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It has now been four months since we returned home. Plenty has happened in that time, and yet here I am still banging away about a trip that lasted six weeks. There are many reasons for that, I think. A big personal one is simply that I want to catalogue as much of it for myself as I can. Write down all my memories, thoughts, and impressions so that they get that much stronger within my mind, and, failing that, so that future Damian can revisit them here. Find and remember and relive these experiences whenever I/he wishes.
Another part of it is that trips like these ones are a story unto themselves. A short but real fantasy when we get to shed our regular lives and live a different existence for a while. That fascinates me. It’s a reminder that none of this is fixed. That even though we all have our routines and habits and attachments, they’re only as set in stone as we want them to be, and if we so choose they could become as light as dander and float away, even if only temporarily.
I’m also fascinated by the fact that while you’re on a holiday, that is your reality. There’s no two ways about it. You are there. You are eating, breathing, waking, walking, and living in these locations, part of the fabric of them. And that, even if it may feel like a passing dream, it is just as real as your life back home. That too is a reason to write it all down. So that I know it was real, that it had weight, that I was there and I did those things. I lived that reality.
Lastly, holidays are just fun to write about, because they’re, well, fun. They are a short window where we choose to fully indulge. To let go. To spend each day having adventures and eating delicious foods and, maybe most importantly, simplifying our existences down to one place, one day, and the people we’re with. They rule, and I hope you’ve had even a fraction of the enjoyment hearing about my holiday as I have living and writing about it.
So, all that said, let’s finish things off. Let’s do this one last time. Let’s head back to the Dolomites.
We were leaving Ortisei. It had served us well in our short time there but now we were heading to our final stop, deeper into the mountain range. The next town we were heading for was Cortina D'Ampezzo, also known as The Queen of the Dolomites. It is situated on the Boite river, and is an upscale summer and winter sport resort known for its skiing trails, scenery, accommodation, shops, and for its jet setting Italian aristocratic crowds. We are neither Italian, jet-setters, or aristocratic, and so it was a good thing we were only spending about fifteen minutes there. Instead, we were going higher, to stay in the mountains themselves, specifically in a hotel situated on the slopes of the Cristallo Mountain.
To drive from Ortisei to Cortina would take roughly an hour. The common advice when visiting the Dolomites is to hire a car, but, in a rare display of stubbornness from Holly and I, we instead chose to rely on public transport. This meant that our trip, made worse because we were travelling on a Sunday, took roughly four and a half hours door to door, and consisted of five different legs of transport.
In the days previous, we had looked into some other options, but when we discovered that any version of someone else driving us there, be it taxi or transfer, would cost us upwards of thousands of dollars for this one hour drive, we chose to embrace the longer commute. Instead, we paid zero dollars, thanks to receiving travel cards as part of our welcome pack from our Ortisei accommodation, and enjoyed a morning spent hopping around the countryside, watching it pass by through the windows of our various vehicles.
It started with us once more walking down a hill that had already become familiar and which we may never see again, to a bus stop. After a short wait, we flagged down our first bus and started our journey. We travelled for forty minutes until we reached the town of Klausen, and there we enjoyed a fifteen minute walk across the river and through the tiny town to the train station. We had some time to kill as we waited for transport number two, and so Holly read her book and I went about posting a previous Stray Thoughts. The day, thankfully, was blue skied and sunny. The train pulled up, and we, along with a few local families, climbed on board a carriage full of people and mountain bikes. Then it was a twenty minute ride to Franzensfeste. Here, we swapped one train for another and continued on our way, this time travelling for an hour and fifteen minutes until we reached the town of Toblach.
