Italy to Austria 08/11/2010
 
Ok…so I’m a little behind in blogging, but I am determined to get up-to-date before our push into Russia.  So, when we last left off:  I had just blown a gasket in France…

 

7/25:  I got up at the campground at 6 a.m.   I told Joe I’d meet him at the ETAP, which as you know is not my favorite place.   So, I get all packed up, on the bike, and ride to the gate.  It’s 6:45 and it’s closed.   I tried the code they gave me on the keypad and nothing.   The security guard, who is this bald guy with an earring, tells me in French that the gate doesn’t open until 7a.m.   I am just assuming that is what he said since I don’t understand French, but through a lot of motioning and hand gestures, that is what I understood.   So, defeated, I go back to my motorcycle and mope around for 15 minutes.  Of course, I’m expecting someone to show up and open the gate or it to be on a timer.  Oh no!   At 7 a.m., exactly, and not a minute early, the same security guard gets out of his car and punches in a code opening the gate.   Are you kidding me?!!  Word of advice:  If you are a bald security guard, you look stupid with an earring.   Ok…I’m over it.  

 

So, I headed to meet Joe.  We got on the road early and traffic was light, as was the wind.  We hit the freeway and got the Hell out of there.   We skirted up and away from the beach and into the Alps.   Traffic started to pick up as the day went on, but it wasn’t too bad.   Things were good. … We were making progress and the weather was nice.  Beautiful views, great weather, on a motorcycle.  What more can you ask for?   We passed several big lakes in the mountains.  People were out enjoying the great weather:  rafting, windsurfing, kite boarding.   There were motorcycles everywhere.   Of course, everyone is riding sport bikes and darting in and out of cars.  The one thing about Europeans who ride is they ride in full gear… many of them in full racing leathers; and so are the girls on the backs of the bikes.   

We pulled into Italy late afternoon, and immediately it was apparent something was different.  The speed limits were much lower and traffic slowed considerably.  We went through countless tunnels.   They love a tunnel in Europe.  No switchbacks here.  We pulled into some small town and traffic was pretty bad.  So, we followed a guy on a big Harley down the middle of the road, lane splitting and got out of town.   However, it didn’t help much, there are just too many people; and the villages are too close together, with one every few kilometers.   There are just too many people for such a small space.  So, we pulled over and checked the GPS for a campground.  Fortunately, there was one within a few km.   We took off and the GPS led us up a steep hill on a one lane road.   We popped out on the top at a little campground run by an Italian guy who had lived in London for seven years, so his accent was difficult to place.  I thought he was Irish….Joe thought German.   We set up camp and met a group of people who had gathered for someone’s birthday.  They  wandered up to look at the bikes, and, as everyone does, stare at the license plates in disbelief.  We knew we probably couldn’t talk to them because we don’t know Italian, but we were surprised that our lack of communication was for a different reason:  they were deaf.  I guess they had attended the same school and were having a reunion/birthday bash.   There were probably 15 of them (they are in a picture on our friends page), and they were very interested in our journey.   So, we pulled out our maps and showed them where we had been and where we were going.  The owner of the campground remarked to us that he was surprised at how well we communicated with them, despite not knowing sign language.  We told him that we had been in numerous countries (including England…lol) where we didn’t speak the language and had to get by communicating through other means.  The funny thing is he said he had to put the group on the edge of the campground.  They asked him to leave the lights on late at night, which he was reluctant to do….They told him they wanted to stay up and talk to each other. He finally realized they couldn’t “talk” without the lights on, since they used sign language.  He said he put them off by themselves because they made a lot of noise, especially laughing, and they don’t realize how loud they are.   All things I had never thought about.   It was nice meeting them.

 

We headed over to the restaurant, where I drank way too much inexpensive Italian wine.  The dinner was a buffet, which was great because it was a sampling of all kinds of authentic Italian dishes…. Lots of peppers, vegetables, cheeses and thinly sliced meats.   Also, some kind of strange little fish (whole) that weren’t so good.     The campground owner came over and talked to us for a little while, and brought us a traditional Italian after dinner drink that was in a tall shot glass.  Of course, we just threw them down.  He said, “well, most people sip them, but I guess you can do it that way.” Lol.   Hey, give me a clue here, huh!   People from all these countries keep giving me shots…. How am I supposed to know when to sip or shoot?

 

7/26   Got up and headed toward McDonalds, to hopefully use the internet, and then to find a post office to mail some stuff home (souvenirs and things we decided we didn’t need.)   Let me just tell you that McDonalds in Italy can’t hold a candle to the ones in France and the internet sucks in Italy.  Maybe I’m generalizing a little.   Good news is I have no reason, anymore, to go to McDonalds.  To the post office…

So, I go into the mall to attempt to buy a few things to send home, and I immediately feel like I’m at a tryout for Jersey Shore.   All of the guys under 30 are tatted up, wearing tank tops, and their sunglasses….that’s inside mind you.   So, I put my sunglasses on.  I didn’t however get a tattoo, yet, but I guess you never know.  Well, I didn’t find anything to buy, and we took off to the post office, which was not in a great area of town.  Of course, in typical European style, everything is closed…holiday….lunch….mid-day siesta…whatever.   The post office was open.  Joe waited by the bikes while I went inside.   The post office must get attacked or robbed often because they are hidden behind this vault of steel and thick glass.  You have to put your package inside this little room with two doors.  You open the outside door, put your package inside, and close the door….then they open their door and take the package out.   So, there I am trying to explain I want to mail a package to the US and all I have is Joe’s phrase book, which has French, Italian, and German.  It has a lot of useful phrases like “it is raining like cow’s piss”.  I’m not joking.   After 45 minutes with little luck, this Vietnamese guy shows up and he speaks some English and apparently some Italian.   So, I buy a box from them and fill out several forms in duplicate.  When I finish and give them the box, through the series of doors, they suddenly inform me that they can’t mail it.    My translator has left, so I still don’t know why.   All I do know is I spent 1.5 hours and spent $2.50 Euros for nothing.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I bought a lovely box, which I immediately threw away in the dumpster outside, since I couldn’t carry it on the motorcycle.   I came out of the post office, which was about 95 degrees inside, sweating and laughing maniacally.  I think Joe though I had gone crazy.  He had been sitting outside watching the bikes.  The good news is he didn’t have to go inside to mail his package.

 

We were supposed to go meet with a friend of my uncle who manufacturers a special type of shotgun at his place, somewhere near Milan… so we laughed off the post office incident and took off.  I say “took off”, only meaning we started the bikes and tried to leave what turned out to be the city of Turino.   There was road construction everywhere.  We sat in traffic for at least an hour, with the mercury quickly rising to the high 90s.   Our bikes started getting really hot, and Joe’s starting overheating.  We had to take off and split lanes to get some air into the radiators to cool off the bikes.  The choice was overheat sitting there, or ride like maniacs.  By the time we hit the freeway, we were drenched with sweat, the bikes were very unhappy, and we were a little frazzled.  We had just entered Italy and it was crazy.  We were supposed to go all the way to Florence.   Of course, we had already decided not to ride motorcycles into Rome because we heard it was worse than London.  We stopped at a gas station and made a quick decision that it was time to head north; not only to escape the crowds but to escape the heat.  My fear is that we were stressing the bikes too much.   The hardest part of the trip is Russia and Mongolia, and we need our bikes in tip top shape.  It was then that we decided to skip going to the gun shop, because it involved driving through Milan.  Um…. No thank you.

 

So, we get back on the freeway, and for some reason the booth didn’t give Joe a ticket.   You get a ticket at the beginning, like a parking garage back home, and then give the attendant at the next toll booth the ticket and get charged accordingly.   So, when we reached the toll booth, my toll was $9.70, and because  Joe didn’t have his ticket, they tried to charge him something like $70.  Of course, the toll dude didn’t speak English and Joe doesn’t speak Italian….so I think they just had a yell off.   The result is Joe paid $10 and got some ticket that seemed to mark him as a violator.  We  wondered how this would affect our ability to ride on the freeway.  I told him to just file it next to the parking tickets we got in London.

