Category Archives: Europe

Good Friday in Munich

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Our bad weather continued today.  Today was another cold (<10°C) and rainy day, actually rainier than yesterday.   We had gotten quite lucky with the weather on the Italian and Austrian segments of the trip.

Also, today was Good Friday.  In Bavaria, that means most places, including most museums and shops are closed.  Even some restaurants are closed.  Knowing this ahead of time, we decided today would be more relaxing, in advance of our flight home tomorrow.  Our original plan was to check out the Olympic Park (from the 1972 summer games), and the BMW museum, as they are close to each other.  However, with the cold, wind, and rain, we decided that walking around Olympic Park would not be a pleasant experience.  So we stayed in until lunchtime.  We went back to Rotkreutzplatz and found a restaurant open for lunch.  I got Wiener schnitzel, as I wanted it one more time before leaving.

We tried to visit a couple of museums after lunch; the Duetches Museum and the Oktoberfest and Beer museum.  The Duetches Museum looked really cool, a lot of science stuff, and I wish we had visited it on one of the days it was open.  However, both museums were closed.  So, we went back to the hotel, played cards and watched movies.  The hotel offers this English language movie channel called SkyTV.  However, for some reason, they mostly show straight to DVD movies.  But we don’t know German, so we watched mostly this channel and CNN England.  Last night they showed this Mandy Moore movie called “Love, Wedding, Marriage”.  I could not watch more than 30 minutes of it.  Abby looked it up; it got a 0 rating on Rotten Tomatoes- yes a zero!

We’ve still yet to watch an entire movie on this channel.  This afternoon we watched part of this Cinderella movie (also a straight to TV ABC Family movie), and some movie about ultimate fighting.  Neither of these movies was as bad as Love Wedding Marriage, but they were not great either.

I am okay with not doing much today.  There are some things I still wish to see in Munich, but none of our stays on this trip were long enough to do everything.  I did not expect that, and have no desire to wear myself out on a vacation.

One thing I will certainly remember about Munich is the amount of green space in the city.  The first place we went to on Tuesday was Nymphenburg Garden, which is huge.  Dotting the city landscape, even in the central part of the city, there are tons of gardens like Hofgarten.  Down by the river, which we finally saw today, there are also tons of gardens and green space.  I wonder how this came to be, and whether it was like this before World War II.

Reflecting on my time in Germany I observe that there are much fewer German flags here compared with the number of Italian flags in Italy.  I had previously heard that due to recent history Germans had been somewhat more hesitant to show National pride.  This I find to be a shame, especially considering that many of the people living here now were born after the end of World War II.  They really had nothing to do with any of these events, and I am sure that over 99% of them view what occurred with absolute horror- the way I did yesterday.  Since then, Germany has done well for itself.  They handled the cold war and unification with East Germany without the bloodshed that raged other Soviet Bloc countries in the 1990s.  Nowadays, they have a strong economy, which is kind of holding the European Union afloat.  From what I hear, they have also done a good job of achieving life-work balance.  If you ask me this is worthy of pride.  However, I realized two other things:  Italy was also on the wrong side of World War II (until September 1943).  In fact, given their weakness and side switching in both World Wars, they come off quite possibly as the lamest country of them all.  There were also more EU flags flying in Italy.  So, there is a strong possibility that the observed differences are mostly cultural.

The Dachau Concentration Camp

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Today was a rather somber day.  The weather kind of sucked, could, drizzly, and I doubt it got above 10°C.  We spent most of the day in Dachau at the concentration camp memorial and museum.  Dachau, which is less than half an hour from Munich, was the site of one of the largest concentration camps and the one that set the standard for many others.  Nazis would refer to it as the “Dachau spirit”, when demonstrating how other concentration camps should operate.

I did not expect to spend nearly as much time there as we ended up doing.  In fact, we ended up missing a meal because of that.  Maybe that was fitting for the experience of being at a concentration camp.  As we learned today, those detained in the concentration camps often experienced starvation.  The museum and audio guide had a lot of information.  It also included a detailed history of Adolf Hitler’s NAZI party, and a lot of videos and first hand accounts of the day-to-day life inside the concentration camps.