From a quick google, photos of this region are gorgeous, and looking out the window of our fourth transport, a bus, I remember it being green and lush and inviting, but we had another destination in mind and so maybe we’ll find our way back there another day. This almost final leg took us forty five minutes, and then we were winding up into the Queen of the Dolomites, Cortina D'Ampezzo. We made our way through the bustling town until we reached the bus stop, and from there we were able to hire a taxi to take us on our fifth and final leg. The driver drove us up for twenty minutes, winding around mountain roads as we watched the buildings fall away to be replaced with trees and rocks. We pulled up into the carpark of our newest and final accommodation, grabbed our bags, paid our driver, and found ourselves looking up at a big blocky building spotted with windows, nestled easily amongst the mountains. Our home for the next few days.
Except, our temporary home wasn’t ready yet. After walking through the doors and speaking to a harried young woman, we were dismissed back outside as we waited for our room to be ready. Thankfully, there was a cafe attached to the hotel that we could wait in, and so, we did. We drank coffee, then beer, (our wait would prove to be several hours) and looked out at the surrounding mountains and the one other building in the vicinity; an abandoned chalet across the road, ominous and mysterious and begging to be explored.
Waiting complete, we headed back inside where the still harried young woman greeted us as if for the first time. After reminding her who we were and of our booking she confirmed our room was ready and we went into the hotel proper.
The hotel, while set up with all the amenities you’d expect of a hotel, also felt like a school camp. This was largely thanks to the communal eating. With only a few other establishments within a twenty minute drive, most people staying at the hotel were also provided with breakfast and dinner, with it being an easy, and likely expected, option to choose when booking. So every morning and every evening we would all head down to the dining room where we would get shown to a seat and then be served our preselected breakfast or dinner from that day's options. At first it was novel and fun, but by our third day there it was slightly less so. We’re not big restaurant goers and so moving through the rigamarole of it all was a bit taxing. What remained interesting was the people watching.
It is a curious space, a hotel dining room deep in the Dolomites. While the people are all there for the same reason, the spectrum of folks passing through is wide and varied. They have come, like us, from all parts of the world. They are young and old. Families, friend groups, solo travellers, and couples. Some are earthy and outdoorsy, others flashy fashionistas. Some loud and abrasive, others soft spoken and solemn.
One of the most interesting to me was a couple that looked entirely out of place. A man and a woman, both too old to do the long mountain walks that drew most people there at that time of year, and both dressed like they were staying in a five star hotel in Paris, not a three star B&B on the side of a mountain road. What was curious too, was the preferential treatment they were getting. The staff rushed and gathered around them, ready to serve their every whim, whether it be off menu options or small bottles of champagne.
My presumption is that they owned the establishment, that was the only conclusion I could come to, but perhaps they simply liked being fancy fish in a humble pond and had paid a bit extra for some VIP treatment. I will never know. Not will I know if the stories and assumptions I made up about the rest of our fellow diners were also true. Or what conclusions they likewise drew about me. Knowing the truth when it comes to people watching isn’t the point. It’s more about enjoying a delicious bit of private invention and, here and there, a sprinkling of judgement.
Anyway, back to our room. It was your standard hotel room, but welcome for that, with a comfortable bed, just enough space, and a terrific view of trails, trees, and mountains. We had a few walks planned in the coming days, one quite big one and our prime reason for coming to this location, but looking at the weather across our few days here, things were looking dire. Already out our window, the sky was deeply grey. Dark and threatening, and sitting heavy on the mountain faces. This was worrying but we gave ourselves a pep talk, deciding that no matter the weather we would head out on our pre-planned walks and face what came.
Thankfully, the prediction was that each morning would be, if not clear, then at least not raining, with the heavier stuff coming in the early afternoon. That worked for us, we are morning people, and so the morning it would be. For that first day though, the afternoon was already upon us and so we decided to do a short walk from our hotel. We consulted a large and confusing map outside that seemed to talk of trails but did so in Italian and which could have just as easily been talking about the local fauna and flora. We interpreted it as best we could and headed out. We very quickly got lost. There were markers for a trail but they were few and far between, and with the earth around us grey and dusty, it was easy to confuse natural trails for the man made one. And then amongst all this, somehow we found ourselves walking into a construction area. Large pillars burst out of the ground, leading down the cliff face. The ground underneath was churned and chaotic, and a large temporary river ran between it all. Seeing a road at the bottom of all this, we followed the pillars and the river down. This was perhaps not the best idea as the river proved cumbersome. The not-a-path criss crossed back and forth over it, meaning so did we, taking big jumps from uncertain rocks. As for the pillars, we later learned that they would eventually be the foundation of a new chairlift, one getting built for the upcoming winter olympic games.
