>>21085543>So, the Austrian region is South Tyrol, Sudtirol (with the umlaut on the u). We call it Alto Adige in Italian.>The population is split between ethnic Italians and ethnic Austrians. The main city, Bolzano, is mostly Italian while the small towns and the valleys are mostly Austrian. Bolzano is like 70/30 and the rest is probably close to 20/80.>There's also another population living here, the Ladins. They occupy a few valleys and are Raetho-Romans.Fascinating. I only knew there was an Austrian, or at least formerly Austrian, component to the region. I didn't know any specifics.
>I am ethnic Italian. My grandparents migrated here from Veneto, Lombardy and Trentino.>I don't like the people in Bolzano at all. Part of what eventually pushed me to the right over the years is my identity or lack thereof.Yeah that sounds frustrating. I am a Newfoundlander, I live in Newfoundland, I love Newfoundland, my mother and her whole family going back several centuries were all from here, but I'm also half Québécois and have always felt slightly out of place here. This is a smaller scale example I know but there's a weird sort of spirtual pull a place can have (or not have) on your soul and it's tied directly to whether or not you have deep roots in the place. If you grow up somewhere foreign to where your people really come from (even if its nearby or technically within the same country) there's this odd sense of, I don't know, illegitimacy perhaps? Even when you are half one thing and half another you end up feeling a little bit of this in both places.
