As we twisted and turned across the Dolomites (or Dolomiti for the Italians and Dolomiten for the German speakers), we started to get a better understanding of the region and its history.  However jaded a traveler you might be, and Team Elephant can be a little jaded at times, you will find the Dolomites stunning.  Here, the mountains soar, the villages cling to hills, the roads defy common sense and the stunning vista is so commonplace that it hardly warrants a photo stop.

This area is known as “German Speaking Italy”, but this wasn't strictly true.  People spoke a local dialect that sounded only generally like German to our ears.  Children in these parts learn German and Italian when they start school.  Parts of the Dolomites had, of course, been part of the Austrian Tyrol for most (but not all) of its history.  That changed after WWI.  During the Great War the area was the scene of a titanic struggle between Austria, fighting as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the Central Powers, and Italy as one of the Entente Powers.

The campaign for the Alps was as bloody and terrible as the Somme but is almost unknown outside this area.  With the extreme terrain and climate, the difficulty of fighting here would have been similar to the campaign fought in the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea.  Only here, in the heart of Europe, huge armies fought set piece battles and amassed staggering casualties.   Throughout the campaign the Italian troops launched a new offensive on average every three months, an effort that far exceeded that required of troops on the Western Front.  And there were many other hazards.  On 13 December 1916, 10,000 troops died in avalanches.  The statistics show that artillery rounds caused 70% more casualties on the rocky ground in the Alps than they did in the soft ground of Belgium and France. 

The legacy of the Great War is everywhere, not least in the alpine roads which were built to resupply the front.  In almost every pass there are memorials and museums, and every year walkers turn up grizzly relics of battle.  It is not something that concerns the modern traveler much, but it is worth a passing thought as you sip your hot chocolate on the cafe terrace and wonder what those old fortifications in the pass are all about.

When the Treaty of Saint-Germane established the post war boundaries of Europe, Italy was handed the South Tyrol and its German speaking population and Sud Tirol (Alto Adige) became an autonomous province of Italy.   It is hard to know what the people feel about all of that today, but with the Italian economy stalled for more than ten years now, there must be some resentment that they are not part of a more dynamic economy a few kilometres away over the pass.  Certainly, the villages we stayed in were relatively poor, relying on scraps from tourism and basic agriculture that would have disappeared years ago except for EU agriculture policy.

We saw few references to Italian nationalism in the villages we visited.  What we did find were portraits of Andreas Hofer the Tyrolean resistance fighter who led a Tyrolean army against the Franco-Bavarian forces during the first decade if the 19th century after the Tyrol was transferred to Bavaria from Austria.  It was the many references to Hofer that gave a clue to a true Tyrolean heart.

These days, excellent low roads provide easy access for commerce around the Dolomites so that the only people who go there do so for the sake of the mountains.  We certainly came for the mountains and mountain roads, but we found so much more than hairpin bends in this wonderful place.  You don't have to come to the Dolomites on a motorbike, but I hope you will excuse my prejudiced view that this is the best way to experience the excitement of the place.  For non-bikers there would be few things grander than wandering aimlessly around the mountains in an open top sports car.  A 1963 Alfa Spider would be ideal but if you can't lay your hands on one, then a rented Mazda MX5 would be just fine.  Whatever you do, don't bring a Ferrari!  The roads are very narrow and there are very few chances to pass.  Sitting behind a Fiat Punto for an hour in your snarling super car while the bikes slip by would just make you look like a dick.

For our second last day in the Sud Tirol we stayed in the small village of St. Leonhard (San Leonardo) just north of the town of Meran (Merano).  Our B&B on the outskirts of the village was a typical village house, comfortable in that inward looking way of most houses in this cold place.  Like a lot of alpine houses this one had a lot of stuffed critters decorating the walls.  In the breakfast room we sat facing a display of deer and mountain sheep antlers.

    “They killed Bambi!” I cried in jest.  Then I looked at Jo and behind her on the sideboard was a tiny stuffed fawn. 
    “Oh no! They really did kill Bambi!” 

     Not only Bambi, but a marmot and a whole flock of birds. Some of these alpine  folk are as bad as the Russians with their stuffed brown bears.

In another village the first thing we noticed was the distinctly bovine smell and the flies that traditionally go with that.  Apart from being a stepping off place for summer walkers and winter skiers, Burgeis is a working farming community and the farming business is dairy cattle.  With the summer fully ripe, hay-making was the main work underway as the farmers put down enough fodder to last the winter.  While there were many modern raking and baling machines at work, we still saw families out spreading the cut grass for drying by hand on slopes too steep for the tractors. 

The village was all activity as tractors negotiated the narrow lanes stowing fodder in barns and ricks among the houses.  The roads were slick with tractor mud, cow shit and straw.  Gravid cows were confined in basement stalls, looking out through low windows at the evening diners on a terrace on the opposite side of the street.  The evening milk was brought to the tiny mid-village dairy in small trailers towed by tractors.  And, while the farmers went about their business, we soaked up the last sun of a glorious mountain day, drank our local rose and let the life of the village wash around us.  Brushing away the odd fly even had a slightly homey feel for two flat-landers a long way from home.

It was in Burgeis that we discovered another quaint feature of the Sud Tirol.  We were in dire need of some internet time and hadn't found a connection for a few days.  Our inquiries led us to the Tourist Information office where we agreed to pay two Euro for 10 minutes online.  I was then asked for my passport so that my details could be recorded.  We had already handed our Aussie passports to our landlord as is the custom in these parts so I handed over my Irish passport in desperation to get our problem sorted. 

The registration process took 15 minutes and involved a long explanation of how an Irish citizen wasn't born in Ireland and lived in Australia.  All of this nonsense was, apparently, required by the Counter Terrorism Act 2006.  We had never had this problem in the south of Italy so our assumption was that they applied the rules differently in the Sud Tirol.  Whatever the reason, we remained patient and polite and got the access organised. 

I was given a logon and password and access to a computer only to find that access was still denied. My daily ration of tolerance for stupidity was expended so we recovered our two Euro and walked away grumbling.  Later, we were told by a local that the rules were being changed and weren't applied any more... except here.  By the time we got to the top of the street our little setback was forgotten and we were engaged with the next problem, the hunt for beer and pizza and, of course, planning our next leg over the mighty Passo dello Stelvio (Stilfser Joch), the “greatest” motorcycle road in the world.