Walking to Italy - Days 10 & 11 - Vinaders to Gossensass to Steinach

Day 10: Vinaders to Gossensaß (Colle Isarco)

One more pass to go between us and Italy.

S had been reciting a popular rhyme over the entire trip--

Ein Auto fuhr durch Gossensaß, (A car drove through Gossensaß,) 
Und bog in eine Soßengass, (and turned into a sauce alley,)
Bis sich die ganze Gassensoß (until all of the alley sauce)
über die Insassen goss. (doused the passengers.)

--and this evening he would be able to say it in Gossensaß itself--surely the first human to ever do so. So it was an important day.

But back to Vinaders. Had aliens picked us up in Steinebach the week before and dropped us off in Vinaders, the pillow on the bench at breakfast would have let us know we were in Austria. In Bayern, the greeting is Grüß euch/Griaß eich. In Tirol, euch/eich becomes enk. How? No idea.

It was haying time:

We passed a barn that had a sign posted on it that said "NO POSTERS." The barn further down the road expressed empathy.

We passed through Obernberg. Here's scenic Sankt Nikolaus:

The flags from Fronleichnam were still up. 

After hiking up for awhile, and reaching the end of a trail that Komoot insisted continued, and therefore climbing over a fence that didn't exactly invite climbing, and tromping through a field of waist-high wildflowers that probably should not have been tromped through, we eventually found the correct trail, zipped uphill, and arrived at the Obernberger See. It was really this green.

A quick truffle-hunting detour led us to Maria am See:

The day prior, in Gossensaß, S had decided that we really ought to stop at the Steiner Alm, because wouldn't we deserve a snack after hiking up to the lake? So up we hiked to the Alm...

...where we shared an order of Kaiserschmarrn that was tasty and not overly fluffy, but nowhere as tasty as Puppi's.

We then continued up...

...and up...

...and up...

...until we reached the Sandjöchl pass and crossed into Italy. Here's Carly on the Grenze with her beak in Österreich and her tail in Italy. 

Then we hiked down. We were surprised by how different the flowers were on the south side of the pass.

A car was parked near the top, looking like a magazine ad for a car.

We could see the Dolomites, about 40 miles away.

To ease the downward hike, the trail offered a series of about 30 consecutive switchbacks. 

Hello, Brenner Autobahn. We were now south of the Brenner Pass.

When we entered Gossensaß, we passed the Barbara Kapelle, built in honor of the patron saint of miners around 1510, and the Baroque church Sankt Georg.

Like Sankt Jakob the day before, the Barbara Kapelle was viewable only through metal grates. 

St. Georg was easier to access.

Due to vacation, this business is closed until February 27, 2025:

After dinner, we stretched our legs with a backpack-less walk up to a rails-to-trails designated bicycle trail that S would return to by bike in July. Steep ascent, long easy descent. 

Wild orchid:

Ta da! 19.3 miles hiked, ~3,700 ft elevation gain, ~4,200 ft descent.

Day 11: Gossensaß (Colle Isarco) to Sterzing (Vipiteno)

The last day of hiking was a relatively short walk down the valley to Sterzing (Vipiteno in Italian). This part of northern Italy is the southern part of the region Tirol, thus "South Tirol." The northern part or Tirol, in Austria, is simply "Tirol." The connections between Tirol and South Tirol are cultural and linguistic, with South Tirol becoming part of Italy when borders were redrawn after WWI. 

A view back at Gossensaß: 

We crossed under the Brenner Autobahn. Several trail signs had Xs penned over the name of the trail we were following, so we were a little concerned that the trail might be inaccessible.  

The bridge across the waterfall was sturdy, and we had no problems on the trail.

Burgruine Strassburg is closed to the public, since it's in use on a farm.

More signs with Xs. We finally realized that only the Italian names for places were Xed out: people were to go to Sterzing, but not to Vipiteno; to Gossensaß, but not to Colle Isarco. Apparently the Xer's loyalties lie with Tirol, not Italy.  

After we walked a few miles through fields and woods, Sterzing came into view. 

Ruins ahead--privately owned and closed to the public, so we didn't bother hiking up the hill.

We arrived in Sterzing on a Sunday morning, so most businesses were closed and the main drag wasn't completely overrun with tourists.

We had some time to kill before catching our bus back to Munich, so we walked to the Kirche Unsere liebe Frau im Moos (the Church of our beloved Lady in the Moss), built in the mid-15th century. The exterior had patches of surviving fresco:

Since it was a Sunday morning, it wasn't surprising that we arrived while a Mass was still in progress. We wandered through the graveyard while we waited.

The ceilings inside the church were impressively high.

And that was that. We hopped on a FlixBus (owned by the same company that owns Greyhound in the U.S.) and headed back north. It took ~3.5 hours, which was long enough to make us feel like we had gotten somewhere--it's always a little dispiriting when a long-distance walk is erased by a 20-minute drive home.

Border control officers stopped the bus after we entered Bayern. My passport was in my backpack under the bus, so I pulled out the next best thing from my secret pocket in my hiking pants: two credit cards and a health insurance card, all with my name on them. This apparently flies for middle-aged white women with American accents; I was clearly not who the officers were looking for.  

When we arrived in Munich, we headed for salt and hydration a few blocks from the bus station...

After dinner, we walked past this snazzy bicycle...

...then caught a train back to Steinebach, where S remembered to tip the Reisebüro.

Ta da! 10 miles walked, ~900 ft elevation gain, ~1,275 ft descent.

In sum, ~173 miles hiked, ~26,800 ft elevation gain, ~25,700 ft descent, three countries traversed, three Burgruine hiked past, one ferry ridden, one bus ridden, zero elevators ridden, zero broken bones, one blister (from hiking pole abrasion), ~30 lbs lugged, and 11 days of quality time together.