Belluno

About the third day into my stay in Italia, I started missing the Rockies and knew that I would have to get a mountain-fix before too long. My newest venture took me up north into the Veneto region to see get my fix and see some Italian mountains.  Last Friday night I looked through my guide book and found the town of Belluno and decided at about 10:59pm to take the 8:29am train Saturday morning from Ferrara to that town at the foot of the Dolomiti.
The Dolimiti are a unique type of mountains, not an actual mountain range like I thought before reading up on them, that are found in northeastern Italy.  They are actually ancient choral reefs made up of carbonate rock called dolomite, discovered by French minerologist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu. 
I arrived in Belluno around eleven and then ventured out on my own with my Lonely Planet book as my only guide.  It took me a bit of wandering around, but I finally found the main center at Piazza dei Martiri, or Martyrs' Square, which refers to four partisans who were made examples of in WWII.  It's a big open area with a small park in the middle, lined with cafes and shops, which I walked around before finding the center of old town, Piazza del Duomo.  There I found an information center where I got a couple maps as well as information from the woman working there on how I could walk closer to the mountains.
 The tower and Duomo of Belluno

I headed out on the road that wound up and up (after a short, unintentional detour)  to the top of one of the foothills of the Dolomiti.  I rounded around one of the corners to see a flock of sheep and their shepherds--one of the quintessential mountain scenes that makes you look around for the camera crew shooting a remake of the Sound of Music.  The leaves were also changing color, making it a really beautiful scene to take in.  I walked up a bit further, taking in different views of these mountains, then headed back down, completely in my own thoughts about the day.

 It was about ten minutes later that I realized I was on a different road and didn't know where I was going.  I quickly found an Italian couple out for a walk and they assured me that this road also goes back to Belluno.  I ended up following them all the way back down and, nearing town, started talking to them.  He works for a company that has a bunch of different branches all over the world, including one in Dallas, but both of them were born and bred in Belluno.  It was great getting a chance to meet Italians from a different part of the country and practice my Italian a little more.  It was also a great example of how much more easy it is to meet people are start up conversations when you aren't in a giant group of American students.

Schools in full swing, showing itself to be much more demanding here than ever before at home.  With all our readings in Italian coming in at about 40 pages, all of which are in academic language, I find myself reading most of the time during the week and all day Sunday.  We already have midterms this next week with about two months of the semester left!  Hopefully I'll find a good balance of everything before the semester is over...