Sean in Bozen
15 June 2006

All my official stuff was done by Wednesday morning, so I've just been exploring and enjoying the town until work starts on Monday. This is a great town for exploring. On Wednesday, I managed to line up a place to live for the next month. It's in a student residence hall for a college for some Catholic order. I'll have my own bedroom, and I'll share a bathroom and kitchenette with one other guy. There's also supposed to be a larger kitchen on each floor where I can do some more serious cooking if I want. I'm moving in tomorrow. A month should be enough time for me to find something longer term (I hope!).

It's really hard to find housing in Bozen, I'm told. When I opened my bank account, the very friendly young banker and I talked a lot, and he explained that the city of Bozen had made it so financially advantageous for long-time natives of Bozen to buy real estate that it dried up a lot of the rental properties. The banker didn't explicitly say it, but I've heard from others that much more affluent northern Italians really look down the nose at poorer southern Italians, and I bet that Bozen's real estate deal for long-time natives of the area is just one of the many covert strategies for keeping the southerners out of the north.

I walked so much on Tuesday and Wednesday that my feet and legs were complaining loudly when I started walking this morning. Fortunately, the city of Bozen has bikes to rent for just 1 Euro for six hours. I've been biking all over the place today, finding all kinds of interesting places and locating some of the items I wanted to buy. I mentioned before that this city is bicycle heaven, and it's very true. The bridges, walls, streets, stoplights, and everything are all structured with bicycles in mind. There are always lots of people biking everywhere. I am very happy with this!

I'm warm and muggy here: it's 33C today, whatever that is in Fahrenheit (probably high 80's). The huge steep mountains are not far in any direction, but even those nearby mountains looked a little hazy in today's humidity.

I've been having the European-style breakfast at the hostel every morning. Lunch is usually a kind of warm sandwich on wonderful crusty bread with cheese and tomato. Dinner has usually been just pizza, but last night I had _excellent_ pizza with gorgonzola cheese, and beer. Foccacia is also readily available. I can't find a single place so far that sells Spaetzle, the cheesy southern German noodles that I love so much!

I made a good short-term friend at the hostel, a programmer from Germany. We had long talks in German over our breakfasts about politics, language, travel, and all sorts of things. He went back to Bavaria today. I love hostels for these interesting random contacts.

Here's one particular mental snapshot. Last evening, I was at the north end of the Walther von der Vogelweide Platz, the largest square in the old medieval section of town. I was facing south across the square. The sides of the square frame in a spectacular view straight ahead of the huge mountains, which are very close by across the river. The mountains are high and very steep like the Rockies, and the stone is red where it is not covered by the dark green trees; it is all lit up in the glow of the setting sun. To my right is a medieval Gothic church with multi-colored diamond patterns in the roof tiles. To the left side is an open-air cafe out in the square selling wine, coffee, and things. All around the edges of the square are old baroque-style rowhouses whose ground-level shops have closed for the evening. In the middle of the square, the statue of Walter von der Vogelweide looks down and presides in stony silence. Both Walter and I are facing south toward the jazz band which is playing on a temporary stage. There are rows of people in plastic chairs enjoying the jazz, whose sound robustly fills the whole square. I breathe the evening air which is starting to get cool with the setting sun.