike (Evan’s friend who was visiting for a couple weeks, and is an honorary member of Ziegelhau for naming purposes) ). We saw men’s moguls on Feb 15, and men’s snowboarding cross and the Canada-Germany hockey game on Feb 16. Because we were staying in Milan (more about that later, sigh…) there was a lot of travel time every day, but we always put it to good use (eg. Sleep, t-shirt creating, face painting, drinking). But lets start at the beginning…


(Jacqui rocks the photoshop skills)


***July***
Holy crap, we just clue in that the Olympics are going to be in Italy…which is really close to Switzerland! We all scramble to research event times, and try to string together the max number of events in the least number of days off….and of course one has to be a hockey game. I really wanted to see some freestyle skiing too, so was pretty happy with the event lineup that Ziegelhau and I found. Our events were on Wednesday and Thursday (Feb 15 and 16) so Adrienn and I discuss probably checking out more of Italy for the following weekend to maximize the vacation day use. We got the cheap sections for everything, and the total ticket cost ended up around $175 each….not bad! We’re already super pumped for the trip, however, there seems to be a few months we have to wait first. It seems so far away, so we don’t worry about any other trip details yet.

***July – Sept***
“We should really look into accommodation for Olympics”
“Ya, we should”
(nobody looks into accommodation)

***Oct - Nov***
“We really need to find a place to stay for Torino!”
“They guys said they would research something”
“Ok cool”
“We’ll probably end up renegade camping somewhere”
“Haha….” (optimistic disbelief)

***Dec***
“Shane, did you find a hostel for Torino?”
“No, where should I look?”
“sigh….I guess we’ll deal with it after Christmas, we’ve already waited this long”

***Jan***
I check hostel availability in Torino….wow, they’re all booked! We don’t feel like paying a million dollars, so I end up booking a hostel in Milan out of panicked desperation. Yay, we finally have somewhere to stay! Even if it is a 2 hour train ride away from Torino, lol.

***Feb***

Suddenly (it seems) it’s already time to leave for Olympics! We take the train to Milan and find our hostel, which is run by a really nice (though sketchy) Italian guy. Haha, he was constantly commenting on how we still paid him even though we seemed to never use the room.

Oh ya, the night before I randomly decided to dye my hair red in honour of Canada. I did blond first, and then the brightest red I could find…unfortuantly, on my un-dyable hair it only ended up a dark reddish brown. I was happy because it actually looks nice, though, a bit disappointed that I didn’t get the shocking red that I had planned (probably better in the long run though, haha).

The plan is to party in Milan, so we head towards a supposed party area. It happens to be Valentine’s day, so we are constantly being accosted by vendors trying to sell the guys flowers to give us. They should have know better, since all they get from our group is jokes and false hope of a sale, lol. We end up at a little bar that has the ceiling filled with ballons….of course everyone immediately pulls the balloons down to inhale the helium. It was a nice place, though we got tricked into buying some strange drinks that we didn’t really want. We stay there for awhile, and then decide we’re not up for finding a club so we head back to the hostel (with more balloons than we left with).

Check out my red(ish) hair. I swear I'm happier with it than I look in this pic, lol

Shane, Adrienn and Mike in Milan

99 red balloons......

well, 2

The next day we wake up semi-early and catch the train to Torino to see men’s moguls! We make full use of the 2 hour train ride by using it to get ready for the day….eating our supermarket breakfast, Evan makes his Olympic shirt, and I start painting the guy’s faces (luckily we have a train section to ourselves for this whole escapade). Between the 5 of us we have 6 flags so we deck ourselves out pretty well in those too.

