Chestnut Festival at Schloss Tirol

Sunday, October 9, we had ourselves a good old fashion chestnut festival. This was held up in Schloss Tirol where many tourists came to eat chestnuts and watch Megan, Tomer, Nik, and I roast some chestnuts.

It was really fun. We ended up roasting 188 kilos of nuts altogether, which is about 415 lbs. Roasting the chestnuts is a true art. If left on the fire too long without shaking, they become burnt. If they are taken away from the fire and put back on, they explode. We had an average of about four chestnuts per pan explode on us while roasting, which was mostly caused by Tomer, Megan, and me because Nik actually knew what he was doing. All in all, it was fun and we had a blast throughout the whole day.Chuck Solan  

Verona

Out of all of our planned trips I looked forward to Verona the most. I am a Romeo and Juliet fangirl. I can admit it. But Verona is so much more than the setting of Shakespeare’s play.

We started off the day at a restaurant called Ippopotamo which is the Italian word for “hippopotamus” so obviously this restaurant was awesome. The poor waitress had no idea what hit her!

Ippopotamo was in the same plaza as the Verona Arena which is one of the best preserved Roman ampitheaters of its kind. It is beautiful. The coolest part about it is probably that operas are still shown there on a regular basis.

We then headed over to the place most visitors to Verona reach: Juliet’s “House.” While it isn’t Juliet’s actual house, what with her being a fictional character and all, it is a fun experience with a cool museum. Not to mention, the statue of Juliet that had literally dozens of people waiting to grope her chest for good luck. Not joking. Although the house wasn’t really Juliet's house, it was a remarkable representation of what her house would have looked like, complete with clothes and bed.

On our way to the statue of Dante…

We passed underneath a whale bone that supposedly will fall when the first virtuous person walks under it. I swear it looked pretty precarious for a few moments as I passed underneath it.

Maybe.

We then zipped our way past the Castle Vecchio…

Strolled down the river…

And ended up at the Basilica of San Zeno.

Which, by the way, is a beautiful church with lovely frescoes and an amazing bronze-cast door that has scenes carved over every inch of it. When we first got there I wasn’t super excited because we had already been to a large number of churches on our trip to the Vinchgau. However, the church was amazing and held my interest the whole time. Also, they had convenient info pamphlets (in English!) that they handed out at the beginning.

While waiting for the bus in utter confusion we made some new friends who were also from America that kindly helped us find the correct bus to take back to the train station.

This was an amazing trip. Everything went smoothly (it didn’t rain until we were leaving!) and everything was beautiful. Definitely my favorite trip.

Kathryn Farley

Journey to the Vinschgau Valley and Switzerland

Wednesday, as a group, we hopped on a private bus with Sizzo, and headed for the Vinschgau Valley.  It was a very beautiful day to explore various churches, portals, and frescos, as well as taking in the beautiful scenery.  The bus stopped to let us out at various checkpoints throughout the entire trip.  Our trip consisted of visiting four different churches, with our main focus being seeing the frescos and portals. Our first stop was Latsch where we explored a beautiful church dedicated to St. Paul and St. Peter.








Then we were dropped off to climb up to a hill that overlooked the breathtaking view of the valley.

Afterward we explored a church in Mals. From there we went to The Church of St. John in Taufers. Here we all sat down and had a picnic with a beautiful view of the countryside, where we ate delicious sandwiches made by Brigitte.








Before we ventured into Switzerland, Sizzo told us an interesting story of St. Christopher.

Next stop, Switzerland! Although Switzerland was a short experience, it was worth every minute of it. We explored the St. John the Baptist Church before treating ourselves to some tasty chocolate.









On the way back to Brunnenburg, we made a last stop at Von Trapp castle, where we saw the largest privately-owned armory in Europe.

After a full day of hiking and sightseeing, we happily returned home to Brunnenburg.

Jess Gibson and Andrea Ramirez

Hiking to the Cup Stones

The hike to the cup stones took about an hour and a half. The goats wanted to come, but weren't allowed.

We didn't really have any idea what the cup stones were going to look like, but we all imagined some huge stones that looked like cups. To our surprise they turned out to be small carvings on a rock.

The view from that rock was pretty amazing though.

The hike took us through the woods took us past some beautiful and somewhat hazardous terrain.

As well as some very random objects...

After taking a close look at the stones, we were given some possible scenarios as to what the purpose of these carvings was. Some of the possibilities are alien markings (like crop circles), people being bored, or ways of marking a path. It is pretty much left up to the imagination because their purpose isn't known. They are found all over Europe in the same general pattern and have been studied by many people.  

Meghan Nedow