Where Is Annie?

Val Pusteria (or in German Pustertal) is full of hiking trails.  In the classic alpine manner there are huts along the trail to feed and shelter the hikers.  We were starting in Italy.  There was a hut in Austria.  We decided to hike across international borders for our lunch.

The area is meant for tourists.  Buses run frequently between towns and trail heads.  We had bought a three day family pass and found there was no need to rent a car.  We started our hike at the gondola in Sesto/Sexten, Italy.  We bought a one way ticket up from 1300m to 2000m.  The hike looked easy on the map, and the gondola had already done most of the work.   The wide road in front of us just couldn’t be that steep.  Less than 3km to the Austrian border.  But, oh man, it was slow going.  The trail was steep.  We weren’t fully acclimated.  It was hard work walking up.

And then there were the flowers with bees and my daughter.  Catherine loves bees and loves flowers and loves when the bees are working on the flowers.  When we got to the high meadow with flowers and bees, Cat was done hiking.  It took Haribo gummi bears to bribe her further.

I first tasted these gummy candies when I was 16 on a school trip to Salzburg.  It was 1979, the era of Saturday Night Live’s Mr Bill.  The flavor of the bears was delicious.  The various torture one could perform on an innocent piece of candy was delightful.  What a wonderful treat the Austrians had!  And it was enough to keep Cat climbing up that mountainside.

The climb was beautiful.  And we made it to Austria.  The kids jumped back and forth between Italy and Austria.  They straddled the border in order to stand in two countries at the same time.  They found rocks that were lying in both countries wanting to bring them home as souvenirs of an Austro-Italian union.

A little more hiking, past a patch of snow, and we were at the hut ready to eat.  The wind was blowing hard as a storm approached.  We had to lean backward to open the door.  The hut inside and out was so very alpine; so was the menu.  There was meat on the menu.  With sauerkraut, or potatoes, or dumplings.  For Cat there was Käsespätzle.  Always the vegetarian option on German menus this is basically man ‘n’ cheese, but the noodles are flabby and the cheese is greasy.   She ate a few bites then had some more gummi bears.

As we ate lunch we watched the storm clouds roll in.  When we left the hut a pair of boots, the tops blown out and the soles melted by lightening, were hanging by the door.  We knew we had to hurry.  We had asked the chef for the quickest, easiest way down.  Five miles of steep terrain we were at a train station in Sillian, Austria, back down in the valley with sore knees and a some regrets.  Next time we spend a day hiking we’ll follow Cat’s lead: gondola up, watch the bees on the flowers, gondola down.  That’s enough.  Oh, the gummi bears should be part of the day, too.

I don’t know how the Italians do it.  How can such little towns have such amazing the restaurants?  Bagnolo in Piano has less than 10,000 people in the Po Valley.  It is a farming community with a parmesan factory.  Not much else.  Except for a Michelin guide recognized restaurant.

Trattoria da Probo was opened 10 years ago.  Daniela and her sister, Chiara, run the front room of the restaurant.  Chiara’s ex-husband is the chef.  The theme is authentic regional cooking. During our visit Daniela treated us to lunch here.  Daniela had taken the week off work at the restaurant to vacation with us.  Her sister Chiara was kind enough to serve us our lunch including opening a delicious, dry regional spumante, a 2010Colli di Parma.  Prego, Chiara.

Antipasti began the meal with four versions of pork.  Remember, this is the Iowa of Italy.  Lots of pigs.  But somehow what Italians do with pork resembles in no way what I grew up eating.  There was prosciutto, coppa, pancetta, and salami.  The meat came with gnochetto, deep fried squared of pasta all puffed up and warm.  For my vegetarian daughter there was local parmigiano reggiano from cows fed a very special, centuries old diet.  They eat only the hay and alfalfa grown in the region.  Along with the cheese came aged balsamic.  The balsamic spends years in various wooden casks becoming thick and syrupy,  the perfect sweetness for the sharpness of the cheese.

After the antipasti we had pasta.  Keeping with the theme of authentic, regional foods the pasta is kneaded and rolled by hand.  It came to the table as tortelli, three large platters with different fillings: pumpkin with ameretti cookies to add sweetness and the taste of bitter almond, potato with prosciutto for depth, and, my favorite, spinach, so light, and so, so delicious.  These were huge plates to share.  Unfortunately, I took too little in the beginning.  Before I knew it, all the pasta was gone.  Sharing food, especially excellent food, with two teenage boys can be dangerous.   After the pasta I had a small dessert of zuppa inglese full of rum and pudding of which I shared only a little.  The kids had a traditional almond cake which breaks apart like a cookie.  There were battles for the larger pieces.