Evan, very proud of his t-shirt

Mike sporting a maple leaf marker tatoo courtesy of me

From the second we get off the train we are running into other Canadians and exchanging enthusiastic yells and cheers! There are lots Italians and people from other countries dressed up too, but I think Canadians definitely outnumbered everyone in spirit overall. We set about finding the tram to go and pick up Mike’s tickets, which was located somewhere in Torino. This is where things start getting sketchy…some people tell us to go one way, and others say a different way. There’s a bit of confusion and map looking, when suddenly another Canadian we were talking to exclaims that his wallet is missing…..it was apparently just stolen right out of his pocket. Of course, we all immediately check our wallets, and move them to more secure locations (or so we think). At this point what we’re told to be the correct tram arrives, so we cram on to the overcrowded vehicle and hope that we figure out the right spot to get off. After a bit of inquiry, we realize that we were misguided and need to go in the opposite direction, so we get off the tram. A few minutes later, Evan realizes that his wallet was stolen, out of his front zippered pocket which was covered by his boxers (being worn over the pants).

Naturally Evan is pretty pissed off, but after a bit of discussion he realizes there’s nothing that he can do other than cancelling his credit cards. Luckily his passport and event tickets weren’t in the wallet, though he did lost all his cards and over 200 euros. After this we’re super extra careful with our wallets…

Waiting for the tram, we all have our wallets at this time.

We find the right tram, and finally get to the ticket pick-up center, where we encounter a ticket fiasco. They don’t have Mike’s tickets, because they have been delivered to the wrong person by accident. After insisting that there’s nothing they can do about it, the office finally agrees to cancel the other tickets and prints off new ones (was that really so hard?!?!?). We leave, hoping that the day will soon start to go more smoothly.

The train up to the ski area takes about an hour, so we use the time for an intense drink preparation and face painting session. The highlight of the ride was when some Olympics people got on the train to hand out noisemakers (bells) and get everyone all riled up. As you can imagine, being encouraged to make noise and be rowdy was a dream come true, and we spent the remainder of the ride ringing our bells and cheering (much to the enjoyment of the other passengers…).

Next, we had to take a bus to the hill (honestly, this whole trip was just train ride after bus ride after train ride…I think we spent more time commuting to and from things than actually watching events, lol). A few ticket checks and security stations…and we were finally there!!!

The group decked out in our Canada gear!

Check out Evan's newly censored shirt

We staked out a pretty good spot in the cheap-ticket zone, and watched the moguls competition that was already underway. The view was pretty decent, and we got to watch some wicked jumps. We were defiantly the most energetic people there (remember, this was only the qualifying round), and we were so pumped to just be at the Olympics that we were just cheering for everything, lol. Our crazyness helped us meet lots of other people, everybody seemed to flock to us and want pictures, it was pretty cool. We met some other Canadians, and people from lots of other countries.

Watching the men's mogul qualifiers

Us with our new Canadian friend Lucas

American friend that let us paint a maple leaf on his face, mwah ha ha!

Us being hardcore with our facepaint

During the break we went down to check out the main area. There was lots of food and drinks for sale, at surprisingly reasonable prices, it was awesome! At one point Evan and I ended up talking to some people from the Canadian skeleton team, it was pretty sweet.

Me and Evan with the coach and some people from the Canadian Skeleton team

For the finals we really wanted to get into the stands, so we decided to try and get in, hoping that they weren’t checking tickets too intensely. It worked like a charm, so me, Evan, Shane and Lucas (another Canadian that we met) got an awesome view of the finals (and the TV screen, which was nice). It was really cool being right in the action, we cheered hard for the Canadians and although we didn’t win any medals it was still so fun. Actually, the gold medal went to an Aussie who was originally from Canada, so it’s almost like we won (yay….).

Better seats for the finals...we had an awesome view of everything going on

Evan, Lucas and Shane watching the men's moguls finals

Leaving the ski area was crazy, there were such huge crowds of people waiting for the bus…we rocked some wall climbing skills and cut to the front. This wasn’t very popular with the crowd control people, but they ended up just letting us through and we got on a bus with pretty much no waiting, woot!

Back in Torino we found a pub and had some drinks and food. I love being in Italy, the food there is just so awesome…I had some freshly made gnocchi, it was delicious. Olympics was being shown on the tv (hockey, woot) so we wanted and chilled out for a bit, before catching the last train back to Milan. We got home around 1:30am, and after some much-needed paint cleaning-off caught a few hours of sleep.

