The Dolomites

This area in Northern Italy is one that Rob went trekking through a few years ago and wanted to come back to. It has an interesting history in that at the end of World War 1, the region was ceded from Austria to Italy. Much of the culture and the most prominent language is German. We stayed in Bolzano which is a wonderful alpine city with the most helpful tourist office I have ever been to. It is a bicycle friendly town and we rented bikes for an entire day for a single euro. With the dismal exchange rate between the dollar and the euro, the bike rental was one of the best bargains we have encountered while in Italy. An annual festival with music, beer, bratwurst and strudel to honor Walther von der Vogelwiede was taking place over the weekend we happened to be here. It was fun to participate in an Oktoberfest like event which all of the locals as well as tourists enjoyed. I lit some candles in the Gothic Cathedral, we sampled fresh fruit and sun dried tomatoes at Piazza Erbe - an excellent open air marketplace, saw the actual corpse of the 5300 year old Otzi the Ice Man in the South Tirol Museum of Archaeology. Fascinating. One day Rob took a bus and then gondola up to Rosengarten Gruppe at the Dolomite spires and did a 6 hour hike in 3 hours. During that time I wandered around the city, looking at fashion trends, colors and jewelry. I was most excited when I found a .99 euro store and purchased 4mm and 5mm graph paper. I love how the paper in Europe is gridded. That is what I like to write best on and it is difficult to find graph paper any smaller than 1/4" in the USA. Rob is a good sport about carrying back paper for me. What I will need to figure out is how to smash the yarn I purchased into what little room I have left in my backpack. I stumbled upon two yarn stores while in Bolzano - one was a section in a domestics store. I was happy to find some needles in size 2.25 mm - that is a size that isn't sold in the USA. I bought some sock yarn and figured I was done when it came to all things fiber in Northern Italy. Wrong! The next day I literally stumbled upon Otto Von Aufschnaiter's store at Silbergasse 15/A. He has been in business since 1970 and sells only natural fibers. He had an endless selection of alpaca, wool, merino, cashmere, silk, cotton in every color imaginable! Best of all, he was set up to combine fibers into any combination desired. He helped me choose a selection of first cut alpaca and wool in 4 colors of aquamarine and lavender. He combined all 4 fibers in two 100 gram packages. I also purchased some Addi turbo needles, natural colored alpaca and some mohair-silk yarn that is screaming to be made into a shawl. Great memories of Balzano... indeed.