Christmas markets are a thing in Europe, particularly in Germany and
Austria, but Italy is known for having some great ones as well. Last year, due
to a crazy combination of timing, school, Tony's work schedule, and our awesome
vacation to Malta, we completely missed out on this entire phenomenon. First
world problems, I know. This meant it was very high on my list this year. I
thought I'd have more time, but it has a way of slipping away from me these
days. Fortunately, we were able to jump on a group trip with Lucas (of Cooking With Lucas fame)
and head to Bolzano - the largest and most famous Christmas market in Italy!
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| Mercatino di Natale, Bolzano Italy |
In Italian, a Christmas market is a Mercatino di
Natale. I learned that in Bolzano, in the Dolomites of the South Tyrol Province
South of Austria, Germany is one of the official languages. It still trips me
up to see signs in anything other than English, but as you venture closer to
other countries or apparently, provinces with secondary languages, it's even
stranger to see multilingual signs. My brain is getting very full of important
words like gelato and formaggio, but I managed to make room for another phrase:
Christkindlmärkte. Just don't ask me to pronounce it. I know another phrase but
hadn't been able to put it to use yet: vin brûlé. That is Italian for
mulled wine! (In German: gluhwein.) Never fear, I have now partaken of
both the red and white varieties in an official setting! With a bonus tasting
of hot apple cider with rum. Yum yum yum.
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| Pretzel, speck, & cheese sandwich + Gluhwein |
Man, I got started talking about food and drinks and totally distracted
myself from where I was going in my story. I think I jumped ahead of myself a
bit. Anyway, it took us a little more than two hours to get to Bolzano. I
drowsed a bit on the bus, which isn't really surprising since I had nightmares
the night before and also took two Benadrylls before we hit the road; better to
sleep than have motion sickness! Plus, I have a sore ear and I thought the
allergy medication might help relieve some of the pressure. Anyway, the drive
seemed easy. I woke up somewhere East of Lake Garda (and recognized exactly
where we were, BECAUSE I AM AN AWESOME ADVENTURER!) just in time to see a
fantastic monastery built into the hillside. I expected the drive to be a very
twisty-curvy one, with lots of up and downs, but it was all highway and pretty
straight shooting. Our bus driver did an expert job backing the bus into a spot
in a parking garage, and we set off in the freezing cold -2 degree weather
(okay, fine, -2 degrees Celsius, but still) to find the Christmas market. We
parked about five blocks away and just followed the crowd. The idea was to go
to a microbrewery for lunch, but it ended up being really crowded so we settled
for street food instead.First order of business: red vin brûlé and a pretzel
sammich with cheese and speck. FYI: Speck is a cured meat similar to bacon or
prosciutto, and is native to the Tyrol region. That was a darn good pretzel,
the best I've had since Oktoberfest in Munich! (Dang. Please don't think I'm an
asshole just for having some awesome adventures. After all, I had to wait
fourteen months (and one really bad gas station quality pretzel) before
experiencing pretzel bliss again.) Next up: that necessary evil, a public
bathroom. Surprisingly, for the low price of 70 Euro cents, I went through a
turnstile and marched right up to a clean, empty stall, and then washed my
hands with soap and hot water. A+, Bolzano, top marks for bathroom quality.
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| That right there is a nice steamy mug of gluhwein! |
After that, we wandered around. The main event happens in Piazza
Walther, anchored by the 14th century Assumption of Our Lady Cathedral, with
smaller clumps of vendors in other piazzas and scattered throughout the streets
of town. It was fairly crowded despite the chill, and it's a great place to people-watch
even if you don't feel like buying anything. We saw lots of Christmas
ornaments, from hand-carved and laser-cut wooden ones to delicate tatted lace
to hand-painted bulbs. There were linens, candles, and lots of local meats and
cheeses. We saw kids riding a miniature train - and miniature ponies! I think
the horse owners as well as parents are very trusting; the parent would pay,
some adult would help the kid onto the pony, and the owner would hand the reins
over to the parents for a few minutes and the parent would then guide the
animal up and down the street. Everywhere we went, you could find artisan bread
and pretzels and sweets, plus did I mention the vin brûlé?! One of my friends
had a white hot chocolate that looked delicious, and he said it was amazingly
creamy in texture and just the right amount of sweet. I didn't partake of any
hot chocolate, white or otherwise, but I did sample some delicious hand rolled
truffles. Okay fine, I did more than sample. I gobbled up a traditional dark
chocolate (fondente) and a coffee-flavored one, and Mr. Moneybags Husband was
paying since I left my cash at home, and he bought two of each so we wouldn't
even have to share! I'm pretty sure that's a testament to his generosity, and
not selfishness of wanting his own truffle...We saw lots of vendors roasting
chestnuts, and smelled some heavenly combination of cinnamon and vanilla and
maybe nutmeg? that meant there were candied nuts for sale, too. There were
gingerbread and sacher torts, too. Sacher torts are an Austrian chocolate cake
with apricot jam or preserves, topped with dark chocolate frosting or ganache,
and you can find them all over the Alps. In addition to the Christmas theme, we
also saw some vendors with more common goods you'd see in any Italian outdoor
market, namely fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
We already did our Christmas shopping for this year, and didn't really
see anything that called to us for ourselves or for next year's gifts, so after
some browsing (and some more of that delicious wine stuff) we proceeded to the
South Tyrol Archaeology Museum. This museum was created specifically to house a
pretty fantastic archaeological find: Ötzi – the Iceman. Otzi was discovered in 1991 and it turns
out he lived about 5,000 years ago, sometime in between 3350 and 3100 BCE. The
museum was very interesting and respectful, and the body is preserved in a
special Han Solo cryogenic chamber - very cold, very humid, minus Han Solo -
with a little window for viewing. You can read and hear all about the discovery
and recovery, as well as view artifacts like his leggings, bearskin cap, and dagger.
