ILEANA JOHNSON: Sacher Torte, Christkindlmarkt, and Ötzi

We were driving 96 miles north one cold December B.C. (before COVID-19) from Verona, Italy to Bolzano, as fast as the autostrada and the traffic allowed us. We were going to visit the Christmas market in Bolzano among other things.

Because Bolzano is so close to Austria (called Bozen in German), we were also hoping to find my favorite dessert, Sacher Torte.

For those of you who do not understand why anyone in their right mind would drive 96 miles to buy a Sacher Torte, you are happy with the birthday cake from the closest grocery store or Walmart, you obviously have not grown up under socialism where Comrade Ceausescu kept us starving, food and basics were scarce, and chocolate was more valuable as commodity money than as food. But once you taste good chocolate after such communist party starvation diet, you will definitely develop the ability to taste good chocolate from the ordinary variety.

This Sacher Torte, if you like chocolate mixed with fruit in your cake, is a closely guarded trade secret, created by Franz Sacher. They sell the original Sacher Torte in Vienna at the famous Sacher Hotel, in Innsbruck, in Graz, in the duty free shop in Vienna's airport, and at the Sacher Shop in Bolzano.

Our Volvo rolled smoothly through the beautiful landscape – nature is breathtaking in the Alps even in winter and Bolzano is the “gateway to the Dolomites.”

South Tyrol in northern Italy is a fascinating area and its capital, Bolzano, is the largest city in Süd Tirol, with a metro area population of 250,000. The locals speak both Italian and German, having been part of Austrian territory prior to WWI.

The famous Christmas market, Christkindlmarkt, opens here from the end of November to 6^th of January. The Christmas atmosphere is provided by eighty exhibitors who sell food, arts and crafts, the delicious German pretzels, and the famous Gluhwein.

The Christmas market, also known as Weihnachtsmarkt, is a street market that celebrates Christmas during the four weeks of Advent. The market, as the name clearly states, originated in Germany but it is now held in many other countries in Europe and even in the U.S. where there is a large population of Americans with German ancestry. The celebration goes back to the Middle Ages, the 1500s and some parts of the Holy Roman Empire, including eastern regions of France. It was an opportunity for joy, light, and merriment during the cold and dark winter season.

Piazza Walther takes on a special advent atmosphere where Santa Claus could land any moment with his sleigh and reindeer. Opened in 1991, Piazza Walther’s Christkindlmarkt, the largest in Italy, showcases Künstlermarkt & Schau, the charity market, and the children’s Christmas market. The square was named after a 13^th century German minstrel. Bolzano has only been Italian since the end of WWI, therefore it retains its German character.

Bolzano was recognized internationally under Italian control in 1919. Italian troops had entered Tyrol and occupied Austrian areas south of the Brenner Pass in 1918. The area has been transformed to reflect the Italian population, but the German character and way of life are unmistakable.

Children learn in school both Italian and German. Some families speak at home a third language, Ladin, spoken in the Dolomite Mountains of Northern Italy, a language similar to Swiss Romansh and Friulian.

We strolled casually past the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology, briefly glancing at the silhouette on the sign which depicted a man dressed in primitive-looking clothing. It turned out that this was the town’s most famous resident, dating back to 3300 B.C.

Ötzi, also called the Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man frozen in the Alps between 3400 and 3100 B.C. His remains were found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps by a hiking couple at the border between Austria and Italy. People jokingly swear that Italians moved the border to claim the mummy’s body for their museum. The courts eventually decided that his body, still frozen in a glacier, was found within Italian territory.

As the mummy has been thoroughly studied, scientists were able to speculate about his last days on this earth and determine his health condition, his diet, and how he succumbed to his left shoulder wound in which an arrowhead had been embedded. Because he was carrying an expensive copper ax, much has been written and discussed why he was murdered and, if he was wounded and eventually died for his expensive copper ax, why was it still in his possession. His discovery gave scientists the opportunity to study the life of Copper Age (Chalcolithic) Europeans.

Kept in a freezer with a small window for viewing, the now maroon-colored mummy and all his belongings (copies) are displayed in the museum. Curators have speculated and crafted a possible life this mummy may have had. They studied the contents of his full stomach, his nails, his purse with dried mushrooms, his clothing, his hair, his shoes filled with straw for warmth, and his 61 tattoos most of which were not visible with the naked eye.

The mummy had intact blood cells and it allowed the Innsbruck Medical University to perform DNA tests on Ötzi in October 2013. From over 3,700 Tyrolean male blood donors, 19 were found to share a particular genetic mutation with the 5,300-year-old mummified man. In the autosomal DNA, he seemed to have been related to Sardinians and Corsicans.

Ötzi’s DNA analysis revealed high risk of atherosclerosis, lactose intolerance, and that he suffered from Lyme disease but the Borrelia burgdorferi was of a different species.

The strain of H. pylori bacteria found in his intestinal tract was like three modern individuals from Northern India. The contents of his stomach were analyzed and found to contain an omnivorous diet. Because he died with a full stomach, researchers were able to discover many other details about Ötzi’s life and his last days.

Helmut and Erika Simon found the mummy on the melting glacier in the Alps and were awarded eventually in court €150,000 in recognition of Ötzi's discovery by her and her late husband and the tourist income that it attracts.

The case dragged in court for years as many other opportunists came forward to claim the reward prize. As some of the people involved with the discovery have died, conspiracy theorists even invented a curse of the mummy.