You won't fall up and we'll find you at the bottom.

The above is a Czech climbers' saying meant to make you feel safe about the whole climbing bit, and it explains the whole climbing mentality quite nicely. My trip to the Alps was, of course, amazing, despite inclement weather and illness. We started out in Austria, but after several days of climbing rocks in the rain (which is an entirely stupid idea, as rain makes things slippery) we transferred to the Italian Alps, the Dolomiti. The weather there was sunny to the point of tanning, the mountains were bigger and more epic, the parking lots (where we typically slept, being the hoboes that we are) drier, and the community was vibrant, so a good move on all fronts.

One of the more interesting aspects of traveling to foreign countries is the language barrier. It's weird how despite traveling considerably, I'm usually either in English or Slavic speaking countries so I can kinda tell what's going on. Climbing expeditions to Germany and Austria are typically the exception, but since I've been there a lot in past years I've gotten very good at not understanding German. In Italy I was confronted with a completely new type of Foreign, and I'd find myself listening to shop ladies and being like "yes, yes, your language is very sexy, I agree, but I have no idea what you're saying." In addition the climbing community is very international, so typically the Croatians can't understand the Danes, the Germans can't understand the Slovenians, the Italians can't understand anyone and no one speaks English, but everyone wants to say hi to each other. While I can normally distinguish the languages, I feel that subliminally they all kind of register as "Foreign", so I pick a language at random to try to communicate in and it tends to be the wrong one, leaving fellow mountaineers perplexed in the face of my inept attempts at goodwill. Occasionally we would meet fellow Czechs but we'd end up saying hi to them in German or French or something. Kind of a bizarre situation.


A mountain goat! It seems much more at ease among the wet rocks than I was.


The cows seem to regard the approach path as their own personal autobahn. Getting them to move is occasionally tricky. We have fights. They go:
Me: Move.
Cow: Mooo.
Me: Seriously.
Cow: *impassive stare*
Me: Stop staring at me.
Cow: *continues the same*
Me: *violent shove quite out of character for an about-to-be vegetarian*
Cow: Mrf. *slowly saunters off path*


Clouds above the Italian mountains. Much more impressive and breathtaking in real life.


I rather like this picture. Everywhere in Europe the mountains have crosses on them, usually lugged up by some brave soul eighty years ago or so, but oftentimes mountains and mountain huts all over the world have Buddhist prayer flags flapping in the wind as well, which wouldn't seem to make sense since they're dedicated to the Tibetan mountain gods that don't technically reside in Northern Italy, but they don't seem out of place at all and unintentionally two completely different perceptions of the world end up quietly coexisting, both in agreement about the presence of the mountains.