As demented as it is, I consider my greatest travel accomplishments to be trips within trips within trips.
Today, my daughter and I (barely) pulled it off.
We are in Germany for our family reunion… so why not go to Innsbruck, Austria to marinate in some Hapsburgs first?
And it stands to follow that if we are already in Innsbruck, why wouldn't we hustle down to Bozen, Italy and see Ötzi the Ice Man?
And hey, if we are already in Bozen, wouldn't it also make sense to take the gondola up to Oberbozen for dinner?
So we took the cheap Flixbus to Innsbruck, shacked up at the train station Ibis, then grabbed an even cheaper early morning Flixbus to Bozen, and finally hustled up a few Italian Dolomites in a gondola to visit Oberbozen for dinner.
I'm not a MONSTER. I did buy the girl some currants and apricots from fruit stands to eat along the way. And a cheese pretzel.
And up in Oberbolzen we pretty much discovered heaven. It was 15 degrees cooler than the valley, and huge fields of wildflowers welcomed us, as well as the dramatic Dolomites, and the strange “earth pyramids.” There were baby alpacas, too!
Lulled into the peace of the mountainside, I pulled a Maria von Trapp and lost track of time. Because of course we fell in love with a dog named Sarah. She is a mutt rescued from the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain when an itinerant tattoo artist discovered her wandering alone. We had to hear every detail about this woman and her dog, obviously.
So we didn't look at the time until we got off the gondola in Bozen. Yikes! If we didn't skedaddle, we were going to miss the back to Austria!
We began dodging around the streets of Bozen, looking for a quick ride to the South Bozen bus station in time for our Flixbus back to Innsbruck.
I tried to call an Uber (ha ha, no, dumb American), and I harangued several bus drivers, “Fahren Sie nach Bozen Süd?!?” None did.
Finally, the South Tyrol transit app informed me that ONE RANDOM BUS in the whole city would get us where we needed to go: the B200. It was at a strange, alternate bus stop in front of a church, and we hightailed it over.
The Italian bus driver was exceptionally nice to this freaked out woman blathering in iffy German/horrible Italian and her exhausted daughter. Eventually, through some elaborate sign language, he indicated he WAS driving to the Bozen Süd station, and he WOULD take us there for free, as long as we stopped trying to speak Italian.
“Grazi Prego!!!” I shouted (so embarrassing) and leapt onto his bus.
I write this now on the Flixbus back to Innsbruck, Amelia asleep in my lap. We will continue our adventure tomorrow, probably with a day trip to Hall, and hey, while we're there…
My stomach hurts as you painted word pictures that I felt like I had the joy of being in your backpack. Pls pls pls share the gifting God gave you and WRITE A BOOK OR THREE, including all the distractions and adventures that capture your mind, heart and soul along the way. Also, maybe an alpaca for an assistant? Pet and type.