Quanto si perdono quelli che non ospitano i pellegrini! Quanta noia del vivere c'è nel non aprire le porte a ciò che transita, al nuovo, all'inatteso, al non previsto! Quando si smette di provare meraviglia si muore dentro.
(People who don't host pilgrims miss out on so much! How boring is a life in which you don't open your doors to passers-by, to the new, the unexpected, the unforeseen! When you cease to feel a sense of wonder, you die inside.)
- Angela Seracchioli, Passi che si incrociano (2007)
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| Our hostess Elena perusing my collection of stamps in my pilgrim credential |
On the Via Romea Germanica I have stayed with people who volunteer to host pilgrims in their homes, and with members of Servas International, such as Elena and Giuvani, in whose home we have stayed for the past two nights. They also happen to be the parents of my daughter's former roommate, with whom she shared an apartment while studying in The Hague; I met their daughter Emma when she visited us in Tuscany. So when I saw that the whole family are members of Servas, I didn't hesitate to request hospitality; Elena and Giuvani didn't hesitate to agree, even though Elena is currently nursing a broken arm and has difficulty performing ordinary household chores. This spirit of hospitality and generosity is one of the things that makes the Via Romea Germanica unlike other, more popular and crowded pilgrimage walks; the Germans call it Ein Weg der Begegnung: a Way of Encounters.
Elena and Giuvani's home is a few kilometres off our route, but we have been able to "commute" to the trail and back using the handy Südtirol bus service: sometimes confusing, but efficient and regular, serving all the little villages dotting the landscape of Alto Adige.
This morning, however, we literally started off on the wrong foot, waiting for the bus on the wrong side of the street; the schedules posted at the stop must have been for the stops on both sides, because at the appointed time our bus whizzed by on the opposite site, stopping at another bus stop a few hundred metres further along the road. We crossed over and waited for the next bus, then had to wait half an hour for our connecting bus in Kaltern, but we eventually managed to get to Kurtatsch, the place where we had stopped walking the day before.
We walked out of Kurtatsch, we joined the Weinlehrpfad, a didactic path through the vineyards with information panels about viticulture. And we saw our first olive groves on the Via Romea Germanica, along with fig trees growing spontaneously along the path: sure signs that we are heading into the Mediterranean climate!
It's not fig season yet, but we joined a cyclist who had paused to pick medlars (nespole in Italian) and eat them straight off the tree. A delicious and refreshing fruit that I tend to neglect! We paused at a tiny supermarket in Magré for another snack before heading through the town and the apple orchards to the other side of the valley.
We crossed under the railway line, then over the motorway and the river Adige to join the cycling route along the river, where the apple orchards and vineyards continued.
At the village of Laag or Laghetti we left the cycling track to walk through the town and then follow a narrow road with the base of steep cliffs on our left, while the vineyards and orchards continued to our right.
Several kilometres down this road we came to Salorno, a town which did not make a great impression on us - but that may have been due to the grey, muggy weather. We stopped only long enough to refill our water bottles and eat a slice of take-out pizza before continuing out of the town and back to the cycling path along the Adige. We were heading toward the Salurner Klause or Chiusa di Salorno: a point where the cliffs towering on either side of the river valley almost converge, leaving only a narrow gap, which has acted as a natural barrier between the German-speaking and the Italian-speaking worlds since the 1600s. And in fact we passed from Alto Adige into Trentino, and the road signs were suddenly in the Italian language only!
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| First sign on the Via Romea Germanica without any German in it! |
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| Second, more interesting sign in Italian only |
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| Newly paved cycling track |
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| Bike & Break - a bar for cyclists and walkers |
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| Crossing the Adige |
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| San Michele all'Adige |
We stopped for a beer at a bar beside the cycling track and then more cheerfully walked the final couple of kilometres into San Michele all'Adige, a town that has always held a strategic position, located on the north-south axis of the Via Claudia Augusta at the historic meeting point of the rivers Adige and Noce. Today it is right on the major motorway to the Brenner Pass, which probably accounts for the presence of our hotel, seeing as the town doesn't really seem like the sort of place people would come for a holiday. For us it's the perfect stopping point a day's walk before Trento. We stopped by the local supermarket on the way to our hotel and bought some ready-made dishes, so we don't even have to go out to eat and may even have time to watch a movie tonight - if either of us can figure out how to work the "smart" TV! 😅
Kurtatsch - San Michele all'Adige 24 km
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