The overarching theme is just how horrific it was.  Those imprisoned- their life meant nothing, their suffering- nothing.  Many starved to death, were gassed, forced to work, and were mocked and humiliated on a regular basis.  I’d always known about this horrific event, but until today I had never seen actual images and videos of it.  This put it in a whole new perspective.  I was mostly in disbelief about how something so bad could happen.  And it happened in a first world country only several years before my Dad was born.  Maybe that is one reason we are so fascinated with NAZI history, it is not nearly as far removed from us in the early 21st Century United States as Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, etc.

Hitler and the Nazis are brought up and quoted a bit in causal conversation, in my opinion way too callously.  Sure, it may be possible to compare the Defense Authorization Act with some things that occurred in mid 1930s Germany (specifically granting the government the right to detain indefinitely without due process), but after viewing this I feel it is kind of disrespectful to those who actually experienced the holocaust.   We usually bring up Hitler and the Nazis to prove a point.  But, we can probably find a more respectful way to make our points about the political climate in the early 21st Century.

More thoughts ran through my head, as despite our overuse of NAZI comparisons, it is still a very interesting case study in how a major economy/ first world country could go down such an evil path, and so recently too.  The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany is almost always linked to the penalties and sanctions placed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War.  But, what really lead to World War I?  It seems less well known than WW II.  I am sure historians have good theories, but they are certainly less discussed in history class.  Also, were we (US and allies) the good guys in WW I?  After finally learning about Woodrow Wilson’s anti-German propaganda machine in the 1910s (no thanks to high school history class), I just don’t know anymore.  I think this is one reason people love to talk about World War II.  There is a very clear sense that we were the good guys, and NAZI Germany was the bad guys.  Very few wars are like this.  We try to romanticize past wars, especially the Civil War when you learn about it in Illinois, but further investigation shows that it was not nearly as clear-cut as the Land of Lincoln would like it to be.

Another thing that has pestered my in my head about Hitler is why he is always labeled a “right-wing” dictator.  Usually, this is done to contrast him with Communist dictators; Mao and Stalin.  There are important differences.  Most notably, Hitler’s Germany did not squash all corporate activity.  In fact, there were corporations who worked with the Reich.  However, the label is still misleading.  When translated into English, NAZI translates to “National Socialist Movement”.  In the U.S. socialism is considered left wing, at least on economic scale.  Also, many of the propaganda posters for the NAZI party I saw in the museum complained about the evils of greed and capitalism.  Rallying against “Jewish Capitalism” was seen in a lot of NAZI propaganda in advance of the 1932 elections.

I also learned that different groups of people were treated differently inside the camps.  For instance, Austrian nationals captured after the 1938 annexation of Austria were treated much better than Jews.  The more favored groups, while still having it rough, were not treated as rough, and had a higher survival rate.  Before today, I did not know that people were actually occasionally released from concentration camps.  This occurred mainly before the war.  And then there was a period of time in 1943 when they tried to improve conditions in the camps to increase survival rates to meet labor demand for the war effort.

I also did not know that corporations would pay the secret service for slave labor from these camps.  In fact, the German economy kind of became dependent on this labor, much in the same way the pre-civil war South was.  Overall, it was a learning day.  But, after all the walking, and the chilly weather, I was tired, so we did not do much else.

Exploring Munich

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I have now officially experienced a hangover in another continent.  I think I had about the equivalent of 10-12 beers but these metric units are confusing me at this point in time.  As a result, today got off to a slow start.  We went into the city center, which is about a 20-minute ride, to do some sightseeing.  But, we had to go home halfway through the afternoon to take a nap.  Hangovers do ruin days.

Munich is somewhat a different experience that the other cities visited.  In Rome, Florence, and Innsbruck, our hotels were in the middle of the city.  We took the subway in Rome a little bit, mainly to get around faster.  We took a tram in Florence to get to and from the rental car company.  In Innsbruck we walked everywhere besides the ski resorts.  However, in Munich, we are using public transit extensively.

