ALPINE SKI WORLD CUP. When European racers come to Aspen to race, there are plenty of nuances that jump out at them from the minute they set foot on American soil.

File photo of Lindsey Vonn, the undisputed queen of Alpine skiing for the past three seasons. She has been the victim of a curse in Aspen, the lone stop for the ladies on the World Cup tour in the US. Vonn will be hoping to change that this weekend when the giant slalom takes place Saturday followed by a slalom race on Sunday. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Doug Pensinger)

All of a sudden, there are a lot of unnecessarily enormous cars around, the portions of food at restaurants are piled high but Americans (at least the ones in the Colorado mountains) aren’t as fat as one expects.

Even when they’re on the mountain things are different. Here they are at an elevation of 3,000 meters and they’re still surrounded by trees! In Colorado, the tree line is much higher than in Europe (just over 4,000 meters). And while they spend virtually all their time in mountains, several racers say they are affected by the dryness and lack of oxygen at higher altitude.

As far as differences that jump out immediately, the sheer vastness of the country itself is what first strikes Austrian Elisabeth Goergl every time she comes to the states.

“What I really like in America is it’s so wide open,” she says.

And with all the open space comes the awareness of the freedom that America is famous for.

“Everyone can do what he wants to if he has the will to do it,” she points out. “Like it wouldn’t be possible to open a restaurant in Austria if you don’t have the right license for it, but in America if you want to do it, just do it. If you’re good at it, you earn money and you make it. If not, you’re kicked out anyway. I think that’s a good thing.”

There are other good things.

“The shopping is great,” says Italy’s Federica Brignone, who, along with teammate Nicole Gius always brings an extra suitcase when they come to the U.S. “It is really cheap – clothes, shoes … so many things that in Italy are really expensive.”

“It’s a great time also before Christmas,” Gius adds. “You can go shopping and bring presents for the whole family.”

But American food couldn’t possibly compete with Italian food … could it?

“I like the breakfasts here,” Gius says. You can eat many things: pancakes, eggs …”

“And bacon!” Brignone chimes in. “In Italy – especially in the cities – most people are drinking just a coffee for breakfast, or a cappuccino with a croissant.”

And of course, what would America be without its hamburgers.

Shortly after arriving on American soil last week, Marlies Schild made a point to sample the country’s most popular fare.

“Yesterday I went for a burger,” she said. “I wanted to because I’m here. It has to be one time … a burger.”

Schild also said that the size of American cars never ceasees to surprise her.

“Even we have really big cars when we’re here,” she said of her team. “Our car is huge.”

The largeness of things is remarkable to most Europeans when they come to the states but some look beyond that and see the larger and somewhat disturbing meaning behind it. Goergl says it best.

“It seems to me, the big cars take a lot of fuel. They need so much energy. It seems like people think nature and all the resources we have are there forever and that’s not right,” she says. “That’s a big problem. I have to say in America, they do a lot of things like that. It seems like it’s a big country and they can get everything and take everything. I don’t know how your trash separating system is. When I was like 5 years old, I started doing that and now I’m 29. That’s 25 years that we’ve been separating our trash. For me, it’s terrible when I come here and we put everything together in one trash box.”

There are some American traditions to which the Europeans eagerly assimilate. Watch a video in which Goergl and the others reflect on Thanksgiving.

by Shauna Farnell
FISalpine.com
Thursday 25 November 2010