Marta's Monterosa Blog

I am passionate about the Alps. They are my heart's home and the place where I would like to spend the last day of my life. I have been a tourist in the village of Champoluc in the Italian Monterosa for all my life and worked as a tourist operator in this area since more than 15 years.

I believe in respect for the special environment of this place that you can find only here. We all gain by enjoying its beauty, while trying to make a minimum impact at the same time. Leave it for our children in the future!

I believe in respect for people who live here with their traditions and culture, language, and work, their genuine products and delicious wines. They open their homes for us, tourists and meet us as their guests, if we are able to open our hearts for them. I have a friend who is a hotel owner and he says that when stressed people from the city come to his place, he tells them to sit down and take a drink before they even begin to worry if they have a room. Perhaps, we can bring a little of their kindness and calmness with us on our way back to the city.

My philosophy is to give back a little of what the mountains and the people from this place have given to me and to my family through my work, to communicate my philosophy and my passion to those who follow me on the blog, and in my trips as a tour operator.

If you would like to visit Champoluc, Gressoney, Alagna or other villages in the Aosta Valley, trek or ski in the Monterosa, discover Sardinia or other places we offer, contact us.

This is one of the most coronavirus infected areas of Germany

Posted: Mar 9, 2020

Categories: Blog

Comments: 0

Author: Marta Capetillo

9/3 2020 Bottingen, Baden Württenberg Germany

This is one of the most coronavirus infected areas of Germany, we didn’t know when we booked my cozy Gasthaus for this night.

Yes, I run away. I run away from my beloved mountains. MY mountains, why did you come and infested the purity of this, my childhood place with your sticky fingers Covid19? Why so many people this weekend, coming up to the mountains to ski as usual? Why don’t you stay at home? I know you have the RIGHT to come to your second house in the mountains, but you have also DUTIES as citizen: to stay at home (your first) when the crisis is evident as it is now. In Italy.

Today more than 9000 cases in Italy.

I think about my neighbor Massimo in the tiny village of Palouettaz, near the bigger but still tiny village of Champoluc, where we have the privilege of having Thealpstugan. He is 82 and lives alone. With 2 cats. Ah and hens. He feels powerless and alone, more than usual. Why should you come from Milan and threaten his health driving from the - what it is now - orange areas in Italy to these tiny villages? Who is to blame? Not Massimo for sure. Perhaps the ski systems, the industry that makes you abandon your polluted or infected city to get to a new polluted and infected area, but with a ski system? I have never seen so many cars in our villages as this weekend. All coming from Milan to ski – and leave the bad dream of Covid19 behind.

So I quit and leave. And I know that I am a part of the industry.

What is the best way to take you to Sweden from Italy in the era of the pandemic? We reasoned in my family and this is the result:

Two major parameters:

Civil duty – try not to spread the virus.
Come home safe – and fast, we need you.

The means:

Take the car and drive.
Take your pillow and all the disinfectants you can.
Buy gloves to tank the car.
Do not pie.
Cook your food on a camping gas.

So now I am on my way.

First it was a tragedy to leave the purity of my mountains (the paragraphs above are what I thought driving the firs couple of kilometers from Thealpsstugan). Then there was the thrill of passing the frontier to Switerland. Should they ask me where I was from? What should I say? Milan? Lombardia? I am after all born in that incredible city! Tell them that I am running away and that they should do the same?

At the great Saint Bernhard Tunnel, the border, I was completely alone. Only the little man at the Italian cashier to get me pay the toll. No cars, no police, no other migrants as me. Nothing! I had not even to pay for the terrific “vignette”, the toll for the Swiss motorways that you pay when you get into the country usually. Nothing!

So now I am free. Just in another country in Europe with increasing and rising numbers of Covid19. They had a very good Wiener schnitzel anyway, and home made knödel at Landgasthof Rebstock in Bottingen.

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