Munich has four transit systems, the bus, the tram, the U-Train, and the S-Train (U stands for underground, S stands for suburban).  They are all integrated, and you can ride all of them on the same ticket/ day pass.  After taking a mid-day nap, we rode a tram to a Cajun restaurant for dinner, a U-train downtown, and then the S-train back to the tram home.  Overall, a good system.

Everything reminded me of Wisconsin in some way or another.  Okay, maybe not everything.  But, a lot of places I felt like I was in Milwaukee, due to fonts, letterings, street signs, etc.  My favorite place so far is the Viktualienmarkt, which feels like Summerfest to me, and Rotkreutzplatz, which is in the neighborhood of our hotel, maybe four stops east.  It had the feeling of a cool, kind of less touristy area of town.  Maybe Wicker Park without the hipsters.

A lot of people ride bicycles here.  The bike lane system is kind of different.  Most of them are kind of between the street and the sidewalk.  They are sort of separated from vehicular traffic.  They still seem to have to go up and down ramps in a manner similar to having to ride on the sidewalk.  I have yet to decide how I feel about this system.  Usually I like what I know better unless I hear or think of a good reason to feel differently.

The roads themselves, their size and such are most like home of any place we have visited so far.  Rome and Florence had a lot of very narrow roads, basically the size of an alleyway in Chicago.  But, they had a lot of pedestrian traffic, and people riding scooters, along with the occasional small car would come through.  The roads here, and the spacing of the city, and even the size of the cars feel a lot more like home.  Obviously, the cars here are still smaller, but they are not nearly as small as Rome, in aggregate.

Another thing I noticed about Munich and Innsbruck is the way they lock their bikes.  They seem a lot more trusting here.  I did not see any U-Locks.  Instead, they just tie a cord lock from the frame to the wheel, not even using a bike rack of any kind.  They don’t seem to be worried about people cutting the lock, or of other petty theft, like removing the front wheel or seat.  The only thing their locking methodology seems to prevent is someone literally hoping on the bike and riding away with it.

The highlight of the day was probably the street performers at night.  No offense to U.S. street performers, but they were just put to shame.  We saw two sets of street performers in the city center this evening.  One group had all kinds of objects on fire.  It included this girl, who hula-hooped, with a hula-hoop that had several fires lit on the outside of it.  She moved it up and down her body, without lighting her hair on fire!  We also saw a five piece band playing.  This band included a violin, bass, cello, piano, and accordion.  They played classical music, but kind of in a modern form, and the lead singer was very entertaining.  They were also dressed a lot nicer than U.S. street performers.  Overall, they were much better.  It felt like they were actually trying to bring enjoyment rather than shows us that they need help, which I found very refreshing.

The World’s Largest Beer Garden

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It always seems to be 2/3 to ¾ of the way through any trip that people inevitably begin to think about what awaits them back home.  It was actually the previous night when it started for us.  This was unfortunate, as I was really doing my best not to think about my problems including work throughout this entire trip.  People take vacations either to get away from their day-to-day lives for a while, or to see different places/ do different things.  This trip was kind of both for me.  I desperately needed time away from the office when this trip began, but it is also my first ever trip to Europe.

We checked out of the Weisses Kreuz and took a train to our final destination, Munich.  In Italy, we moved around a lot more.  Both the Weisses Kreuz and the Laimer Hof (our hotel in Munich) are four night stays for us.  This gives us a chance to relax for a bit rather than having to carry our luggage around daily.  Overall, I was impressed with the Weisses Kreuz.  One exception, though, were the pillows.  They were crappy, kind of lacked volume.  The pillows at Laimer Hof are much better. 

