Somewhere above Bolzano—just beyond the creaking ascent of the cable car to Soprabolzano/Oberbozen—the names begin to double. Every signpost, every trail marker, every café board now comes in Italian and German.
Soprabolzano / Oberbozen. Renon / Ritten. Malga / Alm.
It’s June, and the meadows spill over with wildflowers—cornflowers, gentians, tiny pink orchids. I’ve packed light: plenty of water, an apple in my small rucksack, a copy of Paolo Cognetti’s La felicità del Lupo (a spare yet lyrical novel set in the Dolomites: full of seasonal shifts, the peculiar steadfastness that mountain living requires — an ode to these cathedral-like peaks) and enough curiosity to follow the footpaths of the South Tyrolean Dolomites.
I jump onto the pretty Renon (Ritten) narrow-gauge railway, the Ritter Bahn, which runs along the high plateau, and journey to its terminus – Collalbo / Klobenstein. The route passes through picture-perfect alpine villages, stopping briefly as Costalovara / Wolfsgruben where a few passengers descend to go swimming in the mountain lake. Here and there, the train stops – locals waving in thanks to the conductor.
The restored train has a Wes Anderson-like charm, all Belle-Époque details, wooden carriages, and the views open up a cinematic panorama of the mountain peaks – Latemar, Catinaccio, Sciliar and Sassolungo. I recognise them, from Cognetti’s writing, and from countless images I’ve studied. Latemar with its jagged crest, like the ruins of a castle, Catinaccio, otherwise known as Rosengarten – will later glow an intense rose-pink, ‘enrosadira’ the locals call it, this glowing mythical light, named after King Laurin’s Rose Garden – a garden cursed to glow for all eternity at twilight. Sciliar I had photographed from the cable car station at Soprabolzano, with its flat table top silhouette, and home, it was said, to witches and supernatural goings-on. Sassolungo/Langkofel, piercing the sky like a stone cathedral, its top wreathed in clouds.
The train journey ends and I get off. The village, Collalbo / Klobenstein, is home to traditional chalets with tidy flower-filled balconies. Beyond it stretch flowing meadows, pine forests stepping down the mountainside, and elegant parades of shady larch trees mark the village roads.
I follow the Sentiero di Freud (Freud’s Path). It’s a 2.5km gentle hike named for Sigmund Freud, who vacationed in Collalbo / Klobenstein in the summer of 1911. The route is marked with panels sharing Freudian thoughts: ‘In the quiet of these mountains, the mind finds space to wander beyond its habitual paths.’ And this catches my eye: ‘The mountains hold our dreams like stones, waiting for the light to reveal their shapes.’
It is a restful place, and at a wooden bench above the village, I sit to read. Cognetti too writes about going into the mountains to escape the noise—not of cities, but of self.
And it is true, there is a stillness here, looking down over the valley where every village seems balanced between past and present. Immaculate stone farmhouses with alpine window boxes. Cows with bells. Bright red trail signs pointing toward old Austro-Hungarian routes and modern mountain refuges. Italian/German, German/Italian. As I pass other hikers we greet each other, sometimes in one language, then another. The border with Austria is not so far away.
In the village, I stop to top-up my water at a stone fountain and greet an elderly man resting on a low wall. He wears a felt hat, sturdy boots, and speaks first in German. I answer in Italian. We meet halfway— going back between the languages.
He tells me he was born here during the war, when the region still felt in-between. “Wir sind nicht ganz Italiener, und nicht ganz Deutsch,” he says with a smile. We are not fully Italian, and not fully German. I get the sense that locals here are proud of their distinctive identity, and perhaps unwilling to be claimed one way or another by either Italy or Germany. The German I hear spoken in the cafés here is soft, more melodic, mixing in plenty of Italian words.
I ask him about the via ferratas – I am curious about these ‘iron routes’ in the sky built along trenches and ridges, some following what was in war years the front line.
He remembers hiking the Via Ferrata Ivano Dibona as a young man—“con corda e cuore,” he jokes—with rope and heart. “But these were not for sport back then,” he adds. “We walked more for work, for necessity.” He turns quiet.
I thank him, wish him well, and continue on – in search of the nearby earth pyramids.
This is an otherworldly site with tall pillars of earth and rock, each topped by a large stone capstone, formed over thousands of years by erosion. A relic from the last Ice Age when the glaciers melted and sediments got washed away gradually. The pillars are only protected by their capstones.
Follow trail 24 and you’ll pass the 17th-century baroque Maria Saalen Pilgrimage Church as well, and Hexenboden – a mystical clearing steeped in mysterious folklore stories. Meaning ‘witches’ ground’, a place where legend tells witches would gather on midsummer nights, the peaceful clearing is surrounded by larch and pine, and today, more prosaically, families eating lunch on the benches.
I wait for the early evening light. The mountains glow orange-pink. Enrosadira.
The mountainsides hum with insects. There are cows below, their bells ringing out like gentle choral song, pine forests beyond, and something deeper—lies unknown—in the stillness.
I pass the trail signs once more. Two names for everything. A constant reminder that this place – like all stories – is layered, more complex than its picture-perfect surface. And that we, as travellers, walk not just through space, but through history, its layers dense, yet only partially hidden, underfoot.
If You Go
Start Point: Bolzano (Bozen) – take the Funivia del Renon/Rittner Seilbahn up to Soprabolzano/Oberbozen
Route: Follow paths through the Renon Plateau, connecting villages like Collalbo/Klobenstein, Longomoso/Lengmoos, and San Genesio/Jenesien. Travel on the Ritter Bahn for a historic train ride.
Best Season: Late May to July (wildflower bloom)
Distance: Approx. 15–20 km (can be broken into shorter day hikes or combined with local narrow-gauge Renon train)
What to Read: Senza mai arrivare in cima by Paolo Cognetti (about his Himalayan hikes, but also deeply connected to his memories of time in the Dolomites and reflecting on mountain solitude)
What to Expect
Rolling meadows, pine forests, quiet villages, dialects, rustic cooking, distinctive South Tyrolean (Südtiroler) alpine tradition.
Don’t Miss: visiting a Malga/Alm – traditionally used for summer grazing, these simple mountain huts embody traditional ways of life and give an insight into the farming heritage of the area – local cheeses like pecorino are often made here, and many of the mountain malgas / alms welcome hikers and tourists.
