We managed to get in a very quick visit to Bolzano on our trip to Italy a couple of weeks ago. Our schedule was complicated by the fact the holiday dates in Germany, Bolzano, and the rest of Italy were all slightly different that week, which made to scheduling visits to see friends in various towns a bit of a scheduling challenge.

But it was fun to have a brief chance to see friends and also pop back into some of our old haunts, including our favorite pizzeria/wine bar/photo gallery, Muflone Rosa, which is still there and going strong.

Over the course of the 28 hours, I managed to hold conversations in most of the languages I now sort-of-know, ie., English, Italian, and German. Unfortunately, many of the conversations were in my now-patented mix of Italian and German. Argh. Luckily, most of our friends in Bolzano speak all 3 languages, and could humor me when I’d unexpected stray from one to the other in the same sentence. That despite my best efforts to stick to one language at a time. Ah well. It was very really odd as I found I was  thinking in German when trying to speak in Italian. I don’t tend to mix in English very much with either Italian or German, actually, so I guess that’s something. But still.

Interestingly, several of our multi-lingual friends commented that they thought I might actually speak Italian more “fluidly” over all now, even if I can produce more German on demand than Italian right now. And, of course, my Italian  is constantly riddled with German words and syntax. Maybe my “fluidity” is just self-confidence, from  all the practice I got taking the German class, where I had to try to speak in a language other than English for many hours every day. I think that made me more relaxed about speaking a foreign language in general, so that I dive right in and try to speak it, even though I know I’m going to make lots of mistakes when I do it. Now more than ever, I just start speaking in what I hope is my target language at the time, hoping that I will say something sufficiently well to be understood.

Anyway, we were so busy running around visiting with friends that I didn’t have many chances to take photos in Bolzano. Below are a few shots that I did take, including some — but not all — of a few reliable subjects that I always used to take photos of. The major exceptions are the Talvera River and the Dolomites, two things that I probably photographed more than anything else when we live in Bolzano. But we had time for merely very abbreviated photo shoot just before we had to catch the train, and since that didn’t give us time to get to my old “regular” photo vantage points for the river or the mountains, I didn’t get any good photos of those two things. Next time. You can’t do everything in 28 hours, after all. 😉