The Weisses Kreuz is actually a really old hotel.  Mozart actually stayed here when he was like only eight years old.  Thinking about this, I actually speculate as to whether or not he wrote his first symphony while he was unable to sleep due to the crappy pillows at this hotel.  The Laimer Hof has nicer pillow.  So, under my ridiculous theory, had Mozart’s family chose to visit Munich and stay at the Laimer Hof instead, he would possibly have never became a famous composer.  It is weird to think about, how sometimes little things like this make all the difference in the world, in the course of history.  What if the wind happened to be blowing in a different direction the day the volcanic ashes covered the Island of Crete, disrupting the Minoan civilization, paving the way for Mycenaean takeover, which eventually lead to Ancient Greece?  What if the Allied powers had chosen a different day in June 1944 to invade Normandy?  One that was less favorable?  All of this seems so minor when it happens, but ends up having profound implications on subsequent events, creating a world, and a history completely different from what would have been had they gone the other way.

With the desire to get my mind off of work and what awaits me back home, and back into vacation mode, we visited Hirschgarten, the world’s largest beer garden.  I don’t speak German, but from years of living in Wisconsin, I have become fluent in German beer.  I knew I wanted something sufficiently alcoholic but not too dark.  Of course, Hefeweizen is the answer!  I really enjoyed this beer.  In fact, I enjoyed it enough to order dinner here, and drink three liters of it.  Once it got dark we went back to the hotel, but the drinking did not stop.  The hotel staff served us beer downstairs.  It kind of felt like a normal night for me.  There was a computer in the downstairs room where they were serving the beer, with free Internet.  I logged into g-chat and talked to some people back home.  In the U.S. it was still the later part of a workday, on a Tuesday in fact, so my crazy party demeanor and random ridiculous questions may have seemed out of place to the people I was talking to. 

I also actually held a fairly productive conversation with some of the other hotel guests.  Mostly, I talked to some people from the other side of Germany, the Northwest part of the country.  Curious, and lacking inhibition, I asked them about how they viewed Greece.  From which I got a somewhat expected response.  But, I was kind of surprised they were not as angry as I thought they would be.  I am ALWAYS mad when I end up footing the bill for the irresponsibility of others; it forms the basis of my belief system when it comes to government.  So, I am glad there are no wars about this yet.

I also asked them what they thought about Bavaria, as it kind of has a separate identity from the rest of Germany.  Before this trip, I had been telling people that Munich is the “Denver and the Detroit” of Germany at the same time.  Denver, due to its general climate, with frequent abrupt weather changes due to it’s proximity to the mountains, as well as it’s status as kind of an island of liberalism (voting SDP) in a region considered the most conservative in the country (CDU dominance).  Detroit because of the BMW factory and headquarters.  But, the man I talked to actually equated Bavaria with Texas.  I guess Texas kind of does have it’s own identity separate from most of the U.S.  There are, of course, major differences.  They drink less beer in Texas, as there are numerous dry counties in Texas.  Also, Texas’s only liberal city, Austin, is nowhere near as large in size and scope as Munich.  That is the problem with analogies like this.  There will always be differences.  When someone asks me what Chicago neighborhood equates with Astoria, or Forest Hills (both in Queens), I am at a loss for words despite my knowledge of both New York and Chicago.  There simply is not an equivalent neighborhood.  That is why, in a way, we visit other places, on trips like the very one I am on right now.  The experience is different from what we know.

Stubai Glacier

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The main event today was skiing the Stubai Glacier.  This is one of nine ski resorts the City of Innsbruck offers free shuttles to for tourists.  Axamer Lizum, the resort we went to on Saturday is another.  This resort is actually on a glacier.  It peaks to 3.2 km (roughly 2 miles) above sea level.  The ski resort guarantees snow from October through June!  This seems impressive, especially since there are places in Colorado that boast peaks just as high, yet cannot boast snow for this large a part of the year.  In fact, I think most of the resorts there close by mid-April, if not earlier.

It took us a lot longer to get there from Innsbruck (about an hour), but I enjoyed the skiing here a lot more than Axamer Lizum.  First of all, Axamer Lizum is not for beginners.  Abby and I felt like the worst skiers there.  At Stubai Glacier I saw people of all ability levels.  Also, here I was able to do some trails at the intermediate level (Red).  In fact, that is what I mostly did.  So, I felt much more legit.  This was possibly related to the better snow conditions at higher altitudes.  The snow conditions did, however, deteriorate in mid-afternoon, as temperatures were well above freezing on most of the hill.  It got close to 70 in town, and I felt overheated on the ride home.

