Salzburg
Aug. 11, 1928
Innsbruck
Honey dear: -
It seems to be a spell of pleasant weather for our start over the Stelois and all our accommodations are reserved through Paris, so we are cheerful, though not anticipating the Italians! I can tell you that the South Tyrol literature is of a kind to rouse your spirits.
Now at Spondigna, Italy - formerly Spondinig. You will require your atlas for this day's trip! We started from Innsbruck at 7:35 and went by rail (all railroads electrified in these parts) to Landech. Not far - up the Inn valley. I think we went that way in 1906. We had to rout out a German family who had been in a compartment all night, close no end! window shut! Mother was nice and tried to find a place for our luggage, but all six of us (there was a loose Eng. girl entering, too) never sat at once! Daughter was sleepy and horrid, father evidently feeble. But the train was full and the guard put us in on them. Anyhow we stood in the corridor most of the way because of the highly spectacular scenery. At one place there was a washout by the lively Inn three weeks ago, and they are relocating the tracks. When the Eng. girl went by before she had to change trains, transfer luggage &c, 4 hours delay!
At Landech we were an hour late - but all the buses had waited! Our bus was the hugest thing I ever saw, with a trailer for mail & luggage. We climbed maybe a couple thousand feet up the Inn valley and then away from it to Nauders. The corner we went around as we left the Inn was one of those amazing undercuts for a road that they love to make! A few arched holes like Axel Strasse, but mostly just cut under a precipice some thousands of feet high. Nauders has one, probably three nice little hotels. It lies in a high valley 4,000+ feet up, and really is delightful. It seems to me quite as charming as Mieders, and more uplifted, somehow. Easily accessible, as you see. We had a fine lunch in a "terrace" decorated with eagles, cocks (feathers the ones used on Tirol hats), heads of deer, chamois and such. Also quantities of growing flowers. It looked like an excellent place to stay.
At the border, Reschenpass, we went through the Italian customs where the extent of the examination consisted in running Alice's "zipper" back & forth! Our big bags have gone by express to Geneva. We changed to a smaller Italian machine which flew down the valley at about 40 miles an hour! The Ortler came before us almost at once, absolutely stunning, high and snowy. There was one glacier bigger than any I've ever seen, just pouring down the mountain side. Now I must say Spondigna has a hot sun pouring upon us, but in a half hour we go on to Trafoi for the night - and that is high up, you know, as far into the Pass as we could get. It has been a gorgeous day, sunny with clouds, as lovely as could be and I don't see how it can rain tomorrow!
Innsbruck is a nice town! And, I have a Tirol cape and hat! Grey, and a feather. All for less than $10.00, and the cape is waterproof, best Baur camelshair, weights only 600 gr. Alice thought the grey had more style than the green, but I sort of yearned for that green! Couldn't get a peaked hat, this has a feather at the side, like Oberammergan. Many of the feather things are eagles' feathers, soft curly ones from under the tail, as well as the cock things. Not a tame cock, some game bird.
There's a model of all the Tirol in Innsbruck, mountains up to about 4 1/2 feet. 'Twas quite fun to walk the valleys and see how the ranges connect &c. They are made of the right kind of stones, and show the main peaks properly. A boy was weeding it yesterday and if he'd been horizontal, he'd have strenched from Merano to Bozen! It took some time to strip our bags, and then Alice had a woman come to call who teaches home ec. to children. Very nice person - but she led us at top speed across town to a convent where she has some classes and where the Mother Superior spoke English. We were a long time standing in a pleasant garden, and she never asked us to sit on nice convenient benches! We were led in through a door whose latch was controlled by a sister within, unseen - oh, 'twas amusing enough, but also tiring. Alice got some information, however. But there was another aerial r.r. we might have gone on but for this call, and 'twas a heavenly sunset to miss!
We've found a lot of mountain flowers, first & last, but I've seen no places like either the Swedish arctic or the Norway ridge. I hope for yet more excitement up higher. I've not been above tree line myself, but I hope to get there by some aerial, or up in the Stilfser Joch where we stop an hour, I believe.
There was mail at Innsbruck forwarded from Cortina - 'twas the first I knew you knew I had reached these shores! Isn't that absurd? But you allowed extra time to Cortina and then we never got there! We are trying for mail at Gletsch next. I was so glad to hear from you - two letters. But I think I've lost out an earlier one somewhere. The inclosures were interesting, too. I'm glad you have another $60.00, too. And what beastly weather everyone writes about. It must have been a horrid July.
Trafoi. We're here - and it is quite wonderful. We telegraphed ahead for rooms and have one on the top floor with a balcony toward the glaciers! It is amazing - just a narrow valley, with at least three big hotels hanging on. I can't see how. This 4th floor is level with a piece of hillside on which fir (?) trees wafe us fragrance, and then goes up & up, and presently another 5 story hotel begins, with the same history! At this minute the sun comes in horizontally on these snow fields above the glaciers, a while ago one was steely blue - a great big grey mountain sticks out separating the glaciers - and down below children play in the garden, and the stream rushes down the valley. It was a curious valley, somuch glacial rubble for a long way up, and cliffs with almost no vegetation - dirt being eroded, not rock until we were well up. I should say the glaciers must have left their moraines very recently, geologically speaking. There is one conical snow field down which there are streaks just as if the boys had been ski-ing - but it's miles away, of course, and I suppose they are made perhaps by huge snowballs rolling down - I can't see how else they'd come. What peaks of the Ortler these are I've no idea, but they're of consequence, anyhow. We see ice-axes and ropes and numbered guides with official badgets all the time.
There is a good deal of evidence of Italian military forces - an artillery fort along the valley, with iron gates and what looked like real modern fortifications, groups of soldiers coming down in huge vans from a rifle range, men in uniform, one in a nifty uniform with a Tirol feather in his green hat. The Passport men kept our passports 15 minutes, retired to copy the data in a huge book - mostly they've been just glanced at. But we hear this afternoon as much German as Italian.
It's almost dinner time - I'll take this down to mail - even though there is blank space on the back! Much, much love - I wish you were here - you could do this perfectly well -
[This letter and the following four postcards came to me from the same dealer. None of them were enclosed in an envelope. The inscriptions on the postcards seem to be written out about the same time that this letter was written, and may have once been included with the letter in the missing envelope.]
"Schloss Nauders mit Piz Mondin."
Inscription on the reverse: "Nauders has a fine castle, two churches, and seems like quite a town -"
Title on the reverse: "No. 225 Gruppo Dell' Orlter / Trafoi, Hotel Posta"
"Sirada dello Stelvio (2760) visto dal Rifugio, delle Rose"
Inscription on the reverse: "This is the last part of the way up from Trafoi. The hotel at the Pass just shows in the crotch. The building up just a bit to the right is a war ruin."
Title on the reverse: "No. 366 Gruppo dell' Ortler / Panorama dell' Ortler visto dal Passo Stelvio"
Inscription on the reverse: "Stelvio Glaciers from just a little to the left of the pass in the other picture. Just below this was where the boys were ski-ing"