Free Travel #2 (Part 3)

To readers eager for group updates, I apologize for all the details about my family's travels, but members of my family stateside are clamoring for information, so please bear with me. After this post, I'll be back to the group.

Saturday morning, October 18, we checked out of our hostel in Padua, but before leaving town we walked over to the church of St. Anthony, which is the burial site of St. Anthony of Padua and one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Christendom. Anthony was a 13^th-century Franciscan who is supposed to have been one of the most powerful preachers of all time. He was canonized soon after his death, and this church was begun immediately. It is quite large, so even though there was a service underway when we entered, we were fairly unobtrusive. We visited the tomb and the relics chamber before leaving the church, checking out Donatello's Gattamelata (the first full-sized bronze equestrian statue to be cast in a thousand years) in the piazza outside. Then we visited an open-air market to buy some gloves, and left town for the South Tyrol.

The South Tyrol (also called Alto-Adige) is the northeastern part of Italy. From the Middle Ages until 1919 it was Austrian territory, but Italy got it at the end of World War I. The population is still largely German-speaking. Our purpose in going was to visit Europe's largest alpine meadow, the Alpe di Siusi. We stayed in a small town called Castelrotto (Kastelruth), one of the most picturesque mountain towns I have ever seen. We slept in a bed-and-breakfast operated as an appendage to a family farm, and the farmer took the kids into the barn to see their cows (about 30). On our arrival Saturday afternoon we took a chair lift from Castelrotto up to a spot on the lower edge of Alpe di Siusi where there was a hikers' hut, a playground, and a half-dozen goats. We actually got to eat Wienerschnitzel in Italy, and the scenery was beautiful. After coming back down the chair lift, we did some grocery shopping, checked into our B&B on the edge of town, and then walked back into the town center to take a look at things. Most of the buildings are 19^th-century but look as though they are from an earlier period.

Sunday morning we went back into town to see the locals turn out for Mass in traditional clothing (a tip from our guidebook). The church in the town square was completely packed, all the proclamations of the death of religion in Europe notwithstanding. We stayed inside the church for the first few minutes of the service and then left for the cable car in the neighboring town that would take us up to the main part of Alpe di Siusi. The town of Compatsch at the meadow's head is at about 1500 meters elevation. From there we took a chair lift up to a plateau at about 2100 meters and hiked a loop trail for a couple of hours. We had one incredible vista after another, and even though lugging strollers over rocky parts of the trail was not fun, the experience was well worth the effort. In the late afternoon we rode the chair lift and cable car back down to our car and drove back to Castelrotto. We had a nice evening at the farm and were able to have a worship service for our family.

Monday morning we went into town one more time, primarily to check out a woodcarver's shop we had noticed Saturday and a museum dedicated to the town's claim to fame, a folk-music band called Kasteruth-Spatzer. Apparently these guys are the hottest thing since sliced bread in the German-speaking world, having put out best-selling albums for 25 years or more. One reason we took an interest in them is that their annual hometown festival/concert (which had occurred the week before our visit) takes place at the farm where we stayed, and we had seen lots of photographs of them already. Our hostess had told us at breakfast that this most recent festival had drawn 50,000 people over three days! After visiting the museum—yes, we bought some music—we got back in the car and spent about five hours driving back to Citerna.