Sunday morning, Chelsea and I left for Bolzano. Our first train went to Civitanova (and this time it was actually a train, unlike on Saturday) Our second train was to Bologna, and it was delayed by about a half an hour…. Which tends to make a layover that was under 40 minutes a bit tight. The train made up a little time as we went… but it was still late. We arrived in Bologna, and began frantically trying to figure out which Bin/track we had to get to for our next train without having to run all the way into the main station and then back to the tracks. After a few moments of searching, we asked a conductor, who told us our next train was departing from Bin 1 West… We were currently positioned at a Bin in the central section… brilliant.
So, we ran down the stairs and followed the signs through the labyrinth that lies beneath Bologna Central Station… I have not been in a train station as nuts as this one before. BUT we made our train, with a few minutes to spare. This train had some fascinating people on it, including but not limited to a woman with her pet ferret in a carry case, and a man who stood up several times to tuck in his bright purple dress shirt while talking to himself…he also continued to talk to himself while sleeping.
We got some awesome views of the mountains from the train. I made a few attempts at pictures, but we shall have to see how well they turned out, I haven’t gone through all of them yet. I am figuring out that especially in regards to the mountains and other pretty things, I need to stretch my vocabulary muscles a bit more, because I keep thinking that they are just indescribably beautiful, but that’s not true. There are words, I just can’t locate them in my brain currently. And I am not sure that my pictures even do it justice… so I am in a bit of a dilemma.
Anywho, made it into Bolzano, and walked over to our hostel, in an ideal location about 2 blocks from train station. We got ourselves settled in a bit and then asked if there was anywhere open that we could go for dinner (something that can be difficult to find on a Sunday evening) The concierge gave us a few suggestions, and we set off. The restaurant we ended up at had a lovely cabin like feel, except for the fact that they were playing mostly American pop music on the radio, which created some interesting texture in the atmosphere. Bolzano was part of Austria until 1960, and is a bilingual town, Italian and German. The German influence up there is very strong, and it was refreshing to spend some time in a “different world.” We ordered a chicken cutlet and fries, and some squash ravioli, and split both dishes. We followed this with a warm apple strudel that would rock your world.
Bolzano is so bright and colorful! Well compared to Macerata at least, now don’t get me wrong, I love my beautiful walled city, but I didn’t really notice how little color there is on the exterior of the buildings until I got up to Bolzano, where the streets are filled with gorgeous Austrian style pastel colored buildings. It felt so quintessentially European to me, right down to the men playing accordion in the street. There is a fresh fruit and veggie market in the street, everyday except Sunday. And, on top of fresh fruits and veggies, fresh chestnuts, roasted right before your eyes… over a large drum of hot coals, but close enough to an open fire to count for me. Chelsea and I split a bag of these everyday, and let me tell you, not much compares to the deliciousness of a warm chestnut on a cold day, I had no idea how awesome these were.
Monday, we spent the whole day wandering the streets of Bolzano, since most of the museums and such were closed. We had a typical lunch for this part of the country, which consisted of 2 frankfurters and a large round roll, all of which you basically just tear apart and eat with your fingers. We walked from one side of the city to the other, and not in the most direct path. But we also, found our way to one of the city’s three cable cars. Which we proceeded to take said cable car up the mountain, and the views were spectacular. We walked around the little town that was at the top of the hill for a little while and then headed back down.
On our way back down the river walk, we began to notice something peculiar about the benches… it seemed that there was a backrest in the middle, but it leaned to one side or the other to make benches that could face either direction… there also did not appear to be a pattern to which benches would face which way, not as though the designers thought, “the views are better this way from here…” After a couple minutes of discussion, we decided to investigate for ourselves, and discovered that these benches were actually reversible! You can actually push the back rest so that it leans a little bit to one side or the other, and then comfortable sit on whichever side you please (unless of course one of your bench-mates disagrees… but nothing’s perfect) Genius…
That night for dinner, when we told our waiter that we would not be having salad, just a pizza, he took our salad forks away…apparently quite afraid that two American girls would commit the cardinal sin of eating pizza with a salad fork. This sparked a sudden inspiration that there should be an appropriate fork with which to eat pizza, since that seems to be the expectation here. We decided that such a fork would need sharp tines, especially for the crisper crust often found on Italian pizza. There should also be personal pizza cutters for patrons, because the knives, well they just don’t cut it. Our study of specifically purposed silverware was actually continued at dessert, when we were given a special spoon with which to eat our tiramisu. Most remarkable about this spoon was the small divot on one edge of the bowl, perhaps to aid in “cutting” through the lady fingers.