Overall, the whole experience was fun.  After skiing, we had 45 minutes to spare before the bus came to take us back to town.  We went to a bar to buy some soda, as we were thirsty.  As was the case at the other ski resort, there were people partying, having a good time, and listening to techno.  Then, they played a techno remix of Manfred Man’s hit song For You (from 1984).  It reminded me of Eric Pryd’s Call on Me, from several years back, which was a remix of the Steve Winwood song Valerie.  My trusted sources tell me that that song was quite huge in the London Club scene in the middle 2000s.

I thoroughly enjoyed this remix.  I think the Europeans do a good job of remixing old American music.  They periodically seem to do it with songs you would never think of making into a remix.  I mean, Steve Winwood, Manfred Mann.  Who thought of taking this song and turning it into a techno remix?  I mean, I could ponder a way to throw Metallica and Lady Gaga onto a Yanni track before I could ponder a remix of Steve Winwood or Manfred Mann.  But, they were good, real good, along with most of the other music I heard, both on this ski resort and the other one.

I could definitely see myself coming back here.  There really is no place in America like this.  It’s like the fictitious town in Hot Tub Time Machine.  We have ski resort towns in America, like Vail, Breckenridge, Steamboat, and Park City, but they are not nearly the size of Innsbruck, which has about 120,000 people.  Denver, Fort Collins, and Salt Lake City are bigger, but they are not nearly as close in proximity to the skiing, they are not ski towns.

Thinking of all of this European techno, specifically their producing quality remixed of American songs, naturally leads me to think of Flo-Rida.  A year and change ago (sometime in 2010), he released Sugar, which takes the tune from Eiffel 65’s 1999 hit song Blue (Ba ba di ba ba da).  Flo-Rida managed to spin this whole thing around.  Finally, an American creates a hit from a European track (Eiffel 65 is Italian), and Flo-Rida becomes a National Hero, well, at least to me.

We went out for Indian food tonight.  Abby found a place across the Inn River, meaning we got to see another part of town, kinda.  In the grand scheme of things, German food and Austrian food are similar.  So, it is probably a good idea to get something else as to not get burned out on this food before Munich.  I have no interest in trying Mexican food in Europe.  Maybe there are some places that are decent.  But, with Mexico borders the United States, and the US is currently experiencing a great migration of immigrants from Mexico.  So, I don’t see how the Mexican food here can be as good as it is in the US.  In fact, I imagine it to be a lot worse.  However, India is really nowhere near either county (USA or Austria), so it’s more worth a shot.  I did the Indian food here, but not as much as the Indian food in the U.S.  This could be due to the fact that the Indian food in the United States caters to our tastes.

As the day draws to a close, our last in Innsbruck, tow things are on my mind.

1.   What am I to expect from Munich, our next and final destination?  Tyroleans and Bavarians have to have some major cultural differences.  They fought each other repeatedly in the past, and have been declared part of two different countries fairly consistently throughout history.  What are these differences?  Will I end up experiencing them on this trip, or will I only be visiting places where these differences do not show up?

2.  Why the %&!# do I still have a lot of energy?  The story of my life.

Touring Innsbruck, Austria

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The weather was not quite as nice in the mountains this morning, so we took a day off from skiing.  Hopefully we’ll be rested for tomorrow- we plan to ski the Stubai Glacier, a place where it is possible to ski year round (although I don’t think many ski in the summer).

After sleeping in a bit, we hit up the Alpenverein Museum, which is a museum of mountain climbing I saw in an Innsbruck information packet.  This museum was great, and only 4 euro each.  We saw the complete history of mountaineering, including the tools people use to scale a mountain, how people map out mountain passes/routes/terrain, pictures people drew of mountains, stuff about mountain sickness (from high altitude), and stories and thoughts from mountain climbers themselves.