The next day we woke up super early to get to the snowboarding cross. As usual, Italy trains totally disappointed, and the one we had looked up the day before no longer existed. We caught the next possible one to Torino, and then had a stroke of luck (it was about time!). The ticket checker randomly asked us if we were going to an event, and informed us that the train we were on went all the way up to the mountain town we were trying to get to, putting us back on schedule for getting to the event on time!

One train and bus ride later, we were walking through windy snow and rain to watch the qualifying rounds. We were all bundled up pretty well against the cold, and had opted not to put on face paint for this event (we all needed a break after the painty day before…that stuff just gets evvvvverywhere).

Ziegelhau bundled up against the weather

I'm pretty sure Evan's in there somewhere...

By the time the finals were on the sun had come out and was drying off our chilly wet selves. Shane and Mike were up in the better seats (Mike had a ticket for up there, and found a way to sneak Shane in). We made plans for the rest of us to get in, but they fell through so we just watched from the budget ticket holders section. It was still pretty sweet though, especially once we elbowed our way up to the front of the railing. The only annoyance was the overwhelming French fans next to us…they were bound and determined to elbow us out of our viewing zone, but we held strong and managed to keep our space…only some little things like breathing were sacrificed, it was totally worth it.

The day gets nicer! Watching the men's snowboarding cross finals.

A glimps of the crazy French people next to us, and their giant mascot

Adrienn, me and Evan cheering hard

The finals were really exciting, because 4 snowboarders race together at once and the top 2 get to move on to the next round. We had 4 Canadians in the finals, and one (Jasey-Jay Anderson) was looking like he might end up with a medal. Unfortunately, a collision and fall during one of the races got him eliminated…even though he ended up finishing second, he had missed a gate, causing him to be disqualified. It was pretty disappointing, but that’s how it goes.

More Canadian fans

Go Canada!

Since there was no Canadians in the final, we joined a group of American girls next to us (who we had bonded with over our joint annoyance with the French fans) in cheering for the States (even though it went against every natual instinct, hahaha). They won the race, so that was kinda exciting.

While waiting at the train station, Adrienn, Shane and I somehow got talking to a reporter from the Vancouver sun. He was asking us what we thought about the events so far, and how easy getting around was. Adrienn said “ With Italy, the motto is, you just never know” and he thought that was awesome and took down the quote. He wrote down a bit of other info about us and took a pic…I wonder if it ended up being published, I forgot to find out. It was still pretty cool though.

I used the train ride home for a quick power nap, which was a good thing because by the time we got back to Torino we only had an hour to get ready for the hockey game! We stationed ourselves in the trains station and broke out the face paint once again. Needless to say, we were quite the spectacle for people walking by, especially since our face painting was comboed with drink mixing and hurried sandwich eating. We ended up attracting a whole bunch of other people headed to the game, who somehow assumed that we knew where we were going. Luckily we actually did, since the hockey venue was where we had been the day before to pick up tickets.

On the way we stopped to spray the guy’s hair red, and also the hair of some of our new companions. Among them was a family of 2 boys and their mom, who were just awesome. They were totally loving our crazy excitement, and joined in all our cheers and enthusiasm. I felt a bit bad about the fact we were all blatantly getting drunk and sneaking liquor into the event, but the mom seemed cool with it so I guess it was all alright.

The Canadian family that hung out with us before the game, they were awesome!

We arrived a bit late for the hockey game (too much stopping for hair and body decoration), but found our seats quickly and got right into the action. We were definitely the loudest people in our section, and were screaming our lungs out with excitement. Our winning of the crazy contest was confirmed when the first intermission arrived, and we finally had time to apply body paint. Our section was a tangle of discarded clothing and everything we brought was covered in body paint but we didn’t care. All that mattered was using the short break to completely coat ourselves in paint that read “Go Canada Go”!

Mike and Evan watching the Canada- Germany hockey game

Adrienn and Shane rocking some awesome face paint

Go Canada Go!
(oh, that paint got everywhere....)

