August 24, 2015
Day 34: Bolzano to Trento: One Ice Man, Two Drowned Rats
We were able to arrange with the hotel to leave our bikes in the cellar past check out time, so we could go to the Museum of Archeology for the Ice Man display. What it meant was carrying our gear to the cellar, so all our stuff was down there. It sounds simple, but the darn cellar was more like a coal mine - deep down and with narrow passages. There was a special gotcha about it too. The Europeans are fanatical about saving power, and use a lot of motion sensor lights. With those, the favourite gotcha is when you go into the toilet stall. In there, the sensor can no longer see you, so at the most inopportune moment, all the lights in the place turn off!
This time there was not a motion sensor - too many twists and turns - but a timer. This devilish device could not be reset until the time had run out. So the first time, the lights went out when I was in a corridor. Fortunately, I remembered the location of a light switch down there, because it was blacker than black in that basement. The second time, it got me on the winding stairs. That time, I used the autofocus assist light of my camera to rescue myself. Sheesh!
We had graciously declined the ripoff 12 euro each breakfast (croissants and coffee) at the hotel, and set off to the market to find some affordable real food. To get the ball rolling, we bought one pastry each at the Franzikaner Bakery, on the way. Thank goodness, Bolzano has many bakeries and every one we found had real (like, really real) German baking. We then passed through Walther Square and to the fairly small market. Our first choice was some large peaches. They were ripe and had a unique apricot like colour inside, but unfortunately were tasteless. We thought about buying bread, salami, and cheese, but given that the bakeries were selling this already as made up into sandwiches, we put that idea aside.
The real problem, for me anyway, was the total lack of take out coffee. The Italians, we could see, only support drinking coffee seated in a cafe. And then, the coffee cup would do better service in a doll's house. We were mulling this problem when we passed a cafe where we saw someone had had a sort of real cup of coffee. So in we went and sat down. A little discussion brought me too a semi real sized cup of coffee, and another authentic pastry! Later, on the bill, we saw my real coffee was called a Deutch (German coffee). I wonder if that is slightly derogatory in Italy, like our "Americano"?
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With a peach, two pastries, and a coffee (or hot chocolate) under our belts, we were ready to go to the Ice Man display, which opened at 10.
(Dodie's edit: Steve, who has a fixation on food and in particular pastry, omitted mentioning who and what the "Ice Man" is. So for those who may not know.....In 1991 some hikers in a high up area of the southTirol came upon a mummified body emerging from a glacier. After scientific study it was determined that this was the body of a Copper Age man, who had been frozen in the glacier for over 5000 years. His remains, the artefacts found with him and the back story are the subjects of the museum we were visiting.)
We arrived at 9:45, to find a moderate lineup. We were now sorry we had hung out in the cafe, with the German coffee. Standing in line gave a chance to look about us, and to appreciate the particular architecture of the old town area. Fortunately, the line moved into the museum fairly promptly, because we really did not have all day for this.
The museum has four floors of display, but it does not have a huge number of things to show, so it is fairly spaced out. Still, it took us two hours to absorb what we could of it. The focal point, of course, is the mummy, which is being kept in a carefully climate controlled chamber. It is quite something to look at, but there are other aspects of the whole thing that are equally fascinating: who found it, where was it found, what were the early guesses about what it was and how old it was, how was it recovered and where was it brought, where did the name Oetzi come from, how did the media sensation about this play out, what equipment did Oetzi have with him, and finally how was it determined that he was murdered and what are the the theories about how this happened?
One neat thing was that the displayed artifacts found with Oetzi - clothes, bow and arrows, drugs, firestarting equipment, etc were all the originals, themselves in climate controlled chambers as necessary. There are emergency generators on hand, and the fire department does regular drills on how to rescue the displays in case of fire.
The final thing, and really the "piece de resistance" was a life size reconstruction of Oetzi, based on the mummy and clothes as found, but also on that kind of thing you see in TV crime shows, where the skull is used to model the head and face, producing a lifelike image of the person. So there standing on a slightly raised platform, you find a lifelike model of the actual guy. It's very impressive.
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Back out on the street, we were amazed to find that the fairly empty old town had filled to the seams with people. And the museum lineup that we had thought was long, now snaked around the corner and down the block! Wow, this thing has been her for 20 years, but interest has not slackened.
We made out way though the throngs to our "favourite" pizza place, and ate the slices while walking back to the hotel. We also bought some of those sandwiches, and what may be our last German pastries for a while! (If anyone is counting, that's three today!)
Leaving town was easy, because the bike route signs begin right at the square. This bike route is so great! The smooth path and great signage continued all the way to Trento.
Again, cruising along featured vast plantations of apples, with the fruit veritably dripping from the trees. Now, as we progressed south, the apples had to share space about 50/50 with grapes. Once again, the pruning and maintenance is immaculate, and there were grapes dripping form the orderly vines.
For most of the way, the Etsch (Adige) ran beside the path, and of course the tall mountains stood at either side fo the valley. It had been raining on and off, so cloud and mist often obscured the views to the farms, houses, and castles on the steep slopes.
Of course, there were cyclists on the route, but they were more scattered on this rainy Monday. A very common type was the racer, clad in lycra, always male, and pumping like mad. But we did encounter a few cycle tourists, and even spoke to a few. Two had just met up themselves - with Peter from Leipsig and his mate from Innsbruck. Their destination was something like Portugal.
Two others, were Tony and Lukas, who we met as we approached Trento. Tony and Lukas rode along with us for longer than most people have patience. Lukas was beside me, and I learned that although from Germany he was doing a Ph.D. in Economics in Dublin, having also studied in Paris.
I really appreciated talking to Lukas, because by the time we met up it had been raining on us for a few hours, and I was soaked and tired. The conversation took my mind off this, and soon we were in Trento. There is no camping near to Trento, and too bad about the rain, because we did spot at least one great wild camp prospect. We left Tony and Lukas to search out the youth hostel, while we just carried on toward the cit centre, hoping to spot some sort of hotel.
We did see one, but bypassed it because to us it looked rather dodgy. As we rode past we noticed, though, that it was a four star. Not such good judges of hotels, I guess.
We paused on a street corner, wondering what to do next, when someone in a car pulled up and asked if we needed help. "Yes", yelped the drowned rats. So Iago and Giula parked their car, and walked over to us in the rain. They pointed out the youth hostel on Dodie's GPS, and looked up the price of the nearby Albermonaco hotel on booking.com. Since the Abermonaco was 60 euros and was right there, we decided to give it a try. Iago said he had pulled over because he saw the Bike Fridays. He is a builder of custom bikes, and adores Bike Fridays. So rain or not, we had a good chat about Bike Friday pros and cons!
At the Albermonaco the price turned out to be 90 euros (60 was for a single room). Dodie asked the man to see if they had space. He started to phone, but then offered us the room (with breakfast) for 80. Dripping on his floor, we took it!
More so than usual, we had no idea of where we were. But now we see that we are just on the edge of the old town. So tomorrow, after presumably all the croissants and coffee we can eat, we will go have a look. Then yes, as always, we're outta here!
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Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 1,714 km (1,064 miles)
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