We made it to the road and from there found a trail, not our original one but one that would at least see us back to the hotel. The clouds descended further as we walked, their faces coming down to meet us, and by the time we made it back to the hotel they were right outside our door, dark and thick and full of rain.
The following morning, they had pulled back to hang around the trees outside our window, waiting for us. But we had made our pact, and so we dressed, and prepared, and after a quick breakfast and a short stint of people watching, we were on our way.
This day, day two, would be the big walk, the reason why we, and many others, travel to Cortina in the first place. All so we could hike around Tre Cime di Lavaredo. Tre Cime di Lavaredo translates to the Three Peaks of Lavaredo, and, as their names suggests, are three distinctive battlement-like peaks that rise on the southern edge of the extensive pinnacle plateau. They are so distinctive, that they each have names. There is Cima Piccola or Little Peak, Cima Grande or Big Peak, and Cima Ovest or Western Peak, and yes, I agree, when it came to naming these peaks, those doing so weren’t overly inventive.
The trek around them is even further into the mountain range that where we were located and so, bereft of a car, we once again relied on the whims of public transport. Thankfully, and truly luckily as the service had only started back up the week before, there was a bus stop right outside our accommodation. We headed to it, waited, and before long a bus pulled up. There was some confusion on our end, both that the bus we were getting on was the right bus and how the ticket system worked – the tickets themselves were not dissimilar to raffle tickets – but with some help from the driver we were able to figure it out and were on our way. This was one of two buses we would need to get to where we were going, and so halfway through, at the base of the plateau, we exited to wait for another bus. Around us were trees and fields, and to our delight, a trio of donkeys. They were amiable to being fed some grass through the fence and were good company as we waited for our next bus. It arrived, we boarded, and headed up into the clouds.
On that drive we went first through the clouds and then above them, and by the time we pulled up ready to begin our walk, we could see the tips of mountains stretching out across the horizon below us, clouds snaking through them like rivers. These mountains are grey and white, classic dolomites, with a snow strewn brown and green landscape below them and a blue sky above that looked like chiselled ice. We pottered about the ridgetop, taking photos, awed and amazed and just pleased that the weather was for the moment mostly being kind. We then found the start of our trail and began to walk.
Walking is many things and means a lot to me, so much so that I’ve written a previous Stray Thoughts on the subject. It is both active and meditative as it requires constant movement but not always a lot of exertion, leaving a lot of room for thinking. Because of this it, to me, is the perfect meeting place between the mind and the body. But it also requires the right pair of shoes.
The walk started on steady ground. A wide trail of crushed white rock winding around and over the face of the plateau. The walking was easy aside from a few spots of incline, and the views interesting, layered, and moody. Then we hit the snow. A literal wall of it. We had spiralled up and around to the top of the plateau, seeing some dirty patches of snow lying around the ground beside the trail, but once we got to the top, we found that there was a thick white layer of the stuff several metres high. The trail turned from the easy-to-walk-on-rock to the soft, slushy, and slippery snow. We entered a tunnel of it. This was due to a parks employee in the very early stages of using an excavator to clear the trail. They had done a good job so far but had, as we would soon learn, cleared maybe two percent of it. This meant the tunnel had an end, at which we found the employee and the excavator and the wall of snow. I say wall, because that is what it was, reaching up higher than our heads. The employee paused the excavator to allow us to climb up, over, and onto the snow. Which is where our real troubles began.