The thoughts got deep, as one mountaineer saw mountain climbing as a metaphor for overcoming our self-induced inhibitions in life, and others saw mountaineering to be associated with freedom in some other way.  However, the thing that stuck in my mind was the story of rope.  Specifically, the quality of rope was improved greatly in 1865, in response to four mountaineers falling to their death due to poor rope quality.  From a 21st Century point of view, it seem as though we should have been using much better rope all along, recognizing that human lives are at stake.  It brings up thoughts about the insurance industry charging inadequate rates in Florida prior to Hurricane Andrew, or the fact that the financial markets had to explode before they stopped leveraging 40:1.  Why are we so often collectively unable to recognize these risks until a disaster of some kind happens?

We went to lunch after the museum at a placed called Maria Van Bergund.  The food was great, but we had a strange encounter.  This woman sitting at the table next to next to ours was wasted (noon Sunday, and we were not sure what she was wasted on).  Abby noticed this first, but I thought it was no big deal, as I continued to share thoughts on mountaineering.  Then, she started asking me questions.  She spoke little to no English.  At first here somewhat less intoxicated friend helped her out (he knew English better).  Eventually, he left and she came over and sat at our table (to be in the sun).  Random people do talk to me a lot.  I feel like I am typically a welcoming person, and when I’m in a decent mood, I give off a fun and approachable vibe.  So, I try to have a conversation with her but I know very little German, so it’s hard.  I think Abby was nervous.  Eventually, she moved to another table, as she desired to sit in the sun and the sun/shade pattern advanced.  When she sat with a random old man, she got asked to leave the restaurant.  This did, however, spark up a pleasant conversation with a nice family from the UK.  Some of these events were strange, and I may have been uncomfortable, but I’d still rather stuff like this happen periodically and deal with the stress it causes than never have anything interesting happen.  Simply put, monotony would suck more than occasional stress, or drama.  I did not expect many encounters with random people in countries where I don’t speak the language, but the way I am, I don’t think I can avoid it, even here.

In the afternoon, we walked about 3 km, partially uphill to the Bergisel ski jump arena, where the 1964 and 1976 Olympic ski jump took place.  I was curious about how people watched this particular event.  It did not seem possible to me, but I think I was overestimating the spatial scale of the jump in my head.  I imagined what it was like for a ski jumper.  According to the info, once you start you accelerate to 90 km/hr in only 4 seconds!  Then, you take off.  You have a view of the whole city while in the air, as well as the entire crowd, and multiple mountain ranges.  Then, you have to land- how mind bottling!

Skiing Aximer Lizum

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Today we skied an Olympic ski run, at a resort called Axamer Lizum.  Both the 1964 and 1976 Olympics were held here.  Oddly enough, the 1976 Olympics were moved here from Denver because Colorado voted down a State bond issue referendum, making the financing of the games uncertain.

Skiing here is HARD!  The trails we did were all blue, which is the easiest here (red= medium and black= hard).  However, I was rust form having not skied much lately, and the conditions were kind of bad.  It’s almost April, what do you expect.  The snow is very wet, and got very clumpy, especially on the steeper parts of the hill.  Oh, and I had a screw up with the ski rentals.  They did not fit my boots to my bindings properly, and my right ski fell out every time I turned (left).  We had to trudge up a hill and take the ski lift down to the rental shop to get it fixed.  This wore me out, and wasted the good part of the ski day, morning, before the trails get clumpy from use.

It is hard to imagine, though, that skiing an Olympic course is 29,50 Euro, slightly less than the $45 it costs to ski Devil’s Head in Wisconsin.  They also gave us a free wiener schnitzel!  This was at a restaurant at the top of the mountain, with an amazing view of the town.  So, overall, the ski mountain was a great deal.  The rental company was not.  They did not even give us a discount for the mess up with the rentals.  But, I learned something.  This was the first time I ever saw a ski resort have multiple rental companies.  Usually, in the US, the ski resort just sells the rentals.  Here, there were multiple companies competing for our business.  In this case, we should not have gone to the first rental company we saw.  They have the least need to be good, as they can count on business from tourists that just go to the first place they see.  The others need to have a good reputation to get business, so they are a better bet.

