Nella mia vita errante vidi allora per la prima volta un gran fiume. M'apparve a un tratto, gonfio e veloce fra due ripe selvagge, in una pianura infiammata, quasi fosse stoppia, ai raggi orizzontali del sole che ne rasentava il limite come una ruota rossa. Sentii allora quel che v'è di divino in un gran fiume a traverso la Terra. Era l'Adige.
(It was at that time in my life of wanderings that I saw a great river for the first time. It appeared suddenly, swollen and rapid between two savage banks, in a plain that burned like stubble, in the horizontal rays of the sun that grazed its edge like a red wheel. It was then that I sensed the divinity in a great river crossing the face of the earth. It was the Adige.)
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
This morning we followed the river Isarco out of the city of Bolzano to the point where it flows into the Adige, the river that gives Alto Adige its name. Italy's second-longest river, after the Po, the Adige originates near the Reschen Pass in the Vinschgau, near the Italian border with Austria and Switzerland, and flows 410 kilometres through northeastern Italy to the Adriatic Sea. We will be following the course of the Adige over the next few days.
We checked out of our hostel across from the bus station in Bolzano and walked to the cathedral, arriving just in time to receive the blessing at the close of the eight o'clock mass. Then we walked out of the city and crossed the fast-flowing river Isarco, joining a pedestrian path beside the river through a park on the other side.
The park was full of dog walkers enjoying the relatively cool morning air. We stopped and talked to one very elegantly dressed woman walking her dog outside the football stadium. She perfectly understood the spirit of our voyage, as she had led an adventurous life and travelled all over the world for twenty-five years.
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| Stylish dog-walker |
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| Wooden bridge over the Isarco/Eisack river |
We passed a covered wooden bridge and a group of women exercising with fans.... possibly the best way to exercise in this heat wave! - Other than swimming in the cold waters of the Isarco, like the dogs we saw a little farther down the path.
Further along the cycling path we stopped at a rest area with a fountain in the shade and talked to a woman who is both a cyclist and a long-distance walker. She and another cyclist gave us advice and information on various possible routes to our destination, and in the end we decided to stick to the official Via Romea route, as it was likely to offer more shade than the cycling paths.
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| My kind of trail! |
We crossed the Adige via a former railway bridge, now part of the cycling route, then left the paved cycling track in the sun to head uphill on a shady trail through the woods.
We emerged to walk, still in the shade of the trees, along the edge of a vast vineyard in which every single row was individually wrapped in mesh to protect the grapes from hungry birds and animals.
We reached Colterenzio at noon, and the temperature was already sauna-like. We were saved by a providential bench in the shade and a fountain in front of the village church.
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| I like the German name better 😄 |
Thus refreshed, we resolved to walk another five kilometres to Lake Monticolo, confident that the forest trail would be cool and shady.
When we reached the lake, we were disappointed to see how commercially developed the lakeshore was, with a hotel, restaurant and pool complex where I had imagined a quiet lake in the woods. In any case we found a spot to eat our sandwiches and then took a short and convenient bus ride directly from the lake to San Michele di Appiano, a village a few kilometres off our route. Here we are guests of Elena and Giuvani, Servas members and parents of my daughter's friend and former roommate Emma, who is currently studying in Geneva and whose bedroom I am occupying. Mariella is in her sister Marta's bedroom next door.
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| San Michele Appiano |
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| The view from Emma's room |
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| With our hosts |
It is great to be in a house again after spending several nights in a row in hostels! We sat on the patio and enjoyed a beer with our hosts, then showered and put our clothes through the washing machine while we had a home-cooked dinner.
The third (or rather, the first) language of the Alps: Ladin
Our hosts Elena and Giovanni are natives of the Val Badia, a valley about an hour and a half's drive from here further up in the mountains, and are speakers of Ladin, a minority language spoken in 54 Italian municipalities in the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno. Ladin is a Rhaeto-Romance language with some similarities to Romansch, spoken in parts of Switzerland, and to Friulian. It is, as the name indicates, a vulgarised form of Latin which was once spoken all over the Alpine area but now survives only in the more remote Alpine valleys.
Under Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire and, after 1804, the Austrian Empire, the Ladins underwent a process of Germanisation; when Italy annexed the southern part of the Tyrol after the First World War, Ladin was regarded as a dialect of Italian. The process of Italianisation of Südtirol under the fascist government put further pressure on Ladin speakers to assimilate their language into Italian, even changing place names to an Italianised version. Following the end of World War II, the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement of 1946 between Austria and Italy introduced a degree of autonomy for Trentino and South Tyrol but did not include any provisions for the Ladin language; only in the second autonomy statute for South Tyrol in 1972 was Ladin recognised as a partially official language. Ladin is now an officially recognised language in the autonomous province of Bolzano, taught in schools and used in public offices, in written as well as spoken forms. Elena and Giovanni's daughters grew up speaking three languages: Ladin with their father, Italian with their mother, and High German with their nanny, and now speak English and French as well.
We learned only one word of Ladin from Elena and Giovanni, but we practiced that word a lot. Vives means "cheers", and we said it over beer in the afternoon, wine with dinner and gentian root grappa before going to bed. Vives!
If you'd like a bigger sample of the Ladin language, below is the text of the first part of the Lord's Prayer in Ladin, as compared to Italian and a number of other Romance languages, with the English translation in the last column (from Wikipedia).
Ladin
Pere nost, che t'ies en ciel,
al sie santifiché ti inom,
al vegne ti regn,
sia fata tia volonté,
coche en ciel enscì en tera.
Latin
Pater noster, qui es in caelis:
sanctificetur nomen tuum;
adveniat regnum tuum;
fiat voluntas tua,
sicut in caelo, et in terra.
Italian
Padre nostro che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo Nome,
venga il tuo Regno,
sia fatta la tua Volontà
come in cielo così in terra.
Spanish
Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos,
santificado sea tu Nombre,
venga a nosotros tu Reino,
hágase tu Voluntad
así en la tierra como en el cielo.
Portughese
Pai nosso, que estais no céu,
Santificado seja o Vosso nome,
Venha a nós o Vosso reino,
Seja feita a sua vontade
Assim na terra como no céu.
French
Notre Père, qui es aux cieux,
Que ton nom soit sanctifié,
Que ton règne vienne,
Que ta volonté soit faite
sur la terre comme au ciel.
Romanian
Tatăl nostru, care ești în ceruri,
Sfințească-se numele Tău,
Vie împărăția Ta,
Facă-se voia Ta,
Precum în cer așa și pre pământ.
English
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Bolzano - Lago di Monticolo 16.5 km
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