Italy is full of places to visit but in your twenties you are open to new experiences and Italian Alps is offering a lot of amazing adventures that an exchange student can really appreciate. An Adventure for exchange student is perfect here in the Alps! When you have to guide someone coming from Brazil you know it is hard to amaze them. Brazil is such a lovely country with its beaches, warm temperature and amazing natural beauty in all its corners. Moreover as these Brazilians were coming in the mountains in winter I was very worried about the cold temperature there are in the mountains in this period. But all this problems melt down in front of the beauty of the Alps and because this brasilian erasmus group coming from Venice and Turin was absolutely lovely and accepted the adventure in a magnificent way.
We had great time in reaching the Rifugio Noaschetta, a beautiful house in the middle of nowhere. More specifically the Noaschetta hut is in the Piedmont part of Gran Paradiso National Park. The hut is surrounded by majestic peaks and rock walls. Some peaks there are more than 3500 meters and the vertical rock walls are really very impressive. Alps trekking there is really a nice experience for all. You can imagine how new that was for this fantastic groups of Brazilian students. The weather in Turin looked pretty foggy but once we started hiking, the clouds slowly went away and our erasmus adventure in the mountain could really start! The Gran Paradiso in this region is rich in wildife. In particular this valley is really full of chamoises, a elegant and nice mountain goat. We also met a lost sheep next to the hut trying to guess its adventure which most probably will not have an happy ending.
The dinner was quite rich as we wanted to show the italian cooking quality with the local cheeses, salame, ravioli and wine. We had a very enriching exchange in our cultures. We discovered the reciprocal political and social problems of our countries and we exchange information about the most beautiful places to visit in Italy and in Brasil. The group was omogeneous in studies(the entire group of students are all studying architecture in an exchange program of University) but comes from different part of Brasil: Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, Mina Gerais and Brasilia. The second day we walk deep into the valley arriving at 2300 meters in the middle of some rock cathedral fairly impressive even for me that I am so used to the Alps trekking environment.
Having an adventure with trekking Alps for and exchange student or an Erasmus student is a fantastic idea and I am thinking to create a special program for this young boys and girls coming from so far, willing to explore the most remote part of our beautiful country: Italy!