Tuesday, we awoke early (by college kids on vacation standards) with the best of intentions and not the best nights of sleep (the hostel was HOT, and the beds/pillows aren’t in my top 10 best list) We ate our more northern style breakfast, and then went to grab some groceries in the market to make ourselves dinner. And then we headed off for a day of museums and castles in the rain. After our usual bit of mild disorientation, we made it to the ice man museum. In 1990, a corpse was found in the mountains, about 60 miles outside of Bolzano. Within the first days of the discovery, several theories were launched about who this could be, the first being an Austrian music professor who went for a hike in 1941 and never came home, another theory was that this corpse was somewhere between 500-3000 years old, another was that it was a World War I deserter, a mercenary from the time of Frederick of the Empty Pockets, which is approximately 1382 (I have no idea who that is, but it is an awesome name), but finally it was decided that he was a prehistoric native of the Otz Valley, somewhere between 5350-5100 years old. An Austrian journalist dubbed the “poor, shriveled carcass” that everyone was always talking about “Ützi” and the name stuck, despite the predictions of his bosses. Ützi has been a fascinating case for scientists of all sorts. Studies have found that he suffered from arthritis, atherosclerosis (too much animal fat in his diet they think), that he had a distressed immune system, and that he had some other sort of chroin disease that they have not been able to determine. He was also a murder victim, and has been in the news more recently as the world’s oldest unsolved crime.
After that we attempted to find the Merchant Museum and failed… but we decided to consult our maps/guidebooks again back at the hostel and try again tomorrow. Then we headed to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the interior of which reminded me a bit of the art institute of Chicago…but not nearly as cool art wise. There were only about 2 dozen pieces in the museum, and we were done there after about half an hour. None of the art particularly spoke to me… but they did have a really awesome guest book, it was a wooden park bench with a sharpie tied to it, and you could sign the bench. My inner child always loves a good chance to write on something that I normally would not be allowed to write on.
After the museum, it was more shopping and more chestnuts, and then we stopped in a little chocolate shop, hoping for a cup of something to warm us up, but she appeared to only serve coffee. However, we did buy a few flavors of hot chocolate that I am excited to try! Then, we headed back to the hostel to dry off, warm up, and make dinner.
Our last day, we caught the free shuttle out to one of the local castles, Castello Roncolo (or Schloss Runklestein in German), a really, really awesome castle I might add. There were lots of mostly in tact frescos, and rooms full of artifacts from the owners over the centuries. Being in a castle is a crazy thing, because you look all around you, at all the rooms, the frescos, the high walls, and you think, “this was someone’s house…” The frescos of this castle are unique because they are some of the most well preserved secular frescos we have. There is such an abundance of frescos that is castle has been nicknamed “The Illustrated Castle.”
Before we left, we ate lunch at the little restaurant in the castle. Once again, some lovely northern food. I ordered a wurst of some sort that came with sauerkraut and a couple balls of potato, all of which was quite delicious. Chelsea had never tried sauerkraut before, and so she tried some of mine, but was not a fan, which was fine, more for me.
Afterwards, we wandered a few shops again, I love the way they have their shops set up. They have maintained the old arches and barrel vaults throughout the city center, with their white walls, and filled them with shops. In some ways, it felt ultra modern, which was such a pardox, because those arches have been there for centuries, but the feeling of walking into a room that is more of a half cylinder, than a box, makes me feel like I have just walked into the future…. Cheesy, but whatever. It was really cool. It made shopping a whole new kind of exciting, because every store we walked into I wanted to say, “Wow, I love what you have done with the place.”
