From wine country back into beer land

After a few days of very hot weather, lush meadows, waterfalls, vineyards and orchards, we climbed onto a glacier today, but not just any old glacier, it's the one where they found Oetzi, the ice man. So, it's really a receding glacier, otherwise they wouldn't have found him almost twenty years ago. Now, he's in the fridge in a museum in Bozen. We decided not to go see him when we were there, but if the weather cooperates, we'll go see where they found him. It's cold up here and there are still plenty of snow fields around the hut. It's very busy up here with hikers and climbers. We'll be in the matress camp tonight, along with lots of others. Rob and my brother are sleeping the afternoon away right now, after having a few afternoon beers to incent us for the hard climb.

The last two nights we spent on farms, and although I love the cows with their pretty bells, their poop is smelly. The farmers collect it in big piles, so they can fertilize the fields later, but strangely enough, they also hang their laundry up next to that pile. My oh my - the last two nights, the sheets and the towels smelled like a cow just got done with them. Anyhow, no such smells tonight!

Last night we decided to have dinner on an Alm, a remote farm, about 30 minutes from our not so remote farm where they didn't serve dinner. It took us more like 50 minutes to walk there, but it was worth it. Dinner was yummy, the owner shared her homemade Schnaps, and she even made us a job offer to stay for a few days and bring in the hay - for room and board. It was a tempting offer, but we had to move on. Well, first we had to move back down the mountain to our farm. Rob did not bring his light, but thanks to the long summer days and hiking songs we made it. Rob's decision to challenge the Scottish highland to a bull fight also just resulted in some scrambling, scared cows, and we made it back just fine.

Tomorrow we'll be heading down into the next town. Can't miss the next soccer game Germany - Spain! We were on a TV-less hut for the Argentina game and had to get the updates from the cook who had a radio in the kitchen.

No service up here, but will post asap.

P reporting from Similaun hut on the Austrian-Italian border.