Since arriving in Italy we have continued to have good food, although from fewer ethnic backgrounds. Sunday night, at the suggestion of our hostess, we walked a little ways down the hill to a local restaurant for dinner. Sibylle had a primi piatti or appetizer of spaghetti with tomato sauce and I had a secondi piatti or main course of beef goulash. The goulash was particularly good, with a flavor very reminiscent of the caraway stew my mother used to make when I was growing up.

Restaurants here in Europe are different than in the states. When I was here for the motorcycle tour in 1994, we ate our morning and evening meals at the hotel where we were staying that night, and lunch was up to you. The hotels all had large spreads for breakfast, with meats, cheeses, breads, cereals, yogurt, coffee, tea, and juices. Dinners were usually multi-course affairs, with soup, salad, a main course, and then something for dessert.

The local restaurant we ate at Sunday night would be considered a bit rustic in the US, but the food was good and well prepared. There is no background music to try and talk over, and the waitress doesn’t stop by every two minutes to see how you are fairing. At the end of the meal you have to tell her you are ready for the bill, otherwise they are content to let you sit as long as you like.

Our bed and breakfast provides a simple breakfast, with bread, meats and cheeses, yogurt, cereal, juice and coffee. So far we have made a sandwich from a roll and some meat and cheese to take for lunch each day. Yesterday we stopped at a small grocery store and got some fruit to add to our lunch, and at a bakery for some fresh bread too. 

Last evening (Monday) for dinner we ate at the Internet cafe so we could eat, do some work online, and still catch that last bus up the hill to our bed and breakfast. The cafe had some very nice sandwiches and a cold soda or two, which made for a good dinner. Today we are going to try and split our Internet time from dinner so we can sit in an outdoor cafe and people watch while we eat.

Yesterday, Sunday the 7th, in the evening at about 5:30 (our train was delayed), we arrived at the Bressanone train station.  Our hostess, Clara Amort, picked us up and drove us to Haus Karin, the bed & breakfast where we are staying.  Since we hadn’t really had a meal since leaving Stuttgart - we had small snacks -, we walked through a grape vinyard to a small restaurant where we had dinner.  Shortly after returning to our room, there was a terrific thunderstorm.  After a good night of sleep, we awoke to blue skies and morning mist in the valley.  This here below was the view out of one of our windows this morning:

Can you say “gorgeous” and “wow” and “beautiful”?

After breakfast we walked down the hill, a good 45 minutes, into town.  There’s a pedestrian-only zone around the center of the town, with more than its share of ancient towers, churches and shops.  In a small grocery store and then a bakery, we picked up some foods for lunch - yoghurt, cheese, bottled water, a giant Bretzel and some rolls - some of which we had for lunch, along with the sandwiches and (more) yoghurt we had prepared and taken with us from Haus Karin. 

We visited the visitor’s bureau for information on bicycles for rent, and an internet cafe.  Walking another 15 minutes or so, we found a little bar with internet access where we are allowed to connect our laptop - something that some internet cafes discourage or outright forbid.  A coke for Mark, and a cappuccino for me - life is good.

The centerpiece of our trip this year is a week spent in the Südtirol (Southern Tirol) town of Bressanone. This region is bi-cultural with strong German and Italian influences. The city is known by two names, Bressanone, in Italian, and Brixen, in German. Since I am a good mimic, and can roll my “r” when I want to, I’m able to say “Bressaonoe” just like a native.

With more than 1100 years of history, the city is rich in culture and beautiful artifacts. We spent the day wandering around the pedestrian only portion of the old city, looking at shops and stalls, and drinking in the people and atmosphere. It is such a different feeling place than anything in the United States. You know immediately that you aren’t in Kansas, or New York, or anywhere else, in the US.

After exploring for a while we sought out a Tourist Information center to ask about rental bicycles, and an Internet cafe. Our luck with finding friendly Internet cafes in Germany wasn’t very good, so we were very pleasantly surprised to fine a clean, hospitable, and friendly cafe here in Bressanone. We spent a good 90 minutes uploading pictures, checking email, and posting entries to our blog.

Sibylle discovered, through our hostess, that we can buy a 7-day bus card for only 12 Euros. We purchased a pair and then made use of them to return to our bed and breakfast this afternoon. Tomorrow we might visit the Neustift Cloister, just down the mountain from us, or perhaps a bus ride to the ski lift and gondola trip to the top. Or more exploring in the city.

 

Sibylle and I have been making good use of the inter-city trains in Europe this year.  The day we arrived we took a train from Zürich to Stuttgart, and Sunday we rode from Stuttgart to Brixen (Bressanone) in Südtirol.  Trains have several advantages (and maybe one or two minor disadvantages) not the least of which is being able to sit back and relax.  As you can see below, we’ve both taken advantage of that aspect of train travel.

