My first voyage ‘round the world, part 5

Fifty years ago, during June 1, 2 and 3 we were splitting our days on the Galilei Galileo, our ship, and killing time in the bustling harbor of Naples, Italy, the birthplace of the pizza. I remember the place to be filthy, smelly and crowded. 

I had been to northern Italy before, but this resembled the typical caricature of that otherwise beautiful country. I don’t think JP and I had even thought of traveling to nearby Capri, but we definitely noticed the Vesuvius volcano in the distance. In addition, we didn’t have enough money to play the tourists, as this activity had been relegated to finance our globe-trotting, return trip, at the end of the ski season. 

We had to be careful and watch every dollar we still had in our pockets! Again, we had to go through another two-extra days strike, and that weird state of affair now seemed to be a continuing problem that would seriously delay our arrival in Melbourne, but there was nothing we could do about that, except make the best of it and enjoy the moment. 

Going back briefly to Mt. Buller, the ski resort where we were going to teach skiing, had two competing ski lift companies sharing the mountain, the “Blue Lifts”, where we were going to teach, and the “Oranges Lifts” which employed an Austrian ski school ran by Walter Fröis, from Wolfurt in Voralberg, himself ski school director at Alpine Meadows, a resort today merged into Squaw Valley, near Lake Tahoe. 

As we were leaving Naples and heading towards Messina, JP noticed that our competitors from the Austrian ski school had gotten the royal treatment, as they all had been offered a passage in first class. We had spoken to them craning our heads from our second class lower deck and could sense some condescension emanating from them. 

I remember JP was pretty furious at the way Alexis Saudan had treated us!