Italy’s slice of Austria

We woke the next morning to scenery of the eastern Italian Alps, or more specifically the Dolomites. They are hugely towering, craggy mountains, - a UNESCO World Heritage site. They are decorated with rocky scree slopes, ash, fur and spruce trees, alpine meadows, beautiful farmhouses and barns in a germanic building style.

Our parking spot looked over what was an ancient lake, now a swampy grassland and millions of little frogs! The frogs were all over the tarmac, and grass, jumping around, seemingly not knowing where they belonged. The girls set out to rescue as many as they could, releasing them beyond a wall that looked as though it was supposed to prevent the wildlife from getting on the road, but was a death trap to the little frogs trying to get over to the swamp. I have no idea how they all got there near the road so far from water. The poor little things! After an hour or so of frog rescueing we walked down a walkway to the pathway which lead to what was once an island where there are some ancient ruins still visable. For centuries the island was home to many different people groups, and even saw the Venetian fleet crossing the alpine lake in an amazing feet of cleverness, engineering the boats to travel on land and then across the lake to reach Milan, who they were at war with in the 1400’s. Sadly the lake was accidently drained in the 1950’s by a hydraulic tunnel being built, and the lake has never recovered. But it has become home to many species of plants and wildlife - like the massive snails we enjoyed watching on the walk, and the miriad of different insects we came across.

One of Fern's snails that she rescued off the bike path.

We drove on through the day to Bolzano, and then up to a little village closer to the mountain range called Wehnsnofen. Poor old Poupe found this drive rather exhausting and kept on over heating on the steep road. So we ended up stopping in a tunnel and another stop further up so the engine would cool down. We finally made it to the village and were pleasantly surprised to see the more Germanic style buildings; all double story with wide roofs and wooden eaves rather than the stone and stucco more common in the rest of Itay. We are still in Italy, but German is the most widely spoken language here and the town doesn’t really look like an Italian own at all. Apparently after the war (maybe the first?) the UN decided to give this piece of Austria to Italy, which is why it looks like Austria I suppose.

That evening as Josh had just put the dinner on the table we heard some music coming from the street up ahead, so we all jumped out of the camper and ran up the street to join the other people watching as a brass band in historic costume marched up the street. (Up is truly the right word as it was a very steep street and they all did well to keep blowing on their instruments in time and keep marching up the road!)

They were a very good band, and at the end of the road we all went into a concert hall and they gave the sadly few people in the audience a wonderful variety of music to enjoy. That was a lovely spontaneous treat!

The brass band concert with everybody in traditional dress. They had two pretty young girls sitting at the edge of the stage holding flowers, and were there for looks only as they didn't play an instrument. I thought that was kind of funny!

That night ended up being quite eventful as there was a massive thunder storm as we left the concert and we came back to discover the campervan leaking in a few different spots and so many times during the night (and the next!) we were up to monitor the steady drips. But the next day arrived sunny and clear and we took a gondola ride up above the snow level to experience the exquisite views and a hike around the mountain.

The excited girls on the gondola

There was a beautiful statue of an eagle on the rocky outcrop here. It was so massive! Hard to tell from the photo.

I was so thrilled to find many varieties of flowers I hadn’t seen yet and managed to slow down our hike considerably because of taking so many photos of the beautiful creations. Up there it looks as though spring had only just arrived. It must be such a short warm season. It felt wonderful to be out in the crisp clean air and to be in the mountains again. It was the closest to feeling like New Zealand so far, although from almost anywhere on the mountain we could hear the bells ringing from around the necks of the cows below in the meadows. Such a lovely sound - it made us feel like we were in Heidi’s world. The photos never can do it justice.

Our lunch spot. Fern and Noa were busy drawing the scene. Down in the paddocks below were a herd of horses.

One of the towns we saw from the road as we were driving towards the alps - still in Italy.