Because it was lunch in summer we had a lighter meal than is possible at Trattoria da Probo.  Come Autumn the meat trolley begins.  Pork, of course, as well as veal, beef, lamb, and fowl are prepared in various fashions.   The entire selection comes to your table so that you can choose your meal.  Apparently this is traditional for restaurants in this region but now is rare.  Daniela told us people come from all over the world to this little town north of Reggio nell’Emilia for this experience.  She shared the business card of wine makers from Santa Barbara to prove her point.

We were lucky to tour Italy this way.  No standing in line for a major tourist attractions but rather sharing a meal of delicious, well made food.  No piece of chotsky as a souvenir of the trip but rather a souvenir waistline.

I should have guessed this wasn’t really Italy.  I mean, look at the name.  Südtirol.  There’s an umlaut.  And look at the map.  It’s as close as you can get to Austria in Italy.  There are Italians who live and die speaking Italian here, and there are plenty of Italian vacationers.  But this is the Alps.  There are sausages and sauerkraut.  Oompah bands.  Lederhosen and dirndls.  It’s really hard to remember you’re in Italy.  Daniela and Paolo had told us about this area, recommending the towns of San Candido and Dobbiacho in Val Pusteria.  Turns out, the locals call these towns Innichen and Toblach.  It was time to speak German.

These are the Dolomites where the Via Ferrata was built during World War I.  Fixed iron cables and ladders helped troops from Italy and Austria fight over this rocky, inhospitable environment.  Italy won the land after the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell.  Now it’s an Italian vacation destination for adventure travelers with rock climbing (often using the iron cables and ladders from the war), hiking, rafting, and skiing.  Val Pusteria has been developed for the tourists with programs and transportation making it one of the easiest places to start a mountain adventure.

We started our adventure eating.  Again, even though the Italians won the land, the Austrians still dominate the culture.   Our first night in Südtirol Hank ate a huge hunk of pork with sauerkraut.  Bill ate ribs with sauerkraut.   Sauerkraut ended up in many of our green salads, even in Italian restaurants.  For breakfast we ate brötchen, cold cuts, cheese, müsli, and, yes, apfelstrudel.   We were getting the energy we needed for playing in the mountains.

We began playing in the trees with ropes, carabiners and harnesses.  At our kids school, early in the sixth grade, the kids attend a ropes course.  This was one of the reasons Cat was sad to leave home.  She had been looking forward to this experience with her friends.  I promised her that at some point during the year she’d get to try at least one ropes course.  When I saw the ad for the course I knew it was time to fulfill my promise.  Cat loved it.  She pushed through the challenges way ahead of her parents, easily grasping the safety techniques with the carabiners.  She quickly gained her balance on the wavering foothold and let go with joy as the zipline took her down to the next platform.  The final, most challenging course gave her pause.  The initial path between platforms was scary, but with her own technique she made it across.  Hank joined Cat on that course and stayed behind her, encouraging and advising.  Because it was the highest of the courses she was rewarded with the best of the ziplines.  She was grinning ear to ear when she was done.  Watch her here.

A couple of years ago a colleague told me I had a torn meniscus in my knee. It hurts when I don’t take care of it, and before we left I was just too damn busy. I did nothing to strengthen my knee. Instead I was bending and kneeling and ignoring the pain. I arrived in Italy with a sore knee. As the week went on I started to limp.

On our second day in Cinque Terre, we decided to walk between Monterosso and Vernazza. The towns are connected by a path named Sentiero Azzurro, meaning blue path. The trail is dry and rocky and climbs out of the ravine from one town up over the hill then back down again to the next town. You pass old houses, vineyards, and forests. The view down to the sea is amazing, with turquoise blue water mixing with the darker blues and lighter greens. At the horizon the dark blue ocean meets the light blue sky with fluffy white clouds floating through.  It is a beautiful walk.

Unfortunately, the walk is studded with stairs. Dozens, maybe hundreds of stairs made of rock with variable rises. I started walking up these stairs with my knee maybe better than the day before, knowing I was making a really stupid mistake. The pain was not so horrible going up. It was the down that was going to be impossible. The more stairs I climbed up, the more worried I became about how the hell I was going to come down again. All of a sudden as I pushed up onto a tall stair, I felt a twang in my knee. I immediately sat down scared I had ruined my knee.

I was sure the walk was over. Not only that, our trip would surely end if my knee was damaged. All over before a week had even passed. But, wait, now my knee was feeling better. In fact, the pain was gone. The path had fixed it.  I walked down the steps (the dozens or maybe hundreds) to Vernazza.  We were once again ready to jump off the boat dock into the water.

Unfortunately, a school of jellyfish had decided to visit Vernazza on this day as well.  Hank met one.  It attacked his left arm and then his right hand as he tried to pull it off.  When he got back on the dock he refused to let us treat it.  I guess he already knew that peeing on it won’t relieve the pain.  Advil and gelato worked pretty well, though.  By the end of the day back in Bagnolo in Piano, both of us were free of pain.