For some reason I feel a bit closer to home here, which feels odd to me given that I am half Italian.  But, it’s just some little things.  Innsbruck has sushi, thai, and other food options that I don’t remember seeing in Italy.  The restaurants are open a bit earlier for dinner (around 6 PM), and it is less out of the ordinary to eat dinner at 7 or 7:30.  I also see pool, bowling, darts, and other activities I am used to seeing around.  I saw young people being rowdy both Friday night and Saturday night.

Tonight we stumbled upon a crazy acrobatics show outside the Golden Roof.  People were on stage in colored body suits, singing, banging on the drums, etc.  And then someone, head to toe in orange, tried to walk a tightrope across the street, from one building top to another.  I still have no idea why this show was happening, but it made the town feel a bit like the town in Hot Tub Time Machine, where people ski and party!

Also, everything is cheaper here.  We got gelato for 1,10 each.  It was never under 2 in Italy.  Beer is 2,10 and most other things are noticeably cheaper.  Most likely this is because Innsbruck is not much of a destination for people from other parts of the world.  But, sometimes I wonder if a cultural difference, or Italy’s current economic standing/ dire need for cash has anything to do with it.  Maybe this helps me explain the US a bit.  Could it be that Italians, in love with the extravagant, made New York expensive and extravagant as an image of their culture, while the Germans and Polish made Chicago and the Midwest cheaper and more practical in their image?

Train Ride from Florence to Innsubruck

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Today was mostly a travel day as we moved on from Tuscany and headed for Innsbruck.  It started with another phenomenal breakfast at Poggerino, but that now seems to feel like it happened like three days ago!  Ever notice how while on vacation, or during special events time feels like it is going faster while things are happening, but in retrospect more time seems to have gone by?  I’ve had times at work where I mistook a Tuesday lunch conversation for a Wednesday one, but the start of this trip feels like weeks ago.  Maybe it is that we perceive time in the present tense based on our awareness of time’s passing (i.e. inversely related to how involved we are in what we are doing), but in the past based on the quantity of memorable experiences in our lives.

The train rides started off kind of dull.  Florence to Bologna was like 80% under tunnels.  Bologna to Verona, at least until you approach Verona, is flat.  I saw irrigations and felt like I was in the Kansas of Italy.

After Verona things got interesting as we headed into the Italian Alps.  We kind of missed the Dolomites, but the mountains were quite nice.  Plus, the railroad tracks followed a river valley, so we got to see the scenery (as opposed to being under tunnels).  I read up a bit on Trento and Bolzano while we passed though this area.  It seems as though this is the outdoorsiest part of Italy.  There were bike trails (most likely the same one) along the river valley for much of the journey, and I saw plenty of riders.  Finally, we went thought the Brenner Pass, exiting Italy into Austria.

Innsbruck is exactly as I imagined it; an Austrian looking ski town.  The mountains came right up to the town and watch over it in all directions.  We could probably walk right up to one from the Weisses Kreuz, our hotel, which is right in the center of town.  There is a shopping district that seems to cater to both skiers and Austrian type people with bars and beer gardens.  Like I said, EXACTLY as I imagined.

We had a nice dinner at Ottoburg, at the recommendation of the hotel desk.  There, I decided to dive right into the local culture, and got the most traditional Austrian dish that did not seem scary.  It was phenomenal.  While there, we encountered a group of five guys in their 20s.  It was crazy because, other than speaking German, they looked and acted exactly like you’d expect a group like this in America.  Oh, except they were at a fancy restaurant together.   Groups of guys, for one reason or another, don’t do that in America.  But, their behavior, their interaction indicates one of two things; there really is not that much different amongst different types of people, or that the German influence has manifested itself in the heavily German Midwest (especially WI and NE) in the form of drunken Friday nights.  I’ll let you be the judge, but either way I had my first conversation with completely random people in Europe- awesome!

My Last Day in Italy

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It was our only full day in Tuscany, and our last full day in Italy.  Tomorrow, we’ll take the train straight to Innsbruck, Austria.  I already begin to wonder if I have seen enough of Italy.  However, John, the guy, one of the organizers of this B&B informed us that our train route tomorrow will go through the Dolomites north of Verona, so I guess I will see more of Italy.

