Memories of Italy: Bolzano, Winter 2005

All this writing of and going to Christmas markets has brought to mind plenty of memories of Italy. I went to two Christmas markets while there, one at the very beginning of the season with my German friend Franzi, in Bologna, and one in the Trentino region of Italy. I took a train with a small bunch of other foreign students to a city called Bolzano, where the smallish Christmas Market is held in a piazza. It had snowed recently, which made it seem even more seasonal.

Somehow, a fellow student I didn't know very well, and I got behind the others, perhaps because we decided to start with some spiced white wine. She was hungry, so we got pretzels, too. We stood and enjoyed those for awhile, and when we wandered deeper into the piazza, stopped at another stall that sold mulled wine (the usual, red kind), to try that too. Then we got to the food stall, which sold polenta (there was this huge vat of the stuff, the woman standing over it and stirring it looked like a domestic, winter witch) and blue cheese, together - as well as German sausages. Yum. She got a sausage, I got the polenta. They spooned so much of it onto my plate, and it and the cheese was so rich, I couldn't finish it. Later we found the rest of our group, who'd seen everything else, the decorations and toys and incense and whatnot, and had stopped to see the musicians.

We ate (and drank) our way through the market. And it was excellent.

Doing some research for ITER today, I came across maps of Italy's regions, which is what brought this on. Here's Bolzano, and just south is the Veneto, which is where I studied and lived for four months. Bolzano is the one with the balloon, and Verona is almost directly south, in the foothills.

I think we went skiing once at Lago di Garda, but that's a story for another day...