I would have liked to have observed the History of Predazzo from here, from the window framed in the pastel pink of this small room of the Croce Café. I would have stayed here, elbows resting on the windowsill, nose pressed against the glass peering, across the street here, at the entrance to the Nave D’Oro Hotel coming alive at the arrival of well-dressed gentlemen from who knows what distant countries.
I would have stood here waiting for any of them to come in for their first coffee of the day, listening to their travel plans through half-unknown peaks. Who knows, among them I might have met the English writer Amelia Edwards just as she was sketching the first pages of her “Untouched Peaks and Unknown Valleys” or the geologist Maria Ogilvie Gordon who devoted much of her life to these mountains.
I would have remained here, even many years later, hidden by the solid walls of this small room, waiting silently for the decisive step of the soldiers to move away, and I certainly would not have moved from here even years later, when in ’40 that nice guy Alfonso Facchini would have arrived to run the Caffè Croce and the bar would have been enlivened by the heated discussions of the “comrades” who were at home here.
It is a discreet witness of History and stories the Caffè Croce that through 150 years of history, and perhaps more, jealously guards the memory of a Predazzo that smelled of mountaineering feats, geological discoveries and, above all, of unpredictable encounters.
But unpredictable continue to be today’s encounters as well, and jealously guarding them is Lina Anna Vanzo, who has been working at Caffè Croce now for 31 years, since October ’91 when she began as an employee of Paolo Caglierotti and his wife Flora longtime bar and tobacco shop managers in the years when the door, which still separates them today, was always open.
Lina Anna is a native of Ziano and here she helped her parents for years who, from ’81 to ’97 ran the bar La Capanna. After various seasonal jobs, she landed at Cafe Croce first as an employee and then as manager.
Lina Anna’s day starts early, every day at 4:30 because at 5:30 the first coffees are already ready at the counter accompanied by the inevitable freshly baked brioches; rather long days therefore, but some are much longer than others…
As a great fan of the game of darts, when from the various locales in the country began to disappear, Lina Anna the darts brought them here, to the hall of the Cafe Croce, and since then her teammates also meet here, for practice and for the long evening challenges against the opponents on duty…
