From Italy to Germany

We are two countries past our last post – after a four-night stop in Lutzmansburg, Austria we’ve made our way to Bad Tölz, a spa town in the heart of Bavaria – a good 45 minutes south of Munich.

Our last stop in Italy was in Venice, or as I kept referring to it in the days leading up to our drive, Veniceland, a subsidiary of Disney. Venice, the city of canals, one of the most powerful city-countries from the middle ages through the 1700s or so, pretty much collapsed by the time of Napoleon and only recovered when it discovered it was attracting tourists who loved its preserved heritage. Nowadays, Venice makes so much money from tourism it doesn’t know what to do with it. Fancy bridges to nowhere, updates to the sea-busses (vaporettos), all get funding, except air conditioning in its public museums.

We arrived in Venice on a Sunday afternoon. We drove close to the main train station, only to be turned around by 40 euro a day parking. After finding a shady spot in municipal parking in the town of Mestre for Calude (the Pugeot 206+ we’ve ben driving since Paris) we boarded a train for one euro a piece and, 12 minutes later, faced the queues to talk with people selling tickets for the vaporetto. Four lines for all the folks coming off the train, trying to get into Venice proper. Another place some of that overflow of tourist money might go.

The temperature in Venice was well over 90 – just waiting in line singed my skin. While queued in the line closest to our vaporetto line, a sweaty, smelly German man would not keep his distance. With each step forward, this close-stander would creep up to us, rarely leaving more than 6 inches between us and his person. Tara became so frustrated that I handed her thirty euros and asked her to check out the other ticket line 200 feet away to see if that was moving any faster. Even using both of our roller bags as a buffer, this man did not take the hint; with every forward move of the bag, I could feel his legs release then butt-up against our bags again.

Fortunately, Tara returned victorious with two one-hour vaporetto passes, whereupon we boarded our water bus and waited 45 minutes for it to get to St Elena, our stop. Our hotel, on the main island but a little bit away from the tourist hotspots, was surprised to see us so early in the day, but the manager, Roberto (the son of the couple who owned the building) happily let us into our room. We crashed for about thirty minutes before locking the door and making our way to St Mark’s Square.

Sunday afternoon, high humidity and heat – these left me to question why the Venetians thought it a good idea to build a promenade without any afternoon cover. I slavishly walked under cloudless skies, the sun penetrating every pore of my essence on the way to the main square. Between our hotel and the main attractions lay four veporetto stops and the same number of canal bridges, but, after the loss of many gallons of water in the form of sweat, we finally made it to St Marks.

The number of fanny packs in Italy has been truly astounding, but no more so than here. And the lines were similarly daunting. To get into the Duomo looked easily to be two hours. Into the Doge’s palace – about the same. Didn’t even bother with those exhibits, deciding instead to wander the labyrinthine streets of the city, feast on gelato when we could, and generally take it easy.

The next morning we tried again. At 9 AM we arrived in St Marks and found the same lines and the same fanny packs at all the major sites - and realized there that we were not fated to see scenic Venice. Instead, we spent our two remaining days with somewhat more contemporary happenings. After spending Monday morning in the Academic Gallery (such jaw-dropping artwork hung on walls bathed in sunlight and attacked by heat and humidity in a completely unregulated building) Peggy Guggenheim (astounding in every way! And how did Gerhard Richter manage to insert himself into the sidelines of every artistic movement for forty years?) we grabbed a quick lunch at a bar and spend the rest of our time in Venice in the Biennale, the longest running semi-annual art show in the world.

But that deserves a post of its’ own.

After two tiring days of running around inspired artistic creations, we boarded our final vaporetto, trained back to Mestre, found Claude resting where we left him, and started the drive to Austria.

Lutzmansburg is in the state of Burgenland, the major producer of blaufrankisch in Austria. More specifically, it’s in Mittelburgenland, which is famous not only for that grape but also for Zweigeld, a light, aromatic Austrian varietal Tara and I have liked a lot in the US. Our three whole days were composed of hiking, wine tasting, and a day trip to Vienna, to meet up with one of Tara’s classmates. We also happened to see the famous Klimt paintings at the Belvedere – the Kiss, etc.

And on Sunday we made our way to Bad Tölz, where I’m writing this now in our little apartment having cooked some brats and opened a Moulin a Vent for the evening.

Serenade heard from our balcony in Sirmione

Marching Band in Sirmione at Lake Garda

Italian Internet followup

Fortunately, our hotel in Venice has internet included (most of the places we've stayed have not) so it's given me a chance to waste some time looking into why we've had such poor coverage.

So with a little research it appears Italy passed a law in 2005 requiring anyone providing internet access to collect an identity document from the user. So every hotel, every internet cafe, every place that provides access to customers must collect this information? Why? To increase security and prevent terrorism. Awesome.

