Joanne's long walks: Via Romea Germanica Day 63: Vipiteno/Sterzing

Il cammino deve essere percorso con gli stessi tempi antichi di chi lo percorreva mille anni fa. Deve essere inteso non come il mezzo per arrivare, ma il fine stesso dell'azione. In questo modo, mentre noi andiamo sulla strada, il cammino entra in noi e diventa un amico fedele, un compagno di viaggio affidabile. La sua forze diventa la nostra forza, e allora più si cammina e meglio si sta.

(The Way must be walked as slowly as they walked it a thousand years ago. It must be seen not as a way of getting somewhere, but as a goal in itself. In this way, as we walk along the road, the Way enters within us and becomes a faithful friend, a dependable travelling companion. Its strength becomes our strength, and so the more we walk, the better we feel.)

- Giuliano Mari, 1,400,000 passi sulla Via Frangicena

We are not in a hurry. The stage of the Via Romea Germanica between Vipiteno and Bressanone is almost 35 kilometres long, and so we decided to break it up into two easier days. The only accommodations at the halfway point are expensive hotels, but Don Giorgio gave us the keys to the parish centre in Vipiteno so that we can come back by bus or train and spend another night. Which also offers us another important advantage: today, we can walk without our backpacks!

The hostel in the attic of the parish centre does not have a kitchen, but I snuck into the kitchen of the community centre downstairs to boil some water so we could make porridge and instant coffee. Then we set off through the centre of Vipiteno to join the cycling track that runs parallel to the motorway and the river Isarco in the bottom of the valley.

We left the cycling track at Campo di Trens/ Freienfeld, stopping at the town hall to get a stamp and use the washroom before climbing up to the Sanctuary of Maria Trens, a pilgrimage church at the top end of the village containing a fifteenth-century statue of "Our Lady of the Avalanches", protector against landslides.

On the left wall of the nave are a series of nineteenth-century ex voto paintings, a form of folk art offered to a saint or divinity (in this case Mary) in fulfillment of a vow, or in a spirit of gratitude or devotion.

Leaving the church and the village behind, we followed a path called the Bienenweg or Bee Path - much to Mariella's dismay, as she is allergic to bee stings! But the path did not take us through beehives; it was merely an educational nature walk with information panels about the life cycle of bees - and a comfortable resting spot for the Queen Bee! 😄

We left the Bee Path and headed downhill through the meadows towards the highway. The gps track of the Via Romea Germanica appeared to follow the highway for a while, and I couldn't see a sidewalk or cycling path, but then I spotted a sign pointing to a pedestrian path to Mules, the next village on our itinerary. Figuring that must be the way to go, I turned off into the woods. But the path began to climb, zigzagging up the hill and then back down again towards Mules. We had added practically a hundred metres in altitude and a kilometre or two to the day's walk, just to avoid walking a few hundred metres along the highway! 🙄

The only advantages to this route were the view, and the wild strawberries we found on the way down! We eventually came back down to the highway and crossed it and the river Isarco, where we spotted some white-water rafters, before coming to a strawberry farm where we saw the tame cousins of the wild strawberries we had picked in the woods.

Our Lady of the Strawberries? 😁

By this time we were both getting very hungry, and a handful of wild strawberries was not going to be enough. We hadn't carried any provisions other than a small bottle of water and a granola bar, in order to be able to walk without backpacks. So we were very happy to see a sign indicating a "bike stop" and restaurant 50 metres away. We crossed under the railway and the motorway to emerge at a roadside bar and pizzeria on the national highway parallel to the motorway, where we ordered two large beers and a delicious pizza with burrata to split between the two of us, so we wouldn't eat too much midway through the day's walk. Then we returned to the cycling path, passing a gravel pit and walking beside the railway tracks, with the motorway on the other side... it's not all beautiful scenery and photogenic views!! 😅

We arrived in Mittewald just in time to catch the 16:37 bus number 310 back to Vipiteno. A quick stop at the supermarket to stock up on supplies, and then we returned to our attic room in the parish centre at Oratorio Maria Schutz, ready for an early night after all that sun, wind and exercise!