Sean in Bozen
9 July 2006

Well, I just got back from a soooo-per weekend with Paolo and Stefan. If you want to find the town where we went, it's called Carbonara, and it's about 45km east of Trentino/Trient/Trent, if I remember right (altho that distance is as the car goes down the extremely windy road, not a straight line!).

Friday, they picked me up at Eurac. First we went by the closter to see if I could live there, but we weren't able to talk with anyone. Then we drove down the Autostrada (just like an interstate highway) to Trient. It was rainy, and there was a lot of traffic on the road as we made our way south down the valley. We got off the Autostrada and went on very windy roads way, way up into the mountains. The mountains are very steep and the valleys are very narrow.

The house is an Austrian-looking three-story house with shutters. It was pitch black when we went in, but when they opened the shutters, light flooded in. There were ragged bits of clouds drifting over the mountains. Paolo talked with his cousin who lives next door. Paolo says he is probably related to about everyone in Carbonara.

I had brought a bottle of half-decent wine. They went "Oooo!" enthusiastically when they saw what kind it was; it's a local red wine from here in South Tyrol. I lucked out, because I know nothing about the local wines and just took a stab in the dark when I bought it. We had a before-dinner aperitif.

We went to a restaurant in a town whose name was Folgeria or something like it. I had green spaetzle (containing spinach) and grilled vegetables. Very tasty. Then we went to a little pub and had some schnapps (which does not mean "peppermint schnapps" here; schnapps is a broad term for many kinds of distilled alcohol drinks). It was quite late by now.

Two things about Folgeria. One was that there was a red-white-red Austrian flag hanging over the street at one point. Paolo and Stefan reacted to it. They said the Italians in Bozen would be mad if you did that there. (I could imagine a similar reaction if someone raised a Mexican flag in Arizona or southern California or any other part of what used to be the northern half of Mexico; in both cases, the fact that the land was grabbed by force stays a sore spot for a _long_ time. The U.S. was very alarmed, with good reason, when Hitler offered to give Arizona and New Mexico back to Mexico, if Mexico would side with Germany in WWII.)

Another thing which struck me was how German/Austrian some of the people looked (like our waitress), even tho they spoke Italian and little or no German.

Then we went back to their house and went to sleep. I was just about falling asleep on my feet at this point.

Saturday, I had no idea what time it was when I woke up, because they close all the shutters for the night. It was pushing 9:00 already. They made a breakfast of bread, butter, marmelade, a boiled egg in an egg cup, muesli, and yogurt. Paolo had peanut butter on his bread; I asked, and they said it is not at all a common item here; it's just a quirk of Paolo's. This jives with what other people have told me, that peanut butter is really a specifically American food. Paolo is very international in his outlook; he lived in China for a while, so it doesn't surprise me that he likes foods which aren't necessarily common here.

Then we got our backpacks together and hiked to the lake. It was maybe an hour hike thru very picturesque alpine land on a well-maintained public trail. It looked like it might turn to rain, so Paolo went back to get the car and drive it to the lake while Stefan and I walked on. Stefan is a gardener, and he knows the names of all the plants, both in German and in Latin.

We just hung out at the lake for a long time. Paolo and I went down to go swimming. We decided to swim across the lake. It looked like an easy swim to me; I would swim laps for a half an hour at the YMCA back in America. We swam out far away from where your feet can touch the bottom. I started to be surprised at how fast I was getting tired. Was I that badly out of shape? I didn't want to admit that I couldn't make it across that lake, so I went on. A little bit later, I was having trouble catching my breath. I am never scared in deep water, because I trust my swimming ability, but I started to be concerned. Finally, I thought, to hell with pride, I am not going to let myself drown here. I told Paolo I was going to go back. It seemed to take forever to get back to shore, and I felt like I was suffocating. I finally got back to where I could stand on the bottom, almost to shore, and stood there and breathed heavily for several minutes.

Finally I realized what was going on. We were 1300 m up in the mountains (around 4200 feet), which is almost as high as Denver. Lansdowne back home is just 40 feet above sea level, and even Bozen is just at 262 m. Now the air was thin and I was simply not getting enough oxygen. Needless to say, I did not try to swim across the lake again.

We bummed around for a long time. We had a picnic lunch. We made comments about the hunky guy laying on his beachtowel who kept making out with his girlfriend; they were kissing and groping heavily enough to be skirting the edges of indecency. Then it started to rain, and we walked around the back side of the lake on a nice trail under the trees to a little restaurant where they had cappucino and I had iced tea (I had sort of bowed to peer pressure and started drinking cappucino here, but it was making me so nervous and panicky that I've stopped). Then we walked up the hill to the car, and drove around.

We went to a grocery store to buy supplies, and I finally found black shoe polish, which I've been looking for. I picked up a fig, and Stefan told me I shouldn't do that without a plastic glove. We do that in America for baked things, but they do it here for vegetables too.

We drove around more. At one point, Stefan zoomed down a rare straight stretch of road, and Paolo cried out for him to slow down (sounds familiar, partners criticzing each others' driving, hmm?). We wanted to go to something called Werk Gschwinde, but it closed at 18:00, and we would not have been able to get up there in time.

So, we went back to the house, and they made dinner. They made homemade pizza, and it was gooooooood. The toppings were green olives and capers. We finished the bottle of wine I brought, and started another. After dinner, we talked for a long time until we were all nodding off to sleep. There were spots where I had missed putting suntan lotion, so I was badly sunburned in those spots.

Sunday, it was once again sunny early. After breakfast, we went up to Werk Gschwinde. Imagine something built in a very high place like the Eagle Nest (a very high mountain lodge near Salzburg, built as a birthday present for Hitler; Dennis and I went there in 2002.). However, this was an old Austrian army post from World War I. This spot was right on the old border between Austria and Italy (now deep within Italy, of course). It was this huge, mostly underground complex, tunneled into the solid rock. It took a long time to walk thru all the parts of it and read all the historical signs and look at all the exhibits. It was quite chilly and damp in parts of it. Very interesting. I can't imagine how awful it must have been to be stationed there. I can't imagine having a war in those huge steep mountains, but they certainly did, even in winter. We could see Carbonara off in the distance, and Paolo said that his grandparents had been evacuated and had to go up to a refugee camp near Salzburg.

Then we went up on top of the roof and had a picnic lunch at the tables there. It was an amazing view like the Eagle's Nest. We walked around some, and we saw a couple of holes in the ground which were where bombs from airplanes had exploded.

Then we went down to the lake. We parked and walked way down the hill to the lake. Of course, it started raining at once (just a few drops, but it looked like it was going to pour). So we walked all the way back up to the car. Of course, it stopped raining and the sun came back out. We had gelate. Then we decided to give the lake another try. We went back down and stayed for a few hours. We got a spot near a tree where I could be in the shade but Paolo and Stefan could be in the sun. I read Stefan's book (in German) about gay male bear culture.

Around 5:30, we went back to the house, and they made noodles with pesto (yum!). Then we packed up and started the drive home. We listened to German disco music from the 80's; it was corny and overly sweet, and I liked it a lot. We wound our way down, down, down to Trent. Then we got on the Autostrada and came back to Bozen. They dropped me off.