Bolzano

I’m in a hostel in Bolzano, a city in northern Italy, smack in the middle of the Dolomites. I arrived late last night and narrowly avoided a disaster, again. I really need to be a bit more prepared when I arrive in a foreign city, or at least arrive in the daytime. As it was, I got to Bolzano at 11 pm and hoped to find a hostel I read about in my travel guide. It told me the reception was open until 4 am, so I wasn’t worried. Little did I know….

I didn’t know where to go when I got off the train so I just started walking and asked the first person I came to for a hostel. They told me the hostel was miles away. I asked about the one on Via Renon, the one I was looking for, and they alternately told me it was closed or else it was full of people “without documents,” people who were “pushers of drugs.” This didn’t sound very reassuring. The woman pointed out a hotel to me and suggested I inquire within. The rooms were 60 Euro per night and the man didn’t know anything about a hostel. I went back outside and ran into the helpful lady again, who pointed out another hotel. This one was closed. I decided I would just have to see this drug-pushing hostel for myself, so I set off for Via Renon after seeing a map of the city at a bus stop. There were a few sketchy people around and after what that lady told me about avoiding poorly-lit areas because of all the bad people in Bolzano, I was a little scared. I finally found the hostel, with the help of another hotel desk clerk, and rang its doorbell, eventually coercing a man to come out to help me. He set me up with a room, and everything is peachy.

Far from being a drug-pushing refugee camp, Il Ostella della Gioventu is probably the nicest hostel I’ve stayed in. It is a new building, very modern. The beds are comfortable, the bathroom and showers are nice, and breakfast is included in the modest 19.50 Euro per night charge. I was lucky to find it.

Yesterday, I basically just walked around Venice all day. I met some girls, Nicole, Ashley and Holly, and we went to the secret gelato shop, which is cheaper and gives you a lot more gelato for your money. What a deal! It was right next to the secret pizza place, which gives you a bunch more pizza than the other places. It’s in the secret part of Venice, by invitation only. It was a pretty lazy day, then last night I got on the train to come to Bolzano, which I thought was scary at first but I’m starting to like it. It’s surrounded by gorgeous forested hills. The only problem is the language. The first language is Italian. The other first language is German. Either way I’m in bad shape. But I’ve been getting around just fine. As long as I don’t come across a situation I can’t negotiate with some combination of my ten Italian words (which, let’s be honest, is pretty unlikely), I think I’ll survive.

This morning at breakfast I met a couple of Austrian girls, Clara and Camilla, and we went to see Otzi together, the ancient man found mummified in the mountains near here. Carbon dating suggests he lived somewhere between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. I was impressed by the amount of sophistication his tools and clothes revealed. Apparently he knew how to smelt copper, because he had a couple tools made from copper, and all his clothes were made from animal skins which were sewn together with thin strands of leather. He had an axe, and a bow and some arrows. There were also a bunch of other mummies there from all over the world. It was pretty interesting.

This afternoon I took a cable car ride up to the top of one of the hills around Bolzano. I hiked around in the forest at the top for awhile. It was beautiful, the air smelled like Klamath Falls air.

I wanted to take a picture of all the different Euro coins and dollars, so I set aside one of each coin I had found, and the maid took it! Cagna!

I changed my underwear today.

I’m charging my laptop right now. I bought a plug converter and just crossed my fingers that all that electricity mumbo-jumbo about the correct voltage and amps would work out and not make my computer explode. So far so good.

I’m going to spend tonight in Bolzano, and maybe the next night as well. It’s about as cheap and nice a hostel you could ask for, and I’m hesitant to go tromping into another foreign place expecting to get lucky like I have in Venice and Bolzano. This is a nice, lazy town. It is good for relaxing, which is what I want to do at the moment. But who knows, I might keep moving. I’ll flip a coin tomorrow.

When I was taking pictures today I found a cylindrical piece of bark on the ground. I put my camera lens through it and it made one of those old-timey black outline things, so I took a bunch of pictures like that, two of which are on here. The other pictures are of the Dolomites and just some bark. Quick, Mom, what kind of tree is that?