From: Lavis
To: Egna Neumarkt
Miles: 16
Total: 1067
Another great day walking through the Adige River Valley. Most of the day was spent walking along the bike trail. It appears bike riding is especially popular on Saturday mornings as the trail was very busy.
I had a great night of sleep at the Sartori’s Hotel in Lavis. I even got some laundry done the right way; by letting the hotel take care of it. I was out the door this morning at about 8:00. The air was cool and it was overcast for a couple of hours. By 10:00 the clouds had burned off and it turned into another 90 degree day. When lunchtime came, I had not walked close enough to any towns to find something to eat so I pressed on down the trail until I reached my destination of Egna Neumarkt where I found a nice little cafe.
Egna Neumarkt is a nice little town of 5000 with a neat olde town center. When I arrived there were vendors with tables set up to sell their wares to the Saturday visitors. My hotel, Das Alte Rathaus (the old town hall in English), is the former city hall. It has been completely revamped and is very modern and nice.
A point of interest: I’m getting closer to the Austrian border where German is the official language. I’ll cross into Austria in five days. So I’m now seeing more German names, signs, etc. For example, the name of this hotel is German. Tomorrow, I walk through Bolzano, Italy, a city of over 100,000 where only about 25% of the population speak Italian. Most of the other 75% speak German. Why is that? This region of Italy, it’s most northern, was actually part of Austria-Hungary until the end of WWI, when it was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. Therefore, citizens of this region, through their ancestry, identify more with Austria than Italy and thus the German language is predominant.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend and a Happy Father’s Day to all you dads tomorrow.