Canada winning against Germany

We got finished just in time, and cheered ever harder for the second half. Unfortunately, the effect of our group body painting was quickly lost when we neglected to stay in our seats. We were too busy running around the stands, meeting various other fans and trying to meet Ron Mclean and Kelly Hrudey, who were commentating for the game. During the second intermission they came to sign autographs, and I got my ticket signed by Kelly Hrudey (yay!). Ron Mclean’s shook Evan’s hand, which was probably a decision he regretted since he spent the next 10minutes trying to wipe red paint off his hand, hahaha.

Evan and me watching the game (one of use with more scaryness than the other)

No Ron, don't shake the red hand! He made his choice...

Kelly Hrudey in the background

The last period of the game was good times, and we ended up winning 5-1 over Germany. We left the stadium in high spirits, amidst a mob of other Canadian fans. Everybody kept asking to take our pictures, which was pretty cool, I felt famous or something, haha. We followed the crowd to the beer tent outside the game, which was just awesome. They had music, and everybody was just in such a great mood after the win that the energy in the room was out of control. People were dancing on tables and just having a wicked time.

Canada wins 5-1 !!!

Adrienn, Erin (another hardcore Canadian we met) and me celebrating the win

Yaaaa, we won!

Getting cornered for pics after the game (not that we weren't loving it)

We stayed there until it closed, which was probably the most fun I had the entire week. I don’t think I can do justice to how much fun it was, so I guess you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

The beer tent after the game, so much fun!

Me partying it up (at the expense of our flag, aww...)

Everybody is loving the party

Mike, being a spectacle

Me with some other fans

After the beer tent the mob of us all left and headed to another bar. The probably was that everybody was following each other, and nobody really knew were we were going, lol. I ended up trying to get the group back to the train station near where the bars are, haha, it was like herding a flock of sheep that kept wanting to wander off. We made it eventually though, without losing anyone (a few close calls though, haha) which was a nice relief.

The bar was pretty fun, there was lots of people from the hockey game there. The awesome thing about being at the Olympics is that practically everyone you meet is so happy to be there that you inevitably will have a great time.

Evan, Mike and I decided to leave, and we ended up at the same bar we had been to the evening before, which was sweet cause we were able to get more awesome food (and possibly sleep, lol). We stayed there for a bit watching Olympic highlights and then decided that we were ready to just go wait at the train station for the first train at 5am.

Rondom guy that wanted to get a pic with Mike passed out, haha

There was a nice, heated waiting room, which was a pleasant surprise even though we were forced to sleep on the ground because it was so crowded. Unfortunately, it was so comfortable that we overslept and missed the first train. This was probably a good thing though, since Evan and I had lost Mike and he had no idea how to get home. We went back to sleep for a bit (this time asking a fellow waiting-room guy to wake us up in time for the train, lol). However, when we woke up Mike was missing again…we wandered around the station looking for him, and it was funny because everyone seemed to know who were were looking for and said they had seen him awhile ago. We really couldn’t track him down though, and was about to just get on the train anyways (the phrase “he made his choice” came to mind) when Mike just appeared out of nowhere…defiantly a good call on his part, or he probably would have been stranded in Torino, lol.

We made it back to the hostel around 8am, giving the guys about an hour to shower, pack, and catch their train to France for skiing. Or so they thought…suddenly Shane burst into the room saying “our train is in 9 minutes!”. Mike was still in the shower, so they dragged him out and threw all their stuff into their bags and raced out of the room. There was no way they were going to make it, lol….and they didn’t, we found out later. They were forced to take the next train which caused all sorts of issues…on well, that’s what they get for not looking up the train time in advance, lol.

Adrienn and I were able to take our time in getting ready to leave, since we had no specific train to Venice that we had to catch. Getting ready involved scraping paint off every inch of my body (mostly unsuccessfully, that stuff is impossible to get off!) and isolating all the clothes I was wearing that were all saturated with paint, lol, I’ll deal with those later….

We checked out of the hostel and went to catch our train to Venice. Which shall be continued in the next post…….