(March 15th)
You may not know this about me, but I’m a little obsessed with mummies. I’m not sure if even I was fully aware of it before this study abroad program, but Bolzano confirmed my mummy obsession for sure.
My friend Kate (an archaeology major and also obsessed with dead bodies) and I were talking about the famous Otzi Ice Man mummy one day, and realized that he was supposed to be somewhere in the Alps in Italy. After some research, we learned of a small town in the mountains called Bolzano, where Otzi rests in his temperature-controlled capsule. We also discovered that the Otzi Museum was having a special exhibit in March featuring over 60 mummies from around the world. That sealed the deal.
For some crazy reason, we decided to trek to Bolzano right after Napoli. Since they’re on completely opposite ends of the country, we had to take ANOTHER overnight train (13 hours long) to get there. It was a little bit insane. We also almost got robbed on the way. A seedy guy who had been eyeing us through the window stopped in the car where Nicole, Kate, and I were sitting and tried to talk with us. We ignored him, but it still took him a while to leave. We ended up having to move cars eventually anyway, and we settled into our new spot, turned off the lights, and prepared to go to sleep. Suddenly our door opened and the same guy poked his head inside, looked around, said nothing, and then closed it again. That happened twice. We realized he was waiting for us to go to sleep, probably so that he could take our stuff (Kate caught him looking upwards at our bags one time that he poked in). Freaked out and frustrated that we wouldn’t be able to sleep (and boy, we were tired), we were hoping the conductor would come by to check tickets so we could tell him about the situation. Even better, the police ended up stopping by to check up on us (we think they had gotten complaints already and were on the lookout) and we were able to explain to them what he looked like and what was going on. They found him in the car right beside ours, which just confirmed our suspicions. The police were incredibly nice and stayed around our door until our stop, which was several hours away. We made it to Bolzano with all of our belongings, and that was when the fairy tale began.
Bolzano is a quaint, but beautiful, little town nestled in the mountains. It’s the closest place I’ve ever seen to the set of The Sound of Music. And we literally did this when we got there, because we were so overwhelmed by the amazing scenery and adorable houses. It’s a mix of German and Italian, and we could hear both languages being spoken everywhere. This also means Bolzano has a fantastic food selection. We immediately found the closest cafe and ordered warm apple strudel. Lunch included sausage, delicious meatball soup, and big glasses of German beer. The place we ate at had a pretty fun song selection too, which consisted of about eight American songs on repeat. We still got excited about the Weather Girls each of the four times throughout the meal that we heard them, dancing in our seats, waving our arms, and making the waiters laugh at us.
Every place we went, we insisted on posing like Otzi, which made for a very silly final album. You can see the full collection on facebook. We came across a playground-one of the best I’ve ever seen. The view of the mountains surrounded a collection of trampolines, jungle gyms, slides, a zip-line, and swings. Even though we were the only people between the ages of 10 and 40 in the area, we hopped on the playground equipment and frolicked like the carefree kids we felt like. We think the trampoline guy got a bit freaked out by us over-aged playground-goers. When we walked by the trampoline area and looked hopefully up at them, he gave us a stern look and closed the door. Oops. Really though, kids in Bolzano have it made.
We finally made it to the Otzi Museum, took far too many pictures of ourselves making the Otzi pose in the lobby, and overwhelmed the museum staff with our extreme excitement and enthusiasm. The exhibit was even better than we expected. A couple of floors included mummies from all around the world and in various states of decay. A range of Egyptian, South American, Asian, and European bodies were included, all with interesting stories. My favorites were the South American mummies. They were so well-preserved, with entire braids of hair and intricate decorative clothing left intact. Another highlight was reading about a specific sect of Buddhist monks who eat tree bark during the last few years of their life in preparation for their own mummification.
An entire floor was devoted to the Otzi mummy. We wandered around and avoided his chamber until we had looked and read about all the tools and clothing they had found and put on display. Visitors have to stand in a line and file past to see the actual mummy through a small window. We went up twice and got, as we had throughout the entire trip, overly enthusiastic about seeing a preserved dead body.
The exhibit had a great video featuring the curators at the end, and it spurred a lot of thought about death and preservation of the human body. We ended up discussing whether we would be willing to be mummified (Kate said definitely, I said probably, and Nicole said hell no) and the benefits and downsides to it. Just the idea of looking at other people’s bodies, and the voyeuristic side to it, was interesting to think about. One thing I really loved from the video was when one of the curators explained how observing mummies makes us contemplate not only our own inescapable death but also the ways in which mortality (among countless other things) connects us to people from all parts of the world and from all ages in human history.
Since then, I’ve told everyone who mentions visiting Italy: “Screw Florence and Rome. Go to Bolzano.”
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