Europe Journal 1999
Rainy Fields, Snowy Mountains
December 3
We left Schwangau, Germany (on the Austrian border) at about 10am, and drove without any significant stops until 4pm.
First we drove on smaller roads into the Tyrolean Alps. We saw more and more beautiful sights there — one gorgeous majestic peak after another, and narrow snow-covered valleys in between. We squiggled up one side of a mountain, through a tiny pass, and squiggled down the other side and into Innsbruck.
In Innsbruck we picked up the highway. We went through a tunnel and then came to a toll booth. We were surprised to see that, since we had paid for that vignette-sticker in order to have the right to drive on the highway. I asked the man there, and he said that that was a private highway, so we had to pay again. I thought, we bought that damn sticker specifically to drive on that highway in Austria, and we didn’t need it. Oh well, it was only about $6, and the toll was only about $9. No big thing.
The highway was just as beautiful as the smaller roads. It lead us up to the Brenner pass, the entrance into Italy (since 1919). We passed through yet another nearly abandoned border station, without having to so much as slow down. We did stop at the rest area about a mile down the road, where we withdrew some Italian money from the bank — it’s amazing that we can just stop at a highway rest area in Italy and get money from our account in Chicago.
The Italian highway lead from the Brenner Pass down along the Adige river valley out of the Alps, through the Dolomites, and finally to Verona. The upper area, called Alto Adige in Italian and Süd-Tirol in German, is essential a piece of Austria given to Italy after World War I. It looks like Austria both in landscape and architecture, and all of the signs are bilingual. Further down is Trentino, which is more Italian. The signs are no longer bilingual, and even the mountains are different. These are the Dolomites (which might be considered a part of the Alps, I’m not sure, but anyway they look different).
Whereas the Alps heave skyward with icy, craggy peaks, the Dolomites lie like sleeping giants, rounded and green. Some slopes are not too steep for farming, and so sport green pastures and brown vineyards, interspersed with little houses and churches, climbing far up the mountains. Other slopes are so steep that they can barely contain the trees that cling to them.
The river valley, all the way from the Brenner Pass to the end of the mountains, is littered with little fortified castled perched on giant rocks sticking out of the mountains. Throughout the past the Brenner Pass and the river valley below it must have been an important route to Austria, Bavaria, and other points north. Controlling a piece of that route must have been a popular idea, judging by the number of castles, and the ruinous state of many of them.
Immediately upon arriving in Verona the quality of the air changed, for the worse. Something stank. Eric commented that we were in the “Industrial North”, as northern Italy is so often described. Either it got better or we got used to it as we headed east to Padua.
Padua is a little like Strasbourg: a big, vibrant city with a small, very old city in the middle. Padua’s old center is larger and a little older than Strasbourg’s, however. We left the car in a garage and went to find a hotel. The air felt remarkably cold, even though it’s warmer here than it was in Germany and Switzerland. I think it’s because of the dampness — all of northern Italy that we’ve seen has been misty.
Our hotel is fine but nothing special. It’s reasonably comfortable but the toilette and shower are down the hall. It’s next to one of the old city gates, which is a tall brick tower, and out our back window we have a view of the canal-like river and the narrow park along it.
The buildings of the city run together like most buildings in European cities. The streets are a little narrow, and rather than sidewalks there are arcaded galleries in the sides of most buildings. Above the galleries are the first floors of the buildings. The effect is that the streets seem perfectly wide, since there is a lot of space to walk — but when you look at the space between buildings you find that it is fairly narrow, and neighbors can easily watch each other through their windows.
It is impossible to describe all the beautiful things here. You walk down a street, and you happen upon a pretty piazza, or a beautiful building, or an interesting medieval building, or a fresco or mosaic. On one square we saw an ornate gothic building that was very narrow and did not occupy any special position in the square.
We took a long walk down as far as an enormous piazza with an ellipse-shaped formal garden in the middle, lined with statues and surrounded by a mote. The statues seem to represent various great minds in arts and sciences - and in fact the ornate Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts is there on the piazza.
Then we walked through a shopping district, through the Piazza of the Insurrection of April 28th (such colorful names these European cities have!), and back to our hotel to rest.
Our dinner, our long-anticipated first Italian meal, was slightly disappointing. I had bruschetta, which were decent but not great, and pasta with vegetables, which was also not bad, but the vegetables were zucchini, carrots, and peas — not an inspiring mix. Eric ordered seasonal ravioli, which was stuffed with ricotta cheese and some sort of green, and had a squash-like cream sauce (this was in fact very good), and then a veal dish. When he ordered the veal dish, the waiter said “No!” and then preceded to tell Eric something in Italian and English mixed together that neither of us understood. He brought Eric a salad (he seemed to feel that a salad was required) and a sort of veal steak, which was very tasty. With dinner we drank Prosecco, which is a sparkling wine. It was more like champagne than we’d expected — Eric had understood that it was “lightly sparkling” — but it tasted like wine, and went well with dinner. We skipped desert today. The waiter didn’t offer it, and we were glad not to be tempted.
There was a little girl, about ten years old, in the restaurant. She was having dinner with, I assume, her father, and having a very animated conversation. She was very compelling. I had to keep watching her. She was like a natural actress. Perhaps she is an actress. Perhaps next week I’ll see her on TV selling Italian orange juice or something.
The other thing I saw in the restaurant was a man, dining with a woman, and wearing his reading glasses. He looked over them to look at her, so he didn’t need them for that, and he wasn’t reading anything. He must have been wearing them in order to see his food. I wondered, was he that far-sighted that he couldn’t eat without his glasses? Or does he feel that seeing his food is an integral part of the meal?