He also had specially made ember bags and tools. You can't see it, but you can
hear all about the food remnants found in his stomach and intestines and cereal
grains caught in the fibers of his clothing and pouches. And guess what: Otzi
has 61 tattoos! They are positioned to correspond with modern acupuncture lines
and were pretty certainly associated with some sort of therapeutic treatment.
Brown-eyed Otzi had wavy, shoulder-length brown hair and a beard, was an inch
shorter than me with the same size feet, probably weighed less than I do, and
died when he was about 45 years old. There is an incredible life-size
reproduction/recreation of what Otzi probably looked like, based on all sorts
of fancy technology that I'm too ignorant to understand, much less sum up in a
blog post. In short: it's way cool.
Otzi is important for many reasons; his was the first
archaeological dig on a glacier, and as a result of his recovery and
radiocarbon-dating methods, the timing of the Copper Age was revised by a thousand
years, indicating it started much earlier than we previously thought. Otzi is
also special because of the way he was preserved - naturally, in ice, rather
than through artificial means or in peat. That means all of the organic
materials haven't really been interfered with over time. Also, scientists and
archaeologists didn't recognize signs at the initial time of recovery, but due
to the nature of wounds, they were able to narrow down his cause of death
somewhat. He was discovered on a known traverse/trade route. He had
an arrowhead buried in his shoulder, which led to a big blood loss, fractures
on his face and skull that occurred within 24 hours of his death, a significant
gash on his hand indicating hand-to-hand combat, and a dislocated shoulder. Speculation
is that he had some sort of an incident (perhaps a fight?) the day before he
died and then went to an area where he felt safe. At some point, he ate a meal,
and then within an hour of eating was shot with the arrow and died. The
dislocated shoulder could have happened during that fall, or if he tried to rip
the arrow from his own body (scientifically plausible). The arrowhead was
found, but no remnants of the actual arrow itself, so somebody tried to pull it
out at some point. Then, after he died, he must have been covered with snow and
then ice very quickly, otherwise the elements and animals might have interfered
with his preservation.
Whoa. So, um, yeah. Sorry to get all gruesome in the
middle of a happy Christmas post. But it was fascinating!
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| Chocolate, Nut, & Marzipan Vendors at the Bolzano Christmas Market |
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| My favorite alley of decorations! Giant pretzels! |
Anyway, after we visited the museum, we did a few cloverleaf loops
through the city and visited some of the smaller piazzas, one of which was specifically
devoted to artisans. That square had wooden games, jewelry, felted wool clothes
& ornaments, glassware, and all sorts of other cool handmade stuff. The
town of Bolzano also has plenty of non-Christmas shopping available, everything
from H&M and Aldo and Sephora to Armani and hand-cobbled shoes. I was quite
impressed with the decorations around the entire city. Each street had hanging
decorations, either lights or ornaments or some such. I saw innertubes twisted
and painted like pretzels, bouncy balls painted like ornaments, singing angels,
whispy white paper swirls, and lots of red and gold. Many of the trees were
decorated with lights and ornaments too, including one giant potted olive tree
with red boxes hung throughout. Even buildings were decked out with lights and
3D ornaments on the walls. All afternoon we were pleasantly taunted (if such a
phrase isn't an oxymoron) by whispers of live brass music. It was hard to pin
down a location or even a direction for the music, but we finally found it coming
from a third-story balcony. The song they were playing when we honed in on the
band? Feliz Navidad. Because of course.
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| Hopfen & Co. Brewery. Go there. |
Around 3pm, we made our way to the Bozner Bier Hopfen & Co
Brewery. It's in an 800-year old building and features Tyrolean and Italian
cuisine, plus of course beer! (Birra in Italian, Bier in German, see why my
brain is so fulllll?) Still stuffed from my pretzel sandwich, I settled for a
radler and an endive salad with black olives, sundried tomatoes, and goat
cheese. I was not disappointed. Tony went for a dark beer, a dunkel, and
goulash with bacon beer dumplings. He loved the lager, which even I enjoyed
despite not generally being a fan of dark beers, and REALLY liked the goulash.
The bacon beer dumplings were a little heavy, though tasty. We sat and visited
with a few of our friends, and then we split the vanilla gelato with hot
raspberry sauce. And the angels rejoiced. I don't know what kind of witchcraft
went into the creation of that ice cream or the sauce, but it was amazing! If I
ever go back to Bolzano, I would eat there again in a heartbeat.
We spent a few final minutes meandering through town as we made our way
back to the bus, snapping pictures and purchasing our truffles, and then headed
home. I hereby deem our first Christmas market outing a tremendous success!
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| Yummy, yummy chocolate! Bonus tidbit: 'Chiave' is Italian for 'key' |
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