I finally slept well last night. In fact, I crashed out in the middle of the World Cup Final. Today there was another in the endless rainy forecasts, so we talked to the hotel proprietress about the options for taking a bus. She speaks great english,(and likes to speak it ALOT). She’s obviously athletic, a ski instructor and cycling enthusiast herself, very into our escapades, and she kept explaining how we could take a bus to a certain peak and then cycle down. Not really getting the fact that the down is the part that we particularly don’t want to do in the rain. I could tell she was disappointed in our decision to bus it all the way to Fie, but you know, I don’t think we need to prove our commitment to anyone.

It was 3 buses and about 3 hours. (I find it ironic that the name of the bus system here is SAD.) One bus to Pera di Fassa, then change to Bolzano, then the last one to Fie. Gabriel has become a total rockstar in his ability to wave down a bus driver: Does this bus go to wherever? Ok, where do we change? Can you open the bottom for the bikes? etc. Then in a flash, he heaves and wriggles our bikes in and out of the awkward luggage spaces under the bus, me scurrying behind him with the panniers before anyone has time to get annoyed that we’re holding everything up. Not that they probably would get annoyed. No one seems to be in much of a hurry around here. He’s also been a rockstar about just Figuring It Out. When Plan A gets thwarted he bends over his maps and the weather report and figures out Plan B. He’s like a seasoned sea captain. We can’t let the rain bring us down.

The buses here are clean and comfy, almost like tour buses. You get to see all the scenery and roll through the villages. The local language in these valleys is called Ladin, a mixture of German and Italian, and its cool to listen to people speaking it. Its got the musicality of Italian but lots of German words. On the last bus, I was sitting at the front next to an old, very blue-eyed Italian woman, with maybe not all her marbles, who kept talking to me even though we had well-established that I couldn’t understand a word. Every few minutes she would poke me on the shoulder and tell me something about the road or the landscape (I think). The inexplicably angry bus driver was muttering to himself as he drove. And Gabriel, across the aisle from me, had his lips pursed in this look I know so well. I knew he was thinking: “I’m sick of buses. I’m sick of trying to communicate with people. I want a cappuccino.” And then it just all seemed funny here on the SAD bus and I got the giggles and had to restrain myself.

Here in Fie its cloudy but not raining, and Gabriel–hard core man that he is–got on his bike for a ride. I stayed in the hotel room and laid out our clothes that we finally broke down and washed, and then carried in a plastic bag cos they still haven’t dried. The view from our room is out to the pastures and mountains, misty now. I opened the windows on each corner. The smell of rain was coming in on the breeze and I could hear children on a playground below. Such a happy sound, the same wherever you are in the world I would imagine. Below that, a little hammering and occasional saw–a couple of men building something. And below that, faint piano music coming from a restaurant. I crawled under the duvet and took a nap.

Later to Binderstube again for lasagna and truffle pasta. So good. And then I locked myself out my own IPad which prompted a ridiculous Skype call to Apple. We always have at least one ridiculous Skype call where I’m trying to make the person on the other end of the call hear me. Its usually a bank or a credit card. This time it was Apple. And me trying to read the teeny tiny serial number on the back of the IPad to the guy, while standing in WiFi range, while not talking so loud as to be yelling in the restaurant / hotel lobby, whatever. I was wondering when it was going to happen this trip. It finally did.