Tirolean Weekend

Sud Tirol is the 'Germanic' part of Italy. I'm fuzzy on the details here but I gather it used to belong to Austria but was given to Italy after WWI. Mussolini moved in on it pretty oppressively, forbidding everyone to speak German, which is why quite a few people chose to emigrate to Germany during WWII in order to preserve their culture. Most of them ended up coming back and it took a long time to recover and forgive old feuds. There were also some terrorist activities against the Italians after WWII, which resulted in some nice tax breaks and other concessions.

Anyway, despite it's surprisingly not-so-distant bloody past, today Sud Tirol is beautiful, rural, prosperous and especially nice in the fall.

So rather than a big vacation write up I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. You get the idea.

Maybe just the odd comment.

Halloween was a simple affair.

We carved pumpkins, dressed up, and trick or treated

at exactly one door for one piece of candy.

This is a place we stopped for lunch in the mountains.

The Fall foliage was amazing. My pictures don't do it justice.

Nice place for a picnic, isn't it?

Mountains above Clausen.