« Trento - A Wish for Colder Weather »

Los Angeles has been absurdly hot recently and it is really starting to get annoying. I smell smoke in the air and my sinuses are clobbering the inside of my head. I really like Autumn. I really like the clothes I get to envelop myself in during Autumn. Pretty soon it will be time for WINTER, and I welcome it with open arms, so here are some memories from Trento to hurry its arrival.

My dad came to visit me in Italy last winter, and the first thing we did was hop on a train up to the region of Trentino Alto-Adige to see the snow and the famous Christmas market.

I have a few cousins that live in Bolzano, or Bozen as the Austrians call it. One of them is a Guardia di Finanza, I guess it means financial police, but I never really figured out exactly what they do except solve murders by tracking the receipts of the murder weapons to their respective hardware stores. (Italy has way too many kinds of police.)

Anways, it is a really interesting region because it only became a part of Italy after WWI, which means that everyone there speaks several languages: German, Italian, probably English, and very likely Ladino, which is a Latin-Celtic ancient mix that is considered its own language, not an Italian dialect. Mostly everyone becomes at least bilingual in their public schools at a very early age.

It is such a beautiful city, nestled in the Alps, and UCLA has an EAP program there! The cold air that wakes you up by prickling your face really makes you open your eyes to the surroundings. The main piazza is arranged in two concentric circles of wood-log booths during Christmas and is very famous for its Austro-Italian food, hot wine and Christmas crafts. Dad and I ate at the first warm restaurant that would let us in without reservations, and that is where I first tasted strozzapreti, the translation for which is preist-stranglers. They are cheesy, spinachy gnocchi that literally do choke on the way down.

Since it is a popular vacation spot for Italian skiiers, it has a massive section of expensive shopping that is composed of long, winding alleys with hidden doors and NIKE outlets stuffed into 16th century palazzi. During the Christmas season, the city decorates miles of these such alleys with Trentino stars like the ones in the picture above. The picture below is a Trentino basilica whose patron saint's name I have long forgotten.

So that's a little bit of Trento.