Yesterday, our p-day, we went with the Salatini to Brixen (German name) or Bressanone (Italian name), which is about 3.5 hours (normally, it actually took us 5 because of heavy traffic) north east, in the Dolomites, which are alps between Italy and Austria. It reminded me of the Columbia River Gorge, between Oregon and Washington, where we used to go from Cottage Grove to visit Myrna's parents in Richland, when the kids were small. This part of Italy was in Austria before the First World War. It is a city of only about 20,000, but the Alpine German Mission has two sets of missionaries there. (We usually don' put them in cities of less than 50k.) Effective in Sept. we will transfer this city to our mission, and we will be taking over the two apartments from that mission. About 75% of the people speak German, so all the signs, etc., are in German (the four missionaries all speak German), but it is in Italy and everyone also probably speaks Italian. President Allen asked us to go check it out and take pix of the apartments so we can start binders for them. (I have binders for all of our apartments, including their rental contacts, utility payments, etc.) So we had a nice visit to a beautiful place within our mission. We tried to take the "freeway" two lanes on both sides nice of a nice highway, but it was so slow we got off and took small country roads, sometimes having to follow farmers on tractors, and many bikers. They were having an annual race in Brixen,so there was probably a lot of traffic for that. Unfortunately, most of my pix were taken out the window as Anziano Salitini drove our car (he likes to drive, he was a taxi driver in San Francisco, as well as a junior high teacher). So here are some pix.
At about Verona, going east, we turn north, and you can see the mountains in the background, going north, and the start of heavy traffic, sometimes stopping.
We followed this tour bus a long time, it is from Hungary, and, as you can see, their English is not perfect, but they try.
Along the way, the other side of the freeway (much less traffic coming south than going north,) was one little town with an old church after another.
We saw many medieval castles up against the mountains, and there was field after field of wine grapes and, starting a little north, in what is called the Alto Adige (high Adige River), apple trees laden with red and green apples.
We got off the freeway and on to side roads to get away from the traffic. We had to go north through Trento, or Trent in English. You should Google Council of Trent, one of the Catholic Church's most important councils, held in the 1500s, where they acknowledged the Reformation and how they would fight against it.
We had to be brave to get around farmers on their tractors. I suspect they use the device behind to spray trees or grape vines, or something else farmery like that.
Another castle on a hill, south of Trento.
More grapes, both white and red, and little towns with churches. The farther north we got the more onion dome like the tops of the bell towers were, which is more typical of Austria. Innsbrook is only a couple of hours north of here.
Lots of bikers on the roads.
We crossed on bridges the Adige river many times, as it snakes down the valley.
There were many, many fields of apple trees, but they were hard to take pix of, because it was hard to stop. The trees are all about 6 to 8 feet high and only about 3 or 4 feet in diameter, and seem to be attached to poles, but are loaded with big (for this time of year) apples, both green and red. There were many with netting over them, to keep the birds away. The Alto Adige is famous for its apples, and every part of Italy grows grapes for wine.
You may have to enlarge this to see it. We were about to go through a tunnel, this is the freeway, and there are many tunnels on it, which the side roads (which are ancient) don't have. You can see above the mountain there is a church, and there were castles like that too.
The new highway was built so close to this church, they had to remove some of it, which we saw when we came back on the other side, later in the evening.
Even though this is a little blurry, you can see the netting above the apple trees, which they grow up the side of the mountain.
On the way back we tried to visit this castle, but they were having a race and the side road was blocked and by the time we would have made it up to the castle, it would have been closed, so we weren't able to tour it on this trip, we obviously want to go again.
Off the main road going into Brixen.
We got to the missionary house, which was easy to find in the middle of town, and the four missionaries were eagerly waiting for us. This is outside their apartment building, there are two apartments on their same floor, with two missionaries in each. Left to right, they are from the US (El Paso, TX), Peru, Germany and England, who all speak German.
I took pictures of everything in both apartments, for our binders, to show what was there when we got the apartment. I will not post many of them, because of space and you would be bored, but this is a typical, but nice, missionary apartment kitchen.
View out their kitchen window, you can see the cathedral towers in the back ground, and we easily walked from there to the Domplaz (German), or the piazza del Duomo, in Italian, after we took the apartment pix. The big, old, building in front of the cathedral is the bishop's house, which is a visitable museum (6 euros each), which we did not have time to tour, but from the pictures, it is very interesting.
View out the back balcony of the missionary apartment, I used the tele on my point and shoot Canon camera to take the other houses out, but there are these little churches with tall towers everywhere.
For you future missionaries, remember this. When you have visitors who will take pix of your apartment, clean them up and make your bed. One missionary, the guy from England, even laid out his pajamas. You can see that they do not have a drier (they have a washer) and they dry their clothes on these drying racks. which our missionaries also use. (Senior missionaries have driers.)
This is a "new" apartment building, for Italy, built in, as the sign on the side says, built in 1896.
In the cathedral square, they were set up for a race, and we actually watched the winner come in. He must have been really fast, because we were watching for quite a while and No. 2 did not come in by the time we left.
Of course, we went inside the cathedral and I snapped this pix, which blurred because it wasn't very light in there and I couldn't use flash, the organ in he back of the church. It is more Austrian than typical Italian, but then, it was built in the 1600s when this was part of the Austrian empire.
There was another church next to the cathedral, but they were restoring it so we could not go in and look around, only through the window.
It was pretty dusty where they were working, and they had the artwork, etc., covered in plastic.
There was a graveyard, where they had a monument to the soldiers from this town who died during the Second World War. They were on the German side. I believe the German above the dying soldier reads, "Our Father, we have come into Thy Kingdom" and the names are listed.
As I have mentioned before, city water in fountains, in Italy, is generally always drinkable. Here they had a sign saying it was, including German, Italian and English. It was cold and tasted like mountain water.
The bishop's house had a large vegetable and herb garden.
Including fruiting lime or lemon trees.
On the way home, another castle to try to come back and see another day.
Back of another tour bus, this one from Germany, according to the license plate, but with the Matterhorn pictured, a mountain sheep, and hello from Heidi, who we expected to see bounding down the mountain side at any time.
It was another wonderful adventure in Italy on our P-day.
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