Before this trip I knew I wanted to make Italy a part of this trip.  My family heritage is 50% Italian, and I had always considered that a part of who I am.  Mostly, to explain my lack of patience sometimes I would say: “I have about the level of patience you’d expect from an Italian-American New Yorker”.  However, I’d never known about the culture, beyond the basics.  Now, I kind of understand, or feel like I understand it more.  From now on, those maps of Italy put onto pizza boxes in America will mean more to me.

Today we went to the town of Siena, after an amazing breakfast cooked by the staff here at Poggerino.  Siena, like Florence, “grew up”, in the Middle Ages.  For a few centuries (1000 to 1400-ish), these cities were constantly in conflict with each other over supremacy and influence in the region.  Florence, more or less, eventually won this battle, and Siena was “vanquished” to smaller status (still true today).  This was around the time the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance.   It is probably no coincidence that Florence became the city in Italy most associated with the Renaissance, attracting thinkers/inventors from all over Europe.

In a way every place we visited has an associated time period.  Rome- the Roman Empire, Siena- The Middle Ages, Florence- The Renaissance, The Tuscan Vineyards- now, as it is currently one of the wealthiest and best known parts of Italy.  So, given the small allocation of time, I think I did well and learned a lot about Italian culture and history, about my history in a way.

Finally, I was wayyy excited to have purchased salami, cheese, bread, soda, and an orange from a local shop in Radda, and eaten at home.  It was only 8,64 Euro, so we saved between 25 and 50 (Euro), and we ate at 6 PM (after all, we are American), and did not have to drive unlit roads in rough terrain at night like last night.

Staying at home allowed us to witness a casual fire around 8 PM.  This week’s weather has been warm and dry.  I’ve already gone though all of the short-sleeved shirts I brought.  Today though was windier, making it seem like textbook wildfire weather.  This fire was actually on Poggerino property.  It appeared as though the wind ignited a fire among a pile of dry leaves and wood pieces.  We were worried, and even tried to contact the proprietors of this establishment.  But, noting came of it, and the fire died around 10 PM, when the wind calmed down.  Maybe I am a stupid city slicker.  Or, maybe we got lucky and I need to learn to be more self-sufficient.

Relaxing in Italy’s Wine Country

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Today we left Florence for Chianti.  To get to our winery/ bed and breakfast we needed to rent a car.  Since driving in downtown Florence is restricted, we had to take the T1 tram to the Hertz rent-a-car.  The T1 tram is the Brown line of Italy, slow and seems to have too many unnecessary turns.  On top of that, it was kind of hard to get tickets.  We spent ten minutes just looking for a place to buy them- and eventually bought them at a newspaper stand.

The drive to Poggerino B&B, near Radda in Chianti took about an hour.  We took the scenic route, which had some great views.  We actually climbed to near the top of the mountain (both in Palzzano and near the B&B).  After today, I feel like I have seen many different parts of Italy; Rome, a big city, Florence, a more moderate sized city, and the Tuscan countryside, with small towns and rural areas.

Overall, today was a more relaxing day.  Abby was a bit stressed driving in Florence, but after that it was relaxing.  People often forget to relax on trips.  They often forget that a vacation …well… is a vacation.  I find that Americans see vacations as being in two groups

1.  Vacations to relax, to places like beaches, or even to stay home

2.  Vacations to travel, see places, and do things, often with ambitious itinerary

When a vacation belongs to category two, people can sometimes return more worn out then when they left.  We have a lot to see on this trip, and had done a lot the last few days.  So, today it was time to relax a bit, enjoy the weather, the sun, and the view (which is really nice).

The only thing we did do was go into town (Radda) for lunch.  We also went out for dinner.  Lunch was unexpectedly the best meal I’d had so far.  It was this flat pasta with salami ragu.  A good portion too.  American portion sizes have become ridiculous, and not only at the Cheesecake Factory.  Some places in the city have scaled back to more reasonable sizes.  Buona Terra, our favorite Italian place is not too bad.  But, still you’re far more likely to get way too much food than not enough.