A day in Italy

I had never been to Italy before, and Italy is just a hop, skip, and jump away from Nauders, so the day after Stefan's bike race, we drove 5km south, out of Austria/North Tyrol, and into Italy/South Tyrol. Most of the people I have told this to in the week since then have observed that despite being in Italy, South Tyrol is "basically Austria." The road signs are in both Italian and German, and the towns have both Italian and German names.

After driving up to the Stilfser Joch/Stelvio Pass, we headed back down the way we had come to have lunch in what we called Glurns (since we were traveling with a German speaker)--though I think Italian has the upper hand with this one, as Glorenza sounds far more musical. Glurns/Glorenza is a walled medieval town; wikipedia.de's article on Glurns, when cranked through Google Translate, states that Glurns is one of the smallest municipalities in Tyrol, second only to "the city rats mountain in North Tyrol." I take this as a reminder that while it might be smarter to read text in the original language, it's often more entertaining to use Google Translate.

A biker heading down from atop the Stelvio Pass

Glurns arcades

Glurns doorways

Glurns windows

From Glurns, we headed to Meran/Merano, which was low enough in elevation to give me a taste of what I thought Italy (versus "basically Austria") would look like, with palm trees and majestic cypresses. We wandered around the city center for a bit and found not one but two kitchen gadget stores--joy!--where I picked up three snazzy fluted ravioli cutters. A salesperson noticed that I was lingering for a ridiculous amount of time over the ravioli cutters, spinning assorted wheels and examining their edges; I was pleased to be able to explain in sufficient German that I needed the wheels for pottery, and to explain why the fancy five-cutters-in-parallel model he showed me wouldn't work for my needs. I was also pleased to realize that Italy is probably the cheapest place in the world to buy ravioli wheels.

After that exciting shopping excursion, we ended up on the Tappeinerweg, a path that rises steadily and with many switchbacks through well-tended gardens on a cliff side over Meran. Thus a day that began with snowy mountain peaks ended with prickly pear cactus blossoms.

Cactus flowers on the Tappeinerweg

View of Meran from the Tappeinerweg

We happened upon one Stolperstein on our way to dinner:

Dinner was pizza. As was the case with fondue in Switzerland, it turns out that pizza doesn't taste any more intriguing than usual for being eaten in Italy, but it was nice to have the experience. After dinner, we left northern Italy/south Tyrol for one more night in southern Austria/north Tyrol. On Tuesday, we headed north for Germany.