Rumble: On the Road Again.

Enough of the world problems, holiday time! Today we drove from Belgium to North Italy for our skiing holiday.

Travelling is always adventure, no matter how much we travel, would you not agree? There are probably few who travel more than I do, being home for less than one month per year. And still I enjoy every moment of it. And still I get the butterflies in my stomach each time I close the door behind me, and take a step... A step on the Road to the Horizon.

Our home for the next week:


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Rumble: An Un-natural Mix: German and Italian...

How does the joke go again? Heaven is where the police men are English, the lovers are Italian, the car makers are German, the cook is French..
And hell is... (ok, will not tell the 2nd part of the joke as I do not want to insult any nationalities...)

Still, you will agree with me that the combination of Italian and German (well... Austrian) in South Tyrol is rather un-natural. Italian always being associated with the frivolous, and German with strictness... Or maybe it is a natural match, as opposites often attract.

Whatever.. It makes their roadsigns a mess.. And it upsets the lady in my GPS, as she only knows the Italian names of the towns. :-)

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Rumble: Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

You might think this is silly, but I am fascinated about the barns which dot this landscape.
You find them everywhere, even in the most remote mountain passes. Just standing in the field. Looking at the structure of the wood, the way the tiling is done, they have been standing there for decades.

The barns are used to stow hay and tools, so the farmer does not have to haul everything to and fro the farm. They are usually built

in two storeys. They hay is stuffed under the roof, so it can not get wet once the land is flooded by the melting snow. The tools are stowed below. Often they also have a space for cattle to shelter from bad weather.

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Rumble: Suspicious Food

When skiing today, we had lunch up on the mountain. The bill said we had two versions of "Tageshit"...
"Tage" means "Day". "Shit" is universal, I guess.

So had we just eaten two versions of the "Shit of the Day" ?

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Rumble: King Laurin and his Rose Garden

One of the sagas from this region explains why the Rosengarten ("Rose Garden"), an imposing Dolomite chain which dominates the scenery to the west of Bolzano, glows pink at dusk.

Once-upon-a-time, there was a magnificent rose garden high among the grey rocks, which belonged to the mighty dwarf King Laurin. He owned immense riches, but still his rose garden was the most dearest of his treasures. King Laurin protected it with golden thread of silk and anyone who touched even a single rose, could count on a punishment beyond imagination.

King Laurin fell hopelessly in love with a princess called Similde, so much that he abducted her. When her father's soldiers came to rescue her, Laurin camouflaged himself and hid among the roses, where he thought to be invisible. In vain, though, as the knights discovered his whereabouts and trampled all the roses to catch him. Led into captivity, King Laurin, in a rage over his fate, turned and put a curse on the rose garden; "Neither by day nor by night would human eyes ever again behold its beauty".

However, he forgot dusk, which is why, even up to today, the rocks glow pink as the roses blossom in the glow of the rising or setting sun.

Source: Rosengarten-Latemar

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Rumble: South Tyrol. Wars and Skiing...

The area we are visiting now, is South Tyrol. In German: Südtirol. In Italian: Alto Adige, Sudtirolo or Sud Tirolo. Officially, it is called the "Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen".
It lays south of the Alps, and is a part of Italy, even though everyone here has German as their mother tongue. They must be the only Italians who greet you, not with "Buongiorno", but with "Gruessgott" (translated:"Greet God"), just like in Austria.

It is a piece of land which the Italians nicked from Austria during World War I. This makes interesting history.

When Austria-Hungary, in 1914, declared war against Serbia, thus starting World War I, Italy remained neutral at first, but was soon dragged into the turmoil. The front line followed mostly the then Austrian-Italian border, which ran right through the highest mountains of the Alps. The ensuing front became known as the "War in ice and snow", as troops occupied the highest mountains and glaciers all year long. Twelve metres (40 feet) of snow were a usual occurrence during the winter of 1915–1916 and tens of thousands of soldiers disappeared in avalanches. The remains of these soldiers are still being uncovered today. The Italian "Alpinis", as well as their Austrian counterparts ("Kaiserjäger", "Standschützen" and "Landesschützen") occupied every hill and mountain top and began to carve whole cities out of the rocks. They even drilled tunnels and living quarters deep into the ice of glaciers. Guns were dragged by hundreds of troops on mountains up to 3 890 m (12,760 feet) high. Streets, cable cars, mountain railways and walkways through the steepest of walls were built.

Whoever had occupied the higher ground first was almost impossible to dislodge, so both sides turned to drilling tunnels under mountain peaks, filling them up with explosives and then detonating the whole mountain to pieces, including its defenders.

After the Austrian defeat in 1918, the Southern part of the Austrian province of Tyrol was attached to Italy, even though it was mostly inhabited by ethnic Germans, Ladins (that is Ladins, not Latins nor Latinos!) and only had a small Italian minority: South Tyrol.

Today, we did not mind the violent history. We just... skied! With the hope of not tripping over a frozen body of a soldier from the first World War. Or worse: being chased by a guy who did not know the first World War was over yet! Here are my girls this morning:

Map and history source: Wikipedia on South Tyrol

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Rumble: And now for something different...

Not everything can be about climate changes, developing countries and other depressing stuff...

It is amazing what travel does.. I thought not to post while I was on skiing holiday, but traveling brings inspiration. New places, unfamiliar faces, new stories... When we left home yesterday morning, the scenery looked like the picture on the left..

And just a few hours traveling, the scenery completely changed. Life is different. But nature is just as beautiful. I love the mountains. South Tirol in the North of Italy, the Dolomiti... This is what we looked at today...

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