Scribbles

In Brunico, a town nearby, there is a bridge over the Rienza river with hundreds of padlocks on its railing. We thought these had a romantic meaning: love pledges or “lost loves locked into ones heart”.

The guy at the gas station had the answer: Up 2004, there was a military camp in Brunico where youngsters came for their military service. After finishing their tour of duty, it was a tradition to hook the padlock of their trunk to the railing, and throw the key into the river.

 


Delving a bit deeper into the “Italian padlock mysteries”, revealed different connotations and other traditions:

Originally, the Italian men drawn into military service, took a lock from their home and hooked it onto a monument or a structure, as a public vow to return back home. Some say, it was a vow to return safely back to their loved one..

There is also the Roman legend that lovers will spend their lives together if they write their names on a padlock, place it on the Ponte Milvio’s third lamp post and throw the key in the Tiber. (This story had a funny spin last year when Rome’s Mayor Walter Veltroni introduced fines for anyone leaving a padlock on a lamp post.)

In Florence thousands of young lovers attached their padlocks to the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. Back in 2006, the council set a team of metal cutters to work removing the 5,500 locks on the railings. It took them five months to finish, as new “lucchetti d’amore” accumulated too fast. Also in Florence, the city police has been told to slap a 50-euro fine on anyone who tries to attach a lock to the bridge.

But the issue is not confined to Italy:

The city council of Pecs in Hungary also seems to fight a loosing battle against lovers’ padlocks. More of the same on the Szinva Terrace’s railing in Miskolc (Hungary), Guam’s “Two Lovers’ Point”, in Huang Shan (China), and Riga (Latvia), and Tokyo (Japan), and, and…

HELP: it seems that we have a worldwide padlock problem. Or is it a worldwide love problem?

Luckily, in Brunico, the padlock problem was resolved by replacing the enforced military draft service by a 100% voluntary force. Clever people, those Italians!

One of the sagas from this region explains why the Rosengarten (“Rose Garden”), an imposing Dolomite chain which dominates the scenery to the west of Bolzano, glows pink at dusk.

Source: Rosengarten-Latemar

The area we are visiting now, is South Tyrol. In German: Südtirol. In Italian: Alto Adige, Sudtirolo or Sud Tirolo. Officially, it is called the “Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen”.
It lays south of the Alps, and is a part of Italy, even though everyone here has German as their mother tongue. They must be the only Italians who greet you, not with “Buongiorno”, but with “Gruessgott” (translated:”Greet God”), just like in Austria.

It is a piece of land which the Italians nicked from Austria during World War I. This makes interesting history.

When Austria-Hungary, in 1914, declared war against Serbia, thus starting World War I, Italy remained neutral at first, but was soon dragged into the turmoil. The front line followed mostly the then Austrian-Italian border, which ran right through the highest mountains of the Alps. The ensuing front became known as the “War in ice and snow”, as troops occupied the highest mountains and glaciers all year long. Twelve metres (40 feet) of snow were a usual occurrence during the winter of 1915–1916 and tens of thousands of soldiers disappeared in avalanches. The remains of these soldiers are still being uncovered today. The Italian “Alpinis”, as well as their Austrian counterparts (“Kaiserjäger”, “Standschützen” and “Landesschützen”) occupied every hill and mountain top and began to carve whole cities out of the rocks. They even drilled tunnels and living quarters deep into the ice of glaciers. Guns were dragged by hundreds of troops on mountains up to 3 890 m (12,760 feet) high. Streets, cable cars, mountain railways and walkways through the steepest of walls were built.

Whoever had occupied the higher ground first was almost impossible to dislodge, so both sides turned to drilling tunnels under mountain peaks, filling them up with explosives and then detonating the whole mountain to pieces, including its defenders.

After the Austrian defeat in 1918, the Southern part of the Austrian province of Tyrol was attached to Italy, even though it was mostly inhabited by ethnic Germans, Ladins (that is Ladins, not Latins nor Latinos!) and only had a small Italian minority: South Tyrol.

Today, we did not mind the violent history. We just… skied! With the hope of not tripping over a frozen body of a soldier from the first World War. Or worse: being chased by a guy who did not know the first World War was over yet! Here are my girls this morning: