Last weekend a group of six of us went to Bolzano, which is a city in northern Italy on the edge of the Dolomite Mountains. This part of Italy used to be part of Austria, and German is still the main language spoken there. Whenever anyone spoke German to me I would get a deer in the headlights kind of look and have no idea how to respond. Most people also speak Italian, though, so everything worked out okay.

Bolzano's version of the big church they have in every Italian town

On the train to Bolzano a very strange Italian man sat next to us and proceeded to talk to us for the next four hours, whether we were interested or not(I was not and proceeded to take a nap for the middle section). He spoke English quite well, and topics ranged from love affairs in Mexico to the dangers of polar bears. Every ten minutes or so he would say that he would stop boring us and start to read his newspaper, but then would immediately start back up saying something like, “Let me tell you about how I call into talk radio shows...” Anyway, he was quite the character, definitely a bit crazy.

Bolzano was quite a nice city. The cuisine was more German than Italian and I had sausages and beer for dinner. When we walked out of the restaurant after dinner I became confused by the large number of people dressed as cowboys and indians. All these people were dressed for Carnevale, as we figured out eventually. We overheard one “cowboy” exclaim in english, “I'm from West Virginia!” and start singing “These boots are made for walking.” There was also a group of girls dressed as nuns and singing songs from Sister Act(Completely off key; the cartons of wine they were carrying had taken effect (yes, you can buy cartons of wine in Italy, kind of like juice boxes)). American culture is everywhere.

The next day we took a bus and went up into the mountains. We made friendly with the bus driver who was really funny and dropped us at a great place to just hike around a bit and enjoy the snow and mountains. Our bus driver on the return trip was a madman who drove down the mountain at top speed. Maddie and Liz were so nervous they put on their seatbelts. Anyway, it was a great weekend trip.

Sometimes the mountains just make you feel good

Coming up in the next edition!: I will recount my adventures in Venice for Carnevale.