 

I’ve heard stories in the past about the “ugly America” when it comes to travelers overseas. Boorish louts who assume the world will heed their beck and call simply because they are American. I’ve actually seen this in person, years ago in a marketplace on Martinique.

A cruise ship had emptied itself of 2000 passengers and the market was filled with people looking for “that” bargain to take back home. In a stall selling jewelry a particularly brassy American woman was trying to buy something, only she didn’t want the price in Eastern Caribbean money. She kept saying, louder each time, “I want the price in American money! Real money!” I figured the enterprising stall owner was going to give her an exchange rate that was very favorable to him.

Sibylle had warned me that Germans could be rude too. And today, while on the train from Stuttgart to Munich, I saw it first hand. We had tickets for the train, but no seat reservation. Without a reservation you take which ever seats are empty. We found a pair that were empty next to a reserved pair. There was a small boy in one seat, with a reservation, one other seat in the grouping of four was empty, and the other two were free. We tossed our bags into the overhead rack and settled in. Shortly there after a German woman showed up and sat in the empty seat next to Sibylle, and across from me. Sibylle asked if the reservation was for her, and the woman said yes. Sibylle then asked her if she wanted the window seat and the woman said no, she preferred the aisle. We soon found out why she had that preference.

One of the first stops the train made on its way out of Stuttgart was Plochingen, which is where the remaining reservation holder was due to get on. We hadn’t paid attention to the specific seats that were reserved, as it turns out both window seats were taken, only the aisle seats were free. I was in an aisle, but Sibylle was in the window seat. The reservation holder arrived and very abruptly and rudely demanded his seat. For a moment it looked like he was going to grab Sibylle and move her. The German woman, now wearing a self satisfied and rather smug smile, made no effort to give up the seat she had taken. Unless we could find another place to sit on the train, one of us was going to have to stand.

I looked in the neighboring cars but didn’t see anything better. Sibylle ventured father through the train and found a car at the head of the train, with compartments, most of which were only a half or third full. We moved, and had a much better place to sit as a result. It was disheartening to be treated so rudely by otherwise normal appearing people. That the young man was angry from the get go, without even a single, “excuse me, I believe that is my seat” to start the exchange, was shocking. That the older woman was so self-satisfied that she had hood-winked us out of the open seat, made us both feel used.

In the end we were fortunate. Our train was late arriving in Munich, and after we moved we were in the first car, i.e., closest to the station when the train stopped. Our departure track was next to the arrival track, but on the other side of the train. Having only one car and the engine to walk around saved us considerable time. The connection to Bressanone had waited for our train to arrive, so we made our connection - but only just.

Last night, Friday, at the end of our third day in Europe, while eating out at the excellent Thai restaurant that’s in the same building as our hotel (not connected, though), Mark and I realized that we have been eating quite internationally since arriving in Germany:  we have had Italian, Greek (once in a restaurant, and once at our beloved Gyros Ecke place in Winnenden), and Thai.  Of course, we have also already had an LKW (Leberkäswecken) - a Swabian specialty, and today some German hamburgers - which are more like a meatloaf in consistency - at Ute’s place. 

We’ve indulged in sweet Zwetschgendatschi (a type of local plum tart) and Bretzeln, fresh and still warm from the oven. 

Once in Südtirol (tomorrow evening!), we are looking forward to Italian as well as Austrian foods.

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Yesterday, at the request of her mother, Sibylle and I walked in the farm land near her home. Since she has fallen and broken her hip (more than once) and is dependent upon canes to walk, she doesn’t get out as much as she would like anymore. With us there she wanted to take advantage of having someone to lean on, so we walked for a couple hours, covering nearly three miles between Leutenbach, where Sibylle’s mother lives, and Nellmesbach, the next village to the northeast.

Visa and MasterCard make a big deal in their respective commercials about their respective exclusivity.  However, there are places were neither is accepted.  Winnenden Germany for example.  During some shopping this afternoon, we were trying to find the arch support I got here last year and have loved ever since, our Citibank card was refused.  The merchant only takes cash or a local bankcard.  We didn’t have enough Euro left and so we left the store empty handed.

A few minutes later we were trying to map out the rest of the evening, and coordinate what we wanted to do with the bus schedule so we didn’t have to walk back to our hotel, a distance of several kilometers.  We were debating whether to eat in town or at the hotel when Sibylle suddenly realized that once we bought dinner we wouldn’t have anz cash in the morning for another bus fare.  We quickly made our way to the nearest ATM and withdrew 100 €.  Now we’ve got enough on hand for dinner, and tomorrow’s bus and train fares.

