Stories

Welcome to our Stories, a special blog, where our friends write about their experiences and adventures in the Monterosa area. 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!

Unusual lunch

Posted: Feb 15, 2010
Categories: Champoluc, Blog
Comments: 0
Sometimes it happens strange things: I go to visit a very special and cosy hotel lying in a tiny village from 1600 th century, at 2000 meters high above Champoluc, the village of Crest. The hotel is called Vieux Crest and is lodged in the family house of the owner, since generations.

The atmosphere is genuine and friendly and they invite me to a gorgeous lunch with the staff. I don’t think they mind having me there because they have a chance to eat well too…probably not as they use when they do not have guests.
A cat will receive the remnants of our meal and she is also happy, believe me!

First we chat about tourists and the hotel, nothing unusual, and we are all a little bit shy and unconfy for the strange thing of being a tour operator eating with the hotel’s staff…
But two of them are from the most infected realms of the mafia in Italy, Neaples and Calabria, and the third is a Moroccan woman and does not eat pig ( in the Aosta Valley there is plenty of salami!). This brings us to a long discussion about the situation in the south of Italy, politics and history, with the Moroccan woman silent because of the language more than because of cultural difference.

The 2 guys say that the Italian union at the end of 19th century brought only disaster to their regions, and that South Italy should have had a better destiny if the Austrian kingdom of the Augsburg had been in charge. Neaples flourished during their domain and all the best cultural and social laws had been created during their time.

The book Gomorra is completely true and the guys had no other choice than leaving to afford a honest life. South Italy today is a bank of votes, where the Italian politicians profit of  people’s real hunger, giving them money (50 € are a lot if you are starving) if they promise to vote for them. Millions of people live like this.
Then how could it be possible to change the politics in Italy? Do you understand why we still have the government we have? Probably the world should put more attention on the elections in Italy than on the elections in Afghanistan. After all Italy is still a part of the developed democracies (or not?)…
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