 

We plotted out a route away from any cities, as much as possible and headed due north.  Enough of Italy already.  We ended up at big lake that borders Italy and Switzerland and found a campsite.   Campsites on lakes during holiday…. Not a great idea.   The campsite operator originally told us they were full, but then said, “well, maybe we have something.”  Let me just tell you if you didn’t know….this is not a good sign.   It was not really a spot but only a little spot of grass between two campers.  We were too tired to push on, so we agreed.    We could barely set up our tents.  It was a typical big European campground:  restaurant, store, big wash house, etc.   It was packed with people from up north, Holland and Denmark, mainly.   We had a nice dinner and I had a little more Italian wine.  One great thing was the tira mi su I had for dessert.  Best ever.   The one thing we knew at this point was that we couldn’t take too much more of the heat and traffic.  It was stressing us and the bikes too much.    It was time to head for Austria and the KTM plant.   We didn’t know what the weather was like there, but our bet was that if we kept heading north, it had to get cooler at some point.

 

7/27  It started sprinkling early this morning.   I continue to play chicken with Mother Nature and not put on my rain fly.  So, I am always paranoid that it will start raining.  It is remarkable how much wind blowing through leaves sounds like rain when you are in a tent.  So, I’m constantly looking outside,” is it rain or leaves?”   Just put on the rain fly, damnit!!

 Up early and on the bikes to hopefully beat the heat and the holidayers.  We rode around the lake at 30 mph for probably an hour and a half.  There are some beautiful big houses, but the area is very crowded.   We pass what looks like a toll booth and realize we have just entered Switzerland.  That is how it is these days in Europe, you pass from one country to the next and may not even realize it because no one checks your papers or ask you any questions.   We stopped for gas, which was $1.63 per liter (about $6.50/ gallon).  This is not the place for a Suburban.    We rode through a long tunnel which was spooky.  The temperature outside was about 60 degrees.  As we rode further into the tunnel, the temperature rose dramatically…. Up to 95… and the air became acrid and smoky, burning our eyes.  There was a ton of traffic, especially big trucks.  I radioed to Joe and we were on the same page.  We were thinking something was wrong….a wreck with a fire and we are riding into it.   I was a little panicked, but we rode through and everything was fine.   I’m not a fan of long tunnels and they are all over the place.   As soon as we popped out, the breathtaking beauty of the Alps captivated us.   The cities sit in this valley, bordered by steep mountains, with water falls occasionally cascading from the cliffs.  It is something that pictures can’t truly capture.

On the mountainside, there is an occasional castle or church.  Of course, every place, from villages to cities, in Europe has a big church.   It is cool to see how the designs change.   The one thing they have in common is they are always tall and visible from far away.   We stopped at some castle ruins so I could get my castle fix.  The remains of a wedding were still there….tents, chairs, etc.    I think I’ll get married at a castle.

We stopped and had $20 sandwiches.  Europe is damn expensive, and this is now with the Euro being way down compared to the dollar.  Then, we had to pay to go to the bathroom.  Jip!

We met a guy at the rest stop who rides a 2007 KTM 990 adventure and has ridden Africa and Australia.  He gave us some good advice about the bikes.

 

We kept riding and before we realized it, we had entered the country of Lichtenstein.  Huh?!  What happened?!   I didn’t realize that was even a real country.  I thought it was made up for that Heath Ledger movie, “A Knight’s Tale”.   Anyway, we drove through it in 30 minutes and into Austria.  Again, we passed borders and only realized it because of signs.   On the way, we went through countless tunnels, with the longest being 16km.  That’s like 9.5 miles.  It was older and only 2 lane, and I was behind a big smoke spewing truck.  I almost just took off and passed everyone, but I contained myself.  No wrecks, no fires.   I know what can happen in tunnels.  I saw that Stallone movie…. Of course, I think I was only one of seven, but I digress.

Overall, this was a better day.  The weather was cool and less traffic towards the end.  I think we are both getting a little homesick… not only for my friends and family, but for the things that are familiar to me.   Frankly, I’m tired of being a tourist.  I’m ready to just ride.
 


Comments

Amy (Joe's Neighbor)
08/11/2010 1:08pm

Your absolutely Funny! Totally enjoy your stories, feel as if I am in one of those horriffying tunnels.. I am not a fan of long tunnels either. There is one in Houston, tx that everytime I passed through I thought evil monkeys were gonna come out of those little doors on the side. Yeah, I saw that on a movie once. Kinda screwed w/ my head a bit. Anyway I don't like tunnels.

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