Cinque Terre is a beautiful area along the Italian coast as it heads west toward France. It is named for the five villages tucked into ravines: Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.   On the map it looks like the armpit of Italy.  In reality it’s like romance.

Daniela and Paolo planned a two day vacation for us in Cinque Terre. We drove through Tuscany and had to stop to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  No one in our family had ever been there.  Gigi had never been there either.  Of course, we had to take a few of the classic photos.  At first Hank refused, but  Gigi was willing.

For the night we stayed outside of the area in a monestary in a small town, Boca di Magra.

Monastero San Croce sits up on a hillside looking over a river as it opens to the sea.  Across the river are the mountains white from marble.  Here we were the only Americans. Dinner began standing as the monks prayed in Italian. We stood and waited as our kids experimented crossing themselves.

The food was simple and tasty home cooked but Italian. Risotto with chopped frozen vegetables, a salad bar with raddichio, regional cheese and cold cuts. It was as if our mothers had suddenly become Italian and were cooking for us. It was tasty and satisfying.

In the morning, Paolo piloted a boat he had rented to take us on our tour of Cinque Terre. The ride took all day and was amazing. As we motored between the penisula and an island we watched a town and then fort go by. We anchored in a turquoise bay and jumped in to swim. It was effortless to be in that water. The temperature was perfect. The salt in the water kept us floating. It was hard to get back in the boat.

As we headed toward the villages of Cinque Terre, Bill and I remembered our first trip to Italy together shortly after we started dating. We spent a few nights in Riomaggiore, eating pesto, drinking grappa, madly in love.  We really wanted to head back in there and relive the romance. As we headed toward the dock, our motor got entangled in the lines of other boats. We had to watch Riomaggiore and our nostalgia disappear as Paolo backed the boat away.

We were able to reach the town of Vernazza by boat, however. Here, like the other villages of Cinque Terre, the main street winds up steeply into the ravine. Stores and restaurants line the road. Few if any cars have access to the main road. Instead it’s packed with people, mostly tourists.

To the sides of the main road small alleys, often made of only stairs, cut into the hillside with tall stucco homes on either side. I snuck the kids into one of these narrow alleys, and within 10 yards we were away from the tourists and into a unique part of Italy.

At the ferry dock of Vernazza everyone was jumping into the warm sea.  We did the same.

On the boat ride back from the village we again anchored to jump into the water.  We swam and floated.  We climbed onto the rocks and sunned.  We returned to the monastery to listen to the prayers, eat, and recharge for the next day of adventure.  Recharging only after the disco below the monastery had finished a loud rendition of ABBA’s Mama Mia.  I still have that song stuck in my head.  Maybe that’s my way of praying.

When we arrived at the train station in Bologna on July 3, our hosts, Daniela, Paolo, and Gigi were there to meet us.  As we drove to their home in Bagnolo in Piano we were greeted by a large American flag hanging in on their fence.  The Italians were ready to celebrate our independence from tyranny.

Our Fourth of July started in Reggio nell’Emilia, a small city near Bologna.  The town is not much for tourist attractions.  It has no must see sights in the grand Italian tour, but it has all that is Italian: the fruit seller giving my daughter a peach, the cafe/bar for a quick espresso as we wander the town, narrow alleys where no car can enter, piazzas in front of old churches, and people speaking with their hands.  Reggio is, of course, half the name of parmigiano reggiano.  It’s also where the Italian flag was designed, the Tricolore.  Seemed fitting for a day of patriotism.

In the evening, all of Daniela’s family and friends arrived.  Her mother and father, her sister and nieces, cousins with spouses, childhood friends,  friends of the children, and us.  The table was long.   An Italian flag was now hanging next to the American flag.   Pizza was served, a dish now as American as it is Italian.  The very Italian lambrusco and prosecco for drinking, however.  No Bud.

After dinner Daniela’s sister, Chiara, brought out her karaoke machine to make an announcement.  It was set on reverb.  Her speech, spoken in Italian, sounded like a Mexican radio DJ.  (“Mas-mas-mas musica-ca-ca!”)  She reminded us that this year is the 150th anniversary of the Italian unification.  July 4th is also the birthday of Giuseppe Garibaldi (here are quotes from this 19th century hero).   While Chiara was talking about American independence I noticed some movement out in the field across the street.  All of a sudden firecrackers exploded.  Then fireworks shot up in the sky.  Rising 40-50 feet above us they burst into multiple colors.  Real fireworks in a simple Italian country field.

The next morning we were talking about the fireworks and thanking Paolo profusely for making our holiday true to form.  We told him that fireworks such as those were illegal in the United States.  “You can have guns and rifles but no fireworks?” he asked.  What could I say?