It was still a bit dreary out, but we were going to take our last cable car ride anyway. Our roommate, Elena, who is from the south of Italy came along with us. The three of us chatted the whole way up, only being interrupted by how incredibly beautiful the mountains really are. Elena is just so sweet, it was great to just chat with someone about the world and the different corners of it we come from. When we got to the top of this mountain, after passing through a couple layers of clouds, it was still managing to rain… so we took our little selves into a café for some hot chocolate. We sat in the café and talked about traffic in Italy, parking in Italy, about the States, we drew little illustrations on our napkins, and munched on some little crackers. Then we hopped back in the car and headed down the mountain again. Technically, this cable car is supposed to be exceptionally beautiful at sunset, but it was a little too cold and rainy, to wait for sunset, and also cloudy enough that it might not have been as pretty. But it was getting close to sunset when we came down, and the views were still incredible. The clouds wound through the valley below us like the rivers that carved it.
There is something so peaceful about watching the way that a cloud moves around a mountain. It’s also crazy how a mountain can make a cloud look so small that it looks like someone’s breath on a frosty morning. On the train, the clouds around the mountains looked like a thin veil, separating us from the peaks, and the mottled blue and gray skies high above our heads. I have been trying to come up with a way to describe the feeling that I get when I just stand and look at the mountains and clouds around them, its some sort of a fusion of breathless and speechless, and astounded and intrigued, all of that jumbled up and rolled together, yet somehow still completely at peace….
Anyway, after that brief digression, after we came down from the mountains, Elena, Chelsea and I pooled our food resources, and made dinner. We had linguini with a nice tomato basil sauce for our primi piatti (first course), and for our contorni (vegetable course) a vegetable medley: broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and some little slices of sausage (and yes I do recognize that this is not a vegetable, but we threw it in the pot anyways, and it tasted just fine) Then we had some clementines for dessert. There were some German kids using the kitchen at the same time, and I had a lot of fun just listening to them talk, even though I could not understand a single word of it.
Thursday, Chelsea and I headed to Trent, to make a quick stop to study the Cathedral for a project for our music history class. It was literally on the way, so we figured it would be perfect. Since there was no where for us to store our bags, this was a very quick stop. Then we parted ways, I was heading back to Macerata, and Chelsea was heading off to a few other cities. When I first got on the train in Trent, it was over crowded and I couldn’t find a seat. Luckily, many of the passengers appeared to be high school age students most likely on their way home. After the first stop, several spots cleared and I snagged one for myself. A few stops later, a girl got on and grabbed the empty seat across from mine, and I looked up to discover it was my friend Lindsey. As fate would have it, she got on the same train as me, and in the same car. We were both heading back to Macerata to enjoy the last few days of our break there. We made it back through Bologna Centrale (much more easy to navigate when you aren’t freaking out that you are going to miss your train, but still a hassle) But on our train out of Bologna, we were in different cars. It was ok though, I read my book most of the way, and discovered I must have some sort of a gift for ending up on trains/busses with people that have really bad coughs… it’s a lovely addition to a long day of travel. I also got to watch the sunset (most of the way) over the mountains, and saw a small rainbow. We got into Civitanova, and our train to Macerata had been replaced by a bus. Goody. However, on the bus, we found one of our Italian Language teachers, well sort of, she teaches the level two class, I am in the level one class, and Lindsey is in level three. But we recognized each other and chatted on the bus ride. Small country, spontaneously finding two people you know in one day, in different cities than you live in…
So all in all, it was a lovely little trip, and now I am enjoying a little bit of me time, doing laundry, cleaning my room up, and going to edit photos like a madwoman!
Quick Little Story to Brighten your Day…
I took a little trip to a local coffee shop the other day, and I tried to order a nice warm cup of tea. Which would be “un tè caldo” in Italian. The woman behind the counter looked at me and asked, “Bianco?” Which means white… I assumed this meant she only had white teas available for hot tea today, which was fine so I said sure… and she poured me a nice, tall glass of warm milk. Which would be “latte caldo” I was not entirely sure what to do with myself at this point, except to take the milk that I had somehow mistakenly ordered, and sit in a corner to drink it…. Which is what I did. I have to say that on the list of things I was worried about messing up, that didn’t even register. Oh well… :)
