Ice was our theme today. Along with howling winds and rain, last night's storm left snow and ice on the mountains just above our elevation, making our view even more striking. The clouds gave way to sunshine by mid morning, though, so we took the folks to Bozen/Bolzano (all locations here have both German and Italian names), 40 minutes by train, to see Otzi, the "iceman."
Otzi, around 5000 years old, lives in his own archeology museum in Bozen. He died, possibly evading captors, on a glacier just above us. His body and gear is so well preserved (note that people don't find 5000 year old corpses just every day, even in this fairly-tale land) because of a serious string of coincidences, including the part of the glacier on which he died and the fact that a snowstorm was probably in process at the time of death. If you're interested, here's a nice article about recent DNA discoveries: http://news.yahoo.com/dna-data-helps-flesh-otzi-alpine-iceman-161516817.html
While the folks were at the museum, S, J, and I shopped at the market and ate gelato at a cafe (the third on a three-cafe-day). While the little guy will probably think seeing a frozen dead guy is the highlight of his life in a few years, we decided that eis (the German for gelato) would be of more interest than the iceman. S and I had already seen Otzi, anyway.
Bozen is a nice town--two major piazzas and about three cafes for every person. My kind of town.
Above is cafe #1, waiting for the train with Grandma.
Chestnut Horse likes pesto at cafe #2.
Me too, little kid.
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