Tyrol Über Alles

Monday was travel day – packed up and drove to Italy ( country #8 in our all-time van list).

A tedious journey – the Brenner Pass was basically a 30 mile traffic jam owing to ‘ improvements‘. Brenner Impasse, more like. Some bright spark in Transport Planning ( no, probably not him,)  had hit on a novel delaying tactic.   At one point on the steep climb, they insisted heavy traffic switch to the outside (“fast”) lane , and cars to the “slow lane”  … and then back again a few miles on. 

How we laughed at the tailback-larious results !

Especially when we crawled past a static lorry whose brand advertising proclaimed ” Immer in Bewegung”  ( Always on the move ). In your dreams, pal…..

To be fair, it is impressive to see the scale of the infrastructure projects being successfully completed in some really challenging landscapes. All through our entry Italy there were works to tunnel through hills and move traffic from passing though villages.

One surprising thing was that – it didn’t feel like we were in Italy. The scenery was similar to Austria. The buildings were similar, wooden chalets and church spires. The signs were still in German – albeit now in German AND Italian versions. Max had told us that Tyrol has a strong local identity, and here in Süd Tyrol it clearly trumped any new-fangled notions of national borders. ( In fact there was literally no sign of the border as we ( presumably) left Austria –  just a large shopping centre) . The Wikipedia page explains the odd ” autonomous province” status of the area – I was, as usual, utterly ignorant of it.

But as we proceeded into the Dolomites from the Alps  we started to see the jagged mountain peaks for which it is famous.

Once we parked up in our new home , I took a little stroll into the village . Imagine my delight on seeing that we are staying near to ……

So if anyone asks where I went on my hols, you can just tell them ‘ to Bergerhof ‘.

( and if that’s not worth a good ”  fnaaaar !”, I don’t know what is ). 

So – tomorrow we will try a bit of a hike , but for this evening,   I got the old guitar out for some practice. It attracted unexpected attention :

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( you can stop rolling your eyes now)

Night night .