Italy – Austria – Germany – USA and then some

I was raised right between Italy and Austria. “So, where did you go to school,” people often asked me and my answer confused them even more. I went to school in the South of Germany, three hours away from the small village that I called home. Like life wasn’t complicated enough the way it was. 

 

We lived in an autonomous province in Northern Italy, that originally belonged to Austria until men decided that they would give it to Italy, even though the people living there didn’t speak any Italian -neither did they want to be Italians.

The area is known as Suedtirol -Sudtirolo -South Tyrol or Alto Adige.

Until 1918 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian princely County of Tyrol, but this almost completely German-speaking territory was occupied by Italy at the end of the war in November 1918 and was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1919. The province as it exists today was created in 1926 after an administrative reorganization of the Kingdom of Italy and was incorporated together with the province of Trento into the newly created region of Venezia Tridentina (“Trentine Venetia”). (Source Wikipidia)

To this day most of the people there speak Austrian-German, and only 40% speak Italian. Only politicians can make decisions like that -it defies all logic. Italian became the Government language, many refused to learn it. They didn’t understand the policemen, couldn’t read the signs. The small autonomous region in Italy even has an own passport and an own flag. Right on the border, there is a sign saying “We are not Italians.” Men made chaos -nature can’t beat that.

“South Tyrol is not Italy.”

Because of our separated farm and two old farmhouses houses on each side, my Grandfather could choose, and he chose that we belonged to Austria (that was way before I was born.) I grew up loving Italy when so many around me hated it.

So today I thought I just post a few pictures of the place where I come from.

Years later, as a young woman, I fell in love and followed my heart -and my husband- and moved to the U.S.

BRINGING WORLDS TOGETHER IN MY KITCHEN…was not just the name of my cooking blog, it is more of a general statement of what I do on a daily base. Perhaps I am a cosmopolitan or a gypsy, who makes the world her home.

Traveling the world widened my horizon, it made me look deeper, dig deeper. I showed me how little I am, how uneducated I was, how blindsided my view had been.

How blessed am I to have seen so much in a small lifetime -that isn’t over yet.