To Austria with Love - Piz in Europe

Rain
To our surprise the following morning was dry (not) yet we drove to the famous Schlierwasserfall.  It is a steep overhanging 80 meter tall cave up in the mountains about an hour away.  We hiked through a drizzle until we reached the wall and were amazed that it was packed.  I guess when it is the only dry climbing in the country everyone is going to be there.  The limestone was amazing to the left and to the right of the waterfall and less aesthetic directly below.  No one seemed to mind the crowds and everyone got along nicely.  We met some friends, took some photos and hiked down at dusk…. In the rain.

Rain
We woke up to a lot of fierce rain, decided to just go on a hike and call it good.  We were leaving for Arco (an Italian climbing area) the next morning.  Rain is no good when you have a photographer traveling with an injured climber.  We had high spirits because we were first off to Innsbruck to pick up another climber and then to Italy to hopefully bask in the sun and talk in the view.  Tomorrow would be a good day, with or without the rain.

Side note:
need to buy bags at grocery, need to pay 50 cents to use cart (returned when you bring cart back), cash is used for almost everything, nothing open except restaurants and fuel on Sunday, need to buy sticker to drive in Austria/Switzerland, single anchor ok in Europe(called a pigtail), you will find crazy things at the butchers, as a pedestrian you must obey the rules period, oh yeah bring and umbrella, foamy milk mixed with shot of espresso called coffee, Austrians don’t know/use road numbers even though they are on the map, climbers still belay with figure eights. 

Italy

The week in Italy proved to be a good choice, camping in tall grove of trees, eating pizza checking out the Italian women, eating ice cream, filling up water at local artesian wells, café’s, late starts, extremely windy roads, cemetery camping, lighting storms, more pasta, the dolomites, bouldering, photo stops, oh yeah rock climbing on sick steep limestone, tufa’s pockets, jugs and Italian chipped master pieces, scorpions, night free ascents and fun in the sun.

Wow, too many stories to relate but I think that you can get the picture, we set out to have some fun, make some photos and see a little bit of the countryside and we did just that.  One of the highlights was in a small town called Erto where there was a huge landslide about 50 years ago.  we ate in the local pizza shop and made friends with the owner and had great conversations about the world, her hot daughters (who cody and the rest of us had our eyes on) she gave us free dessert, lots of coffee and great memories.  “watch it andy” seems to always ring in my ears as he dropped and F-bomb right in her face.  In the end he shot family photos of her and her daughters.  They were a bit hesitant to take of their clothes after hours but with andy’s encouragement they submitted to his coaxing (just kidding/we can all dream cant we?)