The Bolzano Christmas Market

Christmas markets... there are endless ones, beautiful, ugly, far and near, in Italy and abroad... day trips, two-day trips... 8 December 2007, I went to the Bolzano markets on a one-day coach trip; I knew perfectly well what I was in for: crowds, long hours of travel, cold... And indeed it was all confirmed, 6 hours there from Turin, a fine and not-too-cold day in Bolzano, which however is a strange city... too neat, too northern, too pristine. A very clean and tidy city, German is spoken the way dialects are spoken in the various parts of Italy; in some places they struggle to understand Italian and speak it badly... but Bolzano is in Italy!!!! And then they complain about southerners always speaking dialect everywhere... It's a lovely city, tucked against the mountains, very green, very controlled, so perfect and well organised that it almost seems fake.

The houses are all freshly painted and arranged with an almost obsessive perfection. It looks like a fairy-tale village, all the houses and buildings perfect, colourful, stuccoed... they are to be admired, but surely a city worthy of the name will have some flaws too? They have a fine castle that you can't visit, though... The centre isn't that big, it's easy to get around on foot; it's a very expensive city and in my view, given the volume of pre-Christmas tourism, they have a slight shortage of accommodation. At lunch there wasn't a restaurant with a free table... in the end we ended up in a sort of takeaway... and to think I wanted to eat something local, which is perfectly possible in Trento and Merano — I did it last year and found a table at a restaurant in Merano on 8 December without too much trouble, whereas in Bolzano it was suicide.

Overcrowded streets, chaos, Piazza Walther, the square of the famous Christmas markets, was as full as a stadium at a U2 or Vasco concert. You couldn't get near the stalls and exhibitors in the square, queues for everything, even for a coffee, the bars were packed, the square crammed with people who couldn't even move forward... In the other streets of the centre there were smaller exhibitors and the streets were very crowded. The Christmas decorations around the city were very beautiful; I appreciated the cathedral a lot — it's an imposing structure that towers over the market square and you can visit it free of charge (exceptional). At three in the afternoon I managed to get close to a market stall to buy a strudel and a pack of Canederli (a typical South Tyrolean dish). I couldn't not buy that famous giant savoury pretzel typical of Germany, called Brezel — good and tasty.

There are several museums but I didn't visit a single one; the prices were excessive. In Bolzano there's the famous Ötzi mummy, in one of the museums. Ötzi... who's that? For those who love ancient history, the kind that starts from prehistory, a visit to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology is essential — the new home of Ötzi, the Iceman, the man of the Similaun, the roughly 5300-year-old mummy found on the Similaun glacier. Over 5000 years ago a man climbed the Schnalstal glacier to its icy peaks and died there. In 1991 he was found by chance, with his clothes and equipment, mummified and frozen: a sensational archaeological discovery that offers an unparalleled glimpse into the life of a Copper Age man. On a day like yesterday it was practically impossible to visit the market stalls, unless you queued at least 15 minutes for each exhibitor......

The things on display were nice — candles, Christmas decorations, typical food and drink, clothing, Christmas music... from a distance I couldn't see much, but I saw something... towards 3 it began to get really chilly and the bars were packed... so we walked until 4, then headed for the bus and at 4.30 set off for home... another thousand hours and aching legs, nerves on edge, delays caused by the latecomers... and we got home shattered... I didn't manage to appreciate the markets fully, too much chaos, too many people, cold, sky-high prices...... A mark out of ten??? 5. And then... hearing German spoken in Italy... strange! Merano last year I liked more, the market was better laid out, more liveable, the atmosphere was nicer, more colourful and Christmassy... Anyway I took lots of photographs and we didn't pay much, but from next year...

maybe I'll do two-day trips at least, otherwise it's all rushed... in the evening you get home and you're shattered!!! Ps. The strudel is divine... and the mulled wine was delicious... at reasonable prices. In Piazza delle Erbe there was the famous and picturesque fruit market. That one is truly not to be missed: beautiful, typical, characteristic, special and colourful, different from the usual ones. All the stalls display their goods in very picturesque and innovative ways, they make compositions with fruit and vegetables, they sell dried and candied fruit, dates, unusual fruit — things that are lovely even just to look at. Then in Bolzano there's Italy's oldest pharmacy, on the main street, Via dei Portici. All in all it wasn't bad, but a bit more organisation would have been needed. Anyway, if you like that sort of thing... it's doable!!