For this trip, I had packed and primarily worn boots. They are what I wear almost all year round and so it was an easy choice to make despite their clunky size twelve bulk. Holly on the other hand, in an attempt to pack light but also practically, had chosen some cute pink sneakers that would be good for most kinds of walking but also look nice while she was travelling through Italy with her friends. They were perhaps the worst kind of shoes possible for walking on snow.
What came next was an hours long slapstick skit. Think a cartoon where someone’s trying to walk on an oil spill, or that video of the baby penguin who keeps standing up only to immediately fall down again. Now don’t get me wrong, even with my boots my way was no easy going. We were heading downhill on snow just warmed and compacted enough to almost be an ice rink and so I had to shuffle each step, trying to keep my weight as centred as possible, and regularly fell forward as my foot found a soft patch where I ended up to my knee in snow which rushed into my boot to crowd around my sock where it would quickly melt and dampen it. But that was nothing compared to Holly’s experience. She fell so many times that I quickly lost count. She would shuffle a few steps, slip and fall, pick herself up, brush off the snow, and repeat the process all over again, doing it all in front of the incredible backdrop of the three peaks. Thankfully, she kept her good humour about it. More than, in fact. With every fall she would burst into a fit of laughter, able to see the comedic absurdity of the situation, a laughter that would prove infectious both to me and those passing us by. But, to save me explaining it further, let me instead share the moment...
The lunacy did not stop there. Twice, the incline was so extreme that there was no way to walk down without falling no matter what shoes you had on. In those moments, I knelt like a skier at the start of a ski jump and slid down the mountain on my feet, using my hands to balance me. Holly did the same except on her ever moistening butt. The day was crisp and clearing, it was ten in the morning on a Monday, and we were sliding across the top of a mountain in Northern Italy. It was both ridiculous and good.
Then came a few genuine scares, where we kept moving along the snow but now there was a severe drop to the side of us, one seemingly hungry and waiting for us. Suddenly, the idea of either of us sliding and falling wasn’t funny any more. Here, we put our weight low to the ground and shuffled as carefully as we could, using the imprints of those who had come before us to guide our way. By the time we got down below the snow line and onto solid ground again we were both beyond relieved.
Our walk though, was far from over. Here, we met an intersection. One path led to our right, up towards a hut that many of our fellow walkers were streaming towards. The other to our left, continuing down to a grassy plateau. Here we also met some Germans, doing the same track as us but from the other direction. They clarified we wanted to head left towards the plateau. We told them about the snow that had coming for them and our misadventures, and in a very sincere, very German way, one of them looked down at Holly’s shoes and said ‘Maybe not the best shoes?’
So, we headed further down, and as the sky cleared further, leaving just a scattering of white puffy clouds, we got the ideal view of the three peaks. Large and proud and steadfast, the green plateau below them, threaded through with veins of blue melting water. We kept heading down, taking photos upon photos, until we got to the plateau itself, and there we found some marmots.
Having had a pet rabbit for a decade, a beautiful boy named Morrie, we are inclined to like a rodent. They have a blank comicness to their expressions, a dumb seriousness that we can project any kind of personality and persona on to. They’re also cute as hell. So, given all that, when we noticed a small movement of brown across the green landscape and saw that it was a marmot sticking its head up out of its hole, we freaked out.
They can hide themselves pretty well thanks to a coat to match the colours scheme and a warren of holes to hide in, so much so that despite a fairly steady stream of people walking past, we seemed to be the only ones who had spotted them, and even then it made me wonder how many we had walked past before we did.
We quickly started taking photos and videos, all blurry due to the distance, but we were also aware of their skittishness and so somewhat hesitant to get too close and scare them away. However, not satisfied with blurry photos, I decided to do a wide circle around them, coming closer from the other side to see if I could get some better shots. A few let out their strange braking shouts to warn of my approach, but I was otherwise successful. We stayed watching them for longer than might have been necessary and then sadly wished them adieu and continued on our way.