Maybe Italy will be more accepting of our credit card.

Our flight from Atlanta was uneventful, and put us in Zürich just before nine am, local time. After the lengthy line and delay entering the European Union last year in Amsterdam, I was prepared for another lengthy process this morning. Instead we were whisked through immagration with nary a second glance at our passports (not even an entry stamp!), and we cleared customs in even less time as we had nothing to delcare. Compared to Amsterdam, Zürich is a dream as a port of entry.

The train from the Flughaven to the Hauptbanhof (airport to train station) was quick and efficient. By quarter to nine we were standing outside in Zürich. After exchaning some US dollars for Swiss Francs (they aren’t using Euros), we made our way to a nearby Internet cafe to check email, and make a couple of postings to our site.

We returned to the Bahnhof and strolled through a farmers market looking for some lunch. A grill with several different kinds of Wurst looked good to me, and so we each had a sausage with some mustard and a nice chunk of hard bread.

The Inter-City Express, or ICE, train this afternoon brought us north from Switzerland to Stuttgart. Riding the train in Europe is light-years beyond any train in the United States. They run on time, are clean, modern, and fast.

Although we were both pretty tired by this point, we enjoyed the scenery and the chance to relax. As an added bonus the train approached Stuttgart through Herrenberg, a medevial city we discovered last year. I was able to get several pictures of the onion dome church that sits high above the city on a bluff.

Knowing that exhaustion would overtake us soon, we checked our baggage into a locker in the Stuttgart Hauptbanhof, and headed up to Koingstrasse to get some fruit, bottled water, and a quick meal. The S-Bahn trains in Stuttgart were as efficient as ever and we reached Winnenden shortly before six pm. Sibylle’s mother was waiting for us at the station and gave us a ride to Hanweiler, a small hamlet, were we are staying for the first few nights.

After a brief visit with her mom we made plans to contact her in the morning. Showers, and a early bed time are all that’s left for today.

written in Hanweiler, Wednesday, September 3, in the evening, after a long and beautifully restoring shower.

Delta knows what every good parent knows: a hungry passenger/child is a cranky passenger/child. So, they feed you within an hour of take-off, as soon as everyone is settled in. (That’s after the initial offerings of cookies or peanuts and a drink.)

As our flight left Atlanta at 4:35 p.m. Tuesday, we were offered dinner: a choice of chicken with corn and black beans and potatoes, or tortellini with tomato sauce (and olives). Plus a small salad, a roll and butter, a piece of cheese, a cookie, and a brownie. Since Mark doesn’t care for olives, and I didn’t care for the cilantro in the sauce over the chicken, we ended up swapping dinners. There are constant offerings of drinks: water, juice, soda, and, after dinner, hot tea and coffee. I like tea - but didn’t think ahead, or think, period, to ask for decaf. One movie passed, then another, neither one interesting to me. I spent some time on the laptop, composing a posting about the sights and sounds and smells of traveling.

After what seemed like hours (but was probably just three or four) of being dead-tired but unable to sleep, I noticed that they were passing out cookies and peanuts again. From one of the hand-outs I knew that they offer small snacks half-way through the flight. It was frustrating to realize that so much time had passed already and we were only half-way there.

Mark and I had a two-seat arrangement to ourselves and tried various variations of leaning, one way then the other, cuddling up, squishing down, legs up, legs down - I think we did finally nod off during the last two hours of the flight.

Since neither Mark nor I wear a wrist watch, and with no other devices, such as cell phones, available to check the time, we were somewhat lost - time-wise. I do remember that at one point, after having dozed off on Mark’s shoulder, he moved, then opened the window covering (does that have a name?), and woke me to point to the sky, the horizon over the clouds: the faintest promise of daylight, with a bit of brighter and more orange light to the east.

Sunrise over the clouds

On the monitors, the annoying TV had finally been replaced again by a map with our route and alternating pieces of information in three languages (I now know that New Orleans is Nouvelle Orleans in French ), information concerning the time at arrival destination, speed, tail wind, etc. On the map, we saw that we were somewhere on the West coast of France, heading toward Paris.

Not long thereafter, the cabin lights came on, a rude and bright light compared to the still faint morning outside the window. Before people had a chance to fully wake up and perhaps realize that they were tired and groggy from having “slept” in an airplane seat - the luckier ones stretched out over three seats they had to themselves - breakfast was served: a warm bagel with cream cheese and preserves (Mark ate the preserves, I had the cream cheese), orange juice, and a banana, plus water and coffee or tea.

Keeping people well-fed, at least quantity-wise - I am sure one can find reason to complain about the quality of “airplane” food - is one of the wisest investments an airline can make.