Brixen / Bressanone

Today we went on an outing down the mountain to the town of Bressanone/Brixen. Our GPS tried to take us back over the mountain, but we just followed the signs this time and were there in a mere twelve minutes.

Bressanone/Brixen is a delightful medieval town with a compact pedestrian-zone old city of cobble stone streets and interesting architecture. The city has the feel of Regensburg, Germany, but with a mountainous setting like Salzburg, and a much fairer climate than either - it was a sunny 77 degrees this afternoon.

We explored the alleyways and visited a couple churches. We were there in the early afternoon, and it was quiet. Siesta time is strong here, most stores closing around noon and reopening around 3:00 pm. The ice cream shops, of which there were many, were open, and Nikolas did his best at trying a couple different flavors at a couple different places. Nothing beats real Italian ice cream.

Absolutely all written signs – bank names, advertisement flyers, street signs, destinations on the front of buses, store displays, menus – are printed in Italian and German. For example, this sign prohibits people from leaning their bikes against this wall with German on the top and Italian below. It must cost a fortune to run a business and organize a town in a bilingual region.

Nikolas was determined to find a souvenir (with the 14 Euros of change that we had collected in his piggy bank) before we headed back to the hotel, and he was a little distressed at all the closed stores. A bag of hand made pasta from a stand near the main piazza didn’t do it for him. Luckily the stores reopened and the streets getting busy just before we left, and so he was able to find an Italian police car to add to his collection