Browsing Bozen/Bolzano

Hi All!

Thought it was time for an update! I only have a couple of days left here in Italy before I'm back in London... wanted to fill you in at least once mid-trip.

It's been really great staying with Magdalena and her family. Magdalena is staying here until she does an exam sometime in November... she keeps a pretty good study schedule in the mornings, which has allowed me to sleep in and look for jobs. In the afternoons we've been zipping about all over, doing relaxing, outdoorsy or touristy stuff.

The trip over was a bit of a nightmare! As usual, I didn't sleep before I left (I *must* ditch that habit). I had to leave home at 3am and catch 2 busses, then caught a train at 4:30 am to get to Stansted for a 7am flight. As a consequence I was amazingly tired, and really quite kooky in the airport and on the plane... ended up chatting to many randoms! Upon arriving I caught another bus, then a train to Bolzano. Travelling time all in all was nearly 12 hours!

Magdalena met me in the train station, and it took about 20 minutes to walk to her house. After ditching my bags we went and sat overlooking a vineyard and started with a great chat. I slept * really* well that night and had a Magdalena coffee waiting for me in the morning :-)

Once I was up and breakfast was over (err it takes a while, I get fed really well here) we went on a bike ride to the Montigglerseen. It was about a 3 hour ride (ouch!) up to some lakes in the woods. We were planning to swim, but it ended up raining! It was really relaxing, except for the concentration required to stay on the bike, and the concentration lost in keeping muscles working that I never knew I had!

After Tuesday's half ride in the light rain, we planned to do indoor stuff on Wednesday. In the afternoon we drove to Merano (about 1/2 hr from here), and went to the "Touriseum" museum. It's all about how Südtirol has changed over the years to accept tourists, and due to tourist influence. It was quite interesting, especially when the flip-side of the coin was shown in interviews with the locals working in pubs and guesthouses, and their children. The museum is in Castle Trautmannsdorff, which was quite interesting in itself, but we didn't have time to check out all of the part about the building of the castle. We did spend quite a bit of time outdoors, looking around the adjoining botanic gardens - this really is a fertile region and I was able to spot a few Aussie plants (or ones I had in my garden at home, I suppose) around the place.

After returning from Merano, we waited for some of Magdalena's friends to arrive for dinner at 8. She selected some friends that spoke English well - it was nice to be introduced to more South Tyrolians and gave her a good excuse to catch up with friends she hadn't seen in quite a while! Gundi (Magdalena's ex-London flatmate) joined us later on as well. She and Magdalena tried to do a walk from Bolzano to Verona (err it's a scarily long distance) and made it slighly more than half way after a week of hiking - so I had a chance to speak to them both about the experience and tell them how mad they were! Gundi returns to London to do a masters this year, so will be nice to catch up and practice my Deutsch now and then!

We woke up late on Thursday after the dinner. As Magdalena rushed Gundi to the train station and went to work in a casual once-a-week cinema job, I took off to wander around the city. I sat and read listening to traditional buskers, took photos of the town, and then wandered up to Schloss Runkelstein, which is an interesting castle with tons of wall paintings. Unfortunately there was no English guided tour, as Magdalena mentioned that they tell tons of interesting stories about the paintings.

I walked back to the town centre, and after grabbing a coffee I went to see "Ötzi" the bronze-age iceman at the Archeological museum. The naturally preserved mummy was found in the Ötztaler Alpen (between Italy and Austria) in 1991, and ended up in Bozen after Italy won the "it should be kept in our country" fight. There was no English writing on exhibits, but the audioguide was quite complete. I never realised how much slower it was to see a museum using and audioguide only! Interesting stuff - it's quite rare to see artefacts as if coming straight from Jean Auel's Ayla or Jondalar! I went back to Magdalena's house for dinner, and had a meal just with her parents and godmother... After meeting her parents Adolf and Karen while half asleep and crazy on Monday, I think I was able to appear semi-sane to her godmother...!!

Friday was the day we planned to go crazy at night. We had an easy morning (Although I actually got up earlier than Magdalena!), then went for a walk in Jenesien. We took some books, and sat reading for over an hour overlooking mountains and trees, with cows clanking their bells as they walked around us. The hotel at the top where we grabbed a coffee was called "Edelweiss"... couldn't remember enough of the song to give Magdalena a complete rendition though.

That night we had excellent traditional food and micro-brewrey beer in Hopfen & Co and then drove to Brixen. We went into a club called "Max" at around 12, but it wasn't until 1am that people started dancing. We pretty much danced straight through till 4, which was excellent! The music was OK, twas a shame that the upstairs part (the "Jukebox") was closed though.

Today has been a long day - After 4 1/2 hours sleep I dragged myself out of bed... I'd promised to cook Magdalena and her parents some Chinese for dinner. This was a little challenging, as there's barely any chinese ingredients in Bolzano, the shops close at 12:30-ish on Saturday, and I'd have to speak Italian or German!!! The last point wasn't much of a problem... I'd been bugging Magdalena all week about learning German - and I quite like to talk with my hands if my basic German/Italian fails! So I managed to get enough of the ingredients I was after (including the *required* Shao Xing rice wine and Sesamöl ;-p ) and whipped up a marinade. In the afternoon we went for a walk to Santa Maddalena (in italiano, Sankt Magdalena auf Deutsch). I haven't worked out if Magdalena is named after a hill... ?!?! It is just around the corner from her house, and after meeting her parents... well *nothing* would surprise me! Haha j/k all is well as they seemed to really like my cooking! After dinner we strolled down to the centre of town to go to a Bond festival at a fancy pub, but it turned out it was invitation only! We did stumble on a celebration of the city fruit market...!!! Which was excellent, except for the part where Magdalena's parents bought me Oysters! Of course the oysters weren't the problem, just the südtirolians buying them for me purely to watch and state "eew how can you eat that!" :-) haha.

So tomorrow! My last full day. We're getting up early (arghh at 7am - 6 hrs sleep!) and hiking for around 8 hours in the Sarental region. Supposedly we'll get quite high. I'm really looking forward to it!

Off to bed. Piccies will follow soon. Love you all!

Posted by Sam at September 18, 2004 11:51 PM