Grandfather’s ski-steps - The Jewish Chronicle

My grandfather first took to the slopes as a young man the 1920s and loved it so much he continued skiing until he was well into his seventies. By that point in his life he had long been able to afford to holiday in Europe’s fanciest ski resorts, but when he first donned ski boots in Zakapone, in southern Poland, Baruch Hirsch Benjamin Glaser was a skint student who, against all the odds, had made it out of small-town Austro-Hungary.

Back then, there was no après-ski in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains and my grandfather’s skis were made of wood. I doubt the ski lift had reached 1930s eastern Europe, either. It was invented in Germany in 1908, the year Benno, as he was known, was born. Before the Shoah, skiing was not the elite recreation it has become over the course of the intervening century.

For this very reason, my émigré grandfather was, until last January, the only person in my family to have taken to the slopes. So when an invitation arrived for a weekend skiing trip in the Dolomites, in South Tyrol, I knew I was in for a rather different experience from Benno’s in Zakapone. Over the years, my Sicilian friends – I used to live on the island in my early twenties – had talked of the chic mountain experiences, the luxurious spa-and-ski hotels and gourmet dining at the opposite end of their country. They had also prepared me to be awed by Unesco-protected mountain range the designer Le Corbusier described as “the most beautiful natural architecture in the world.”

And, mamma mia, are my Sicilian friends and the architect, right. The thunderous peaks and jagged rockfaces of these gargantuan coral-reef mountains that cover nearly 1500 sq m of northeastern Italy and which blush pink at dawn and dusk (something to do with the way the sun’s rays hit the calcium and magnesium-rich rock) are among the most beautiful natural phenomena I have seen in my life.

As a virgin skier I was obviously going nowhere near the more vertical sections of the northeastern Italian Alps. And I doubt I ever will, for the truth is I found sliding across the snow on the mountains' gentle, undulating slopes challenging enough. This had nothing to do with the painstaking directives of endlessly patient local instructor Giovanni – “Flex your ankles and bend your knees, Karen! Don’t lean backwards, it might feel safer but it isn’t, Karen! Don’t lean the way you’re turning or you will fall, Karen!” – and everything to do with my innate uselessness at anything that comes under the heading sport. For fall on those gentle, undulating slopes, I did. Several times. In the end, I reached the base area with Giovanni skiing backwards and inches in front of me. You get the picture.

The writer on the slopes with endlessly patient ski instructor, Giovanni[Missing Credit]

After a day of not-quite skiing but plenty of adrenaline spent trying to, it was wonderful to decompress in the rooftop whirlpool bath and various saunas of Hotel Sassongher. Perched on the side of the mountain it is named after, and looking down on the glamorous and quaint town of Corvara, the five-star hotel has been owned by the Pescosta family for the best part of a century and is decked out in time-honoured lavish Alpine style: wood-panelled walls and nooks, ornate Tyrolean closets, wolf skins in the corridors and deer skulls mounted on the walls of the restaurants, where dinner was simply terrific.

Hotel Sassonger[Missing Credit]

Rooftop whirlpool bath at Hotel Sassongher[Missing Credit]

The menu at the hotel changes often but last January I tucked into a primo of risotto with pumpkin and montasio cheese, a secondo of grilled sea bass with mint emulsion and raw baby spinach and polished the meal off with a small piece of apple strudel from the dessert trolley.

Dessert at Hotel Sassongher[Missing Credit]

It is a signature cake in this Alpine province where Italy and Austria collide and where around six in ten people have German as their first language. This is because until 1918, the South Tyrol was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It was occupied by the Italy at the end of the First World War and became part of the country the following year.

As my grandfather also began his life in the Austro-Hungarian empire, he too would have learnt German, when he went to school. But what Benno never got to do was ski in the northernmost tip of Italy and that is a real shame because I know he would have loved to.

Hotel Sassongher offers Comfort Rooms from €539 (£467) per night, based on two adults sharing on a half-board basis sassongher.it

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Travel

Dolomites