We left at 11:15 to walk down to Bolzano. First we walked down to the village of San Genesio and then we followed a trail through the woods over to a ravine of a castle, Cadstle Sarentino. It should have been all downhill, but we got on the wrong track for a bit and we had to backtrack uphill. I definitely wasn't in the mood for uphill today. After we got near the castle, the trail ended and we just walked down the road to the bus stop at the bottom of the cable car. Boy was it steep, one of the steepest roads I've ever walked down. My knees really felt it.
We got to the bus about 1:30 and we tried to buy a bus ticket at the cable car office but it was closed. There wasn't anywhere else around to buy a ticket, and we knew the bus driver wouldn't sell them. About 5 minutes after we got to the bus stop a bus came along, so we got on it and asked the bus driver if he knew where we could buy a ticket. He said no, and seemed like he was telling us we had to get off the bus, so I asked if we could ride to town and buy one there and give it to him. I'm not sure he understood me, but he acted as if it was okay for us to stay on the bus. Then an older woman on the bus who spoke some English told us she had a bus ticket with 2 punches left on it and we could buy it for 1.87 euros. I was so happy to take the ticket, and we gave her 2 euros. I went up to the ticket machine on the bus and punched in the two rides. She was so nice, and she even tried to give us.13 euros back, and we told her to keep the change. Everyone is always so nice to us and tries to to help us even if we can't speak their language.
It is only a 15 minute ride into town from the cable car bus station, and the first thing we did was buy 2 bus tickets each -one to come back to San Genesio at 5:10 PM today, and one to get us into Bolzano when we take the cable car down on Monday morning.
Then we started walking around town. We bought a few more groceries at the Spar grocery store (they are all over Scotland and Europe) and then we got a piece of pizza for lunch. We had about 3 hours to wait for our bus, so we just walked all around Bolzano which is a nice little town.
We got the bus at 5:10 and it took about 20 minutes to drive up to San Genesio. The bus went very fast on a very winding road up through the hills. Sometimes it was just a steep drop-off on the outside of the road, but it was a neat ride looking down on the vineyards all around the hills and down in the town. This place is surrounded by vineyards and they even use the open spaces in tthe town for growing grapes. They also have lots of apple trees. They prune them so they are sort of small with narrow branches, but they have lots and lots of apples on them.
We walked back to the apartment from the bus stop in San Genesio and we got back around 6PM. It was nice to just relax - shower, do notes, fix the patches on my backpack, drink wine and have pasta, hamburg and salad for dinner.
After dinner we decided to turn on the TV, even if there were no English language programs. We watched the movie "Stargate" (dubbed in Italian) for awhile, and then Shari found a station playing Law and Order: Special Victims. Regular Law and Order is my favorite show, and one of Shari's too, and we both like the Special Victims shows, so we watched it for about 45 minutes. It was so weird to watch American TV shows dubbed in other languages. I certainl;y wouldn't want to watch dubbed TV very often, but it must not bother them in Europe because they play a lot of American TV shows over here. I finally went to bed about 10:45, and Shari stayed out on the sofa watching more TV.
9/21: What a beautiful day! The weather here is just unbelievable. It's just like one of the most gorgeous fall days back home - warm, sunny, breezy. We left at 9:30 to walk up into the hills to see the festival that takes place once a year in an area called Salten. It took about 45 minutes to walk to Tomanegger, where a lot of people parked their cars who were going to the festival. There were about 150 cars there on our way up at 10:15 AM, and probably 700 or800 there on our way down about 2:30 PM.
It took about 20 minutes more of walking uphill to get to the first fetival station. They have ten different areas up in the hills where they serve food,wine and beer. They have cooking and serving areas, and lots of tables and benches set up at each station. They serve a variety of food at each station, but each area has its own specialty - noodles, dumplings, schnitzel, grilled sausages, beef or ham, etc. They also have different kinds of music in each area - an accoridan player, a band, guitar players. There were cows, dogs and horses wandering around, and lots of people of all ages. The horses here are a beautiful tan color with a blonde mane.They are called Haflinger, and they are native to the South Tyrol area. They also had some guys going station to staion with bullwhips, who put on a little show with the whips (which sound like gun shots when they are whirled around).
I took advantage of a lot of the food, but it was a challenge to figure out what the different dishes were on the menues. I think Shari and I were the only English speaking people up there. We did find a few people who spoke a litle bit of English who helped us order the dishes we wanted. Our first taste treat was Zwoa Kasknedl in Zerlossener Butter mit Solet/Canederli al Formaggio.It was sort of a bread, eggs, herbs, cheese and butter dumpling served with a small side salad. Next was Wienersschnitzl mit Erdepflsotel - breaded veal cutlet served with a sort of German potato salad, which I enjoyed with a beer. Next was a dessert, Straubin mit Grantnmarmelade, a sort of fried dough sprinkled with powdered sugar with a spoonful of red currant jam on top. We ate at three different stations, and it was fun walking from place to place looking at the people and animals. Each station was about a ten minute walk from another station and we stayed up in the hills wandering and eating until about 2PM.
We got back to the apartment shortly after 3 and I took a short nap and then sat on the balcony and read my book for a while. It's hard for me to remember we are in Italy. It is much more like Austria or Switzerland here. Most of the people speak Swiss German in this area rather than Italian, so the greeting is Gruss Gott instead of Buongiorno. I will be sorry to leave such a beautiful place tomorrow, but we still have a lot of Italy left to see.
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