Archive for February, 2019

“Let’s go on a run,” I said: notes from a morning adventure run to the Montiggler Seen/Laghi di Monticoli

Posted by julie on Wednesday, 13 February 2019, 8:32

“The elevation of the lakes is only 500 meters,” I said. “It shouldn’t be snowy anymore,” I said. And yet…

This is what Chris looked like for most of my run: a bright green blur far up the trail.

And yet I underestimated the power of a good forest in shading the snow and preventing melting—and it was largely a deciduous forest, scattered through with just a few pines and firs. It snowed a full 10 days ago, after all; and it’s been pretty sunny since then. But yesterday’s adventure run turned out to be a different run than the one we’d originally planned. And, really, that was fine, because my husband would never complain about any run in the woods—or any morning spent together.

Castagna!

 

Populus tremula. European aspen.

Once the kids were off to school, we hopped on the next train headed south. We got off just a couple of stops later, in Bronzolo/Branzoll, where Chris found—on his amazing, free Südtirol2Go app—that in just a single minute, we could board a bus directly to the trailhead. Just let that sink in for a minute: we walked to the train station, got on a train, then took a public bus directly to our trailhead, which headed up some stairs alongside someone’s immaculately-kept house before diving into the woods. And that whole trip cost us just a few cents (really a few cents—like a quarter).

As our time in Bolzano hits its downhill slide (we’ve been in this apartment for five months, and we’ll be out in another four), I’ve begun thinking of the things I’ll really miss about being here. Taking public transportation (trains, buses, and funivias) directly to trails tops my list. Trails here nearly always connect directly to a train or bus line; the trails are so plentiful that, even in a decade of trail running directly out of Bolzano, I could probably not run all of the trails. Plenty of trails radiate from the funivias, too; who doesn’t want to take a gondola to their Sunday afternoon hike?

I’m pretty sure we stumbled upon an old graveyard? Maybe?

 

Ahhhh.

 

Gorgeous new trail signs.

But, anyway, back to the icy, snowy adventure run: The first, quick 250-meter climb, through an east-facing oak forest, was melted out. I slipped and slid on dry oak leaves covering the steep trail. Chris left me in the dust.

And then we hit the snow. As soon as we topped out on the ridge, snow glowed blue on the forest floor, cooling the air and slowing our steps. Each warm day, the snow had melted, then it refroze into a slick crust at night. We were left with a slippery trail, perfect for knocking middle-agers on our butts. Forging through the snow on the trailside was safer, though it meant breaking through a crust, dampening our feet and irritating our shins.

It slowed us down, but that was probably a good thing, because the day was truly glorious. The Montiggler See/Laghi di Monticoli are these little gems tucked into the forest, ice-covered now but undoubtedly swimming magnets in the summer. Birds were everywhere, warming up in the balmy breezes. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and no one was on the trails but us. We found brand-new trail signs, jury-rigged bike jumps, and even an impeccably-maintained 12-seat church (it is Italy, after all), once we’d entered the village of Colterenzio/Schreckbichl, which is currently blanketed with a patchwork of wintry wineries. If this run were snow-free, it’d be fast and easy, with the added bonus of a dip in a lake!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then, I came around the corner to this. This castle, Schloss Sigmundskron, has an interesting history. Currently, it is the centerpiece of the mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s Mountain Museums. It was built before 1000 A.D. and then owned by a variety of princes and earls through the centuries. In 1957, it was the location of the Südtirol’s largest-ever political demonstration, of 30,000 people, demanding independence (from Italy) for the Südtirol. The Südtirol is now considered an “autonomous area” of Italy, which means that it has greater self-government and pays a smaller portion of its taxes to Rome than other Italian provinces.

And then it was over. We passed over the Ponte Adige and ran directly into the train station. Almost 8 miles. We sunbathed in February on a glorious wooden bench while waiting ten minutes for the next train.

I will miss this. Mornings running through the woods with Chris, the next train just ten minutes away. Always an adventure.

Reviews of English-language movies: un divertimento

Posted by julie on Friday, 1 February 2019, 23:12

In our home, we value a good movie, whether it’s on the big screen or on our big screen. Miyazake is a winner (at least with three of the four of us), foreign films are making a comeback as everyone in our family has started to read subtitles quickly enough not to be frustrated, we’re making our way through inappropriate PG-rated 80s movies, and no one turns down a good or not-so-good adventure or action flick (The Fast and the Furious, anyone?).

Here in Italy’s Alto Adige, one thing we’ve found is that, since German and Italian are spoken by nearly everyone, English rarely is, as it would be a third language for most people. Despite the fact that the university around the block actually attracts students from across Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, for whom English is the common language, movies are very rarely shown in English in Bolzano. The multi-movie Cineplexx usually has one English movie night on the last Tuesday of the month, at 8:30 on a school night; and the Filmclub, which is nearby and very nice, with velvety, steeply-canted seating, shows arthouse and Oscar-nominated movies, which are nearly always in Italian or German. The other night, however, I found that they were screening The Dawn Wall in English with German subtitles. That prompted these haiku mini-reviews of movies I’ve seen in the past few months, most of which I sneaked in while I was in the States for Christmas, but a few of which I found on Netflix here in Italy or watched on the flights back to the States.

Blackkklansman
Black cop, white bigot?
Adam Driver is a charm
Spike nails relevance

Mary Poppins Returns
Uppity Poppins
costumed magnificently
proper cameos

The Favourite
Cattiness, love, pride
achingly-portrayed Queen Anne
seventeen bunnies

A Star is Born
Musical romance
fame, love, envy, alcohol
and Andrew Dice Clay?!

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Multiracial teen
jaw-dropping animation
lots of Spider-friends

Bohemian Rhapsody
Homage to a friend
Freddie struts, swaggers, sings, soars
shared songwriting, cats

The Wife
Sad state-of-affairs
surround a Nobel Prize win
eventual hope

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Neeson, Franco, Waits
six vignettes artfully filmed
disturbing plot twists

The Dawn Wall
Tommy Caldwell climbs
Kev Jorgeson displays grit
port-a-ledge coffee

Sometimes it’s good to flex underdeveloped muscles, in this case my haiku muscle. Thanks for enduring!

Note: For a while, the last line of the last haiku was “pooping in a bag.” However, I think to anyone who hasn’t pooped in a bag, that line is all that lingers—and I also didn’t want readers to think that the only thing about which Kevin Jorgeson displayed grit was pooping in a bag. That original line does, however, fit the haiku model a bit better, with a surprise or understanding at the end. Ah, the challenging editorial decisions that come with a personal blog that 11 people might read….