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24-07-2009
St. Michael church
Hiking near Bressanone/Brixen
The menu for the guysBressanone:A nice,old town in a beautiful area
"Bressanone/Brixen: A bilingual town"
Bressanone (Italian) or Brixen (German) is situated in a beautiful valley in the Italian alps. It's a bilingual town, all street signs are in Italian and German and all people speak both languages.In fact, they actually speak three languages, as among themselves they use their local dialect, when dealing with German tourists they switch to standard German and dealing with Italian tourists they speak Italian. All this is done with complete ease. I've even heard small children switching languages matter-of-factly , really amazing.
But it's only people who are bilingual. I was walking down one of the small alleys when an old lady next to me surprised me with some loud Italian phrases. There was nobody else around, so I assumed she was talking to me and I was going to tell her that I hadn't understood. She smiled at me and said she had been talking to her dog. He didn't understand German, she said. Her dog, a German Shepard, looked at us as if he was saying:"What else do you expect me to learn?"
The picture was taken on one of my hikes. You can see the town in the valley. Since I was there late September, early October, the leaves were changing colour, really beautiful.