We crossed the plateau and once more headed up, this time walking across, and winding between, large rocks and boulders. Off to our side, the adjoining rock face fell away to reveal the various shades of nearby mountains, some light and green, others dark and forested, others still grey and snow capped.
And then I split my pants. I did a real good job of it too. It came from me twisting my ankle after putting my trust and weight onto a rock that really didn’t deserve it. My leg went out to the side where I caught myself but not before hearing the unmistakable sound of the tearing of pants. Right around the crotch, of course. I got out my jumper and tied it around my waist to hide my now exposed boxers, and we continued on.
We stopped at a hut to enjoy some views and a coffee, then circled around the mountain face until we were back where we started, just as the rain was beginning to return. We boarded a bus, stopped once more to say hi to our donkey friends, then got the second bus back to our hotel when the rain returned in earnest.
We had done it. Defied the weather to sneak in the walk that had brought us there and all it had cost us was a bruised bum and a split pair of pants.
The next day we enjoyed a similar experience, this time taking a trek that led from our hotel, through the forest, past some sheer and incredible views, up ladders and over slippery rock, to a mountain pool the colour of which needs to be seen to be believed. A startling turquoise that pops out of its more montonal landscape so that it looks like something from a fantasy novel. To see it for yourself, simply google Lake Sorapis or, of course, go to damianrobb.com/straythoughts where I’ll also share some photos. That day too, as we returned back to the hotel, shocked at the fact that others were only just starting out on their own trek to the lake, the rain came. It bucketed against our windows as we sat safe and warm on our hotel bed, watching a movie as we shared a flask of haselnuss schnapps.
Then, it was time to return home.
A trip that would start with a taxi back to Cortina, then a Flixbus to Venice and it’s airport, from where we would catch a flight to Vienna, then a train and a bus back to Jon and Alex and Rupert’s house where we would get to spend one last night in their company, before another bus and train the following day back to the airport, where we would fly for five and a half hours to Abu Dhabi, have a layover, then once more board a plane, this time for just over thirteen hours to get back to Melbourne, then catch an uber to our house where we would get out our key and let ourselves in.
The finishing of a holiday, especially one like this, is always a mixed experience. Six weeks is just long enough for travel to become the routine, and while there’s no doubt by the end of it we are longing for our own bed and space and comforts and people, there’s also a feeling and a want to just keep travelling indefinitely (were it not hugely expensive to do so, of course).
Life quickly swirls you back up into its churn and so it’s nice to have the photos. Our main TV has a chromecast attached which allows you to have a slideshow of photos as a background. For the past four months, we have had that set to just show photos from this trip. This is to remind ourselves of all we did and saw and keep it fresh within our minds. And on the days when the swirl and churn of everyday life can feel akin to drowning, to use it to once more get back into that holiday headspace. To feel the ease and joy of living in Kufstein, the independence and freedom of travelling solo through Innsbruck and Bolzano, the family and frivolity of vacationing in Lake Garda, and the grandeur and awe of just about every step we took through the Dolomites.
What’s also helped is writing these. By going back over the photos again and trying to recall and retell all the details, by having to articulate what I felt and thought and saw, I feel as if I’ve relieved it all again. Better, in some ways, because I have the ability to slow down and think about what it all meant, contextualise it all for myself, and for you. I’ve really loved the challenge of writing about this trip, making this podcast/blog a temporary travel one, and I am once more sad to be leaving. Mostly though, I just feel lucky to have had all these experiences in the first place. How rich and fortunate am I to be who I am, to have a partner like Holly, to get to exotic places and spend time with some of my favourite people, and of course climb so very many mountains. I am wonderfully and comfortably full of gratitude.
On which, I would like to say a very big and very sincere thank you to you for listening and indulging me and coming on this trip with me over the last seven episodes. In many ways, I know, this was just another eurotrip, an experience had by countless others and which will be had by countless more in the future, but this one was mine, and so I am truly grateful to you for letting me share it with you.
Next time, we return to our regularly scheduled programming…whatever that looks like.