Some other enlightened Italian views towards the web are chronicled here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090504/0148494730.shtml

"In Italy we are one hundred years back"

We have encountered four pretty consistent challenges in our time in Italy. First, the road signs are terrible. In France (with the exception of our first day driving, in Paris), when you drive far enough in a straight line, you’ll eventually find a set of signs that tell you the direction of the next town few towns and the more significant distant ones or you will find a sign that says “Toutes Directions,” which lets you know if you continue driving straight you will find such signs. “Toutes” became an indispensible ally in our quest to get places.

Italy has some concept of Toutes – as we passed through about twenty kilometers of tunnels going from the French Alps down into the Piedmont, direction Turin, we occasionally saw a sign reading, “Tutti di directionze” which, in theory, should perform the same task – get the driver to a useful signpost that can help him or her make a decision. No such luck with the latter, though. The signage in Italy is terrible. One intersection will have clear signs getting us to where we want to go; one intersection later, we’re left to just figure it out. As a sign of Italy’s true randomness, we discover afterwards we guess correctly about half the time.

While in Alba, leaving our charming B&B to head to Barolo for some wine tasting, we drove around the ring road surrounding the town twice looking for a sign pointing to Barolo but seeing nothing. Driving through roundabout after roundabout looking at the signs pointing to every destination nearby but Barolo, we realize in a pique of clarity there’s a small chance that the one roundabout without any signs to other towns might be the one we need to get to our destination. Third time around, we choose the roundabout, only to see a sign for Barolo about 500 meters beyond the roundabout. This has been altogether too common an occurrence.

In Italy, many towns have signs with white bulls eyes directing a driver to the city center. These signs are immensely helpful, when they actually work. Unfortunately, all too often the signs are only deployed at every other intersection, requiring a guess at any diverging road without a sign. Again, the 50% rule. We have tried to get into Verona twice now, and the inconsistent centro signs have foiled us both times, adding twenty or so minutes to our travel as we reverse and try again. And, occasionally, again.

Our second challenge has less to do specifically with Italy than it has to do with the inconsistencies of the European Union. When I picked up my car in Paris, the Hertz attendant was very clear to tell me the car can only take Sans Plomb 95 or 98. Nothing else. As long as we were in France, our first 1700 kilometers were fine. Once we crossed into Italy, it all changed. No Sans Plomb 95 or 98 were available. No Sans Plomb at all. Whereas France had one choice for diesel, Italy has two. They have only one unleaded, and it bears nothing in common with the French term.

Banking is similar. In France, it was easy to find banks, particularly those of my bank, HSBC. Italy, true to an Economist article I read a year or so ago, is severely underbanked. Finding ATMs has been difficult and HSBC isn’t even allowed to engage in personal banking in Italy, even though they have branches in many small towns just across the border.

Our fourth problem has been in getting information. We eventually make it to the Verona tourist office, no thanks to Frommers, which lists it on the side of the Roman arena opposite from where it is – curse you Andrew Murphy, the terrible cartographer of our book. Tara goes up to the help desk and asks, as it says in our book to do, for information about the Veneto wine regions. She pulls out a map of Veneto and circles three areas near Verona, saying we can find wines from each of those areas. Tara asks, “so we just go there and its obvious where we can taste?” She says of course. We turn to walk out and I ask for the Frommers book. I take it back to the counter, flipping it to where it discusses the wine region and tasting and say, “in my book it says you should have a list of wineries that allow tasting. Do you have such a thing?” The person behind the desk looks at me for a moment then turns to go to a cabinet of neatly stacked pamphlets, maps, and brochures, digging through them to find us two items – a map specifically of Valpolicella and a second map, by Italian Touring, of all the wineries that allow public tasting. I thank them and, as Tara and I start walking to the door, we start giggling – of course we could get the information we needed, once we showed we knew exactly what we wanted them to give us.

And finally, the internet is almost impossible to find. We located one open wifi spot in all of downtown Alba. In France, Tara would have her iPod Touch or I would have my iPhone open searching for open connections if we needed to look something up; the list of networks would sometimes be a dozen long. Even if most or all of them were locked, France was using wifi. Not so in Italy. Walking through Milan performing the same technique, it was rare to find even one locked wifi connection. Thankfully our hotel had (flaky) access. And to get that, we needed to give them a copy of our passports; in return we received the network’s WEP key and a unique username and password that expired after ten hours of use.

After leaving the Verona tourist office and making two grocery stops where we could not locate an electric hot water kettle, we finally make it to an internet point, a small café about 2 km outside of Sirmione. We go in and ask if they have WiFi. No. Can I connect my computer to their internet connection? No. He walks us to the back to two computers that were likely manufactured before the dot com bust and asks if we want to use one or two of them. Just one. He asks us for identification – preferably a passport. Tara digs through her purse and gives him both of our passports. “With one computer, I only need one passport.” As Tara was loading up Firefox, I asked the barista why every time we sign onto the internet, everyone takes it so seriously, often asking for copies of our passports.

“What year is it, 2009? In Italy we are one hundred years back … before Christ. Do you know what I mean by this?”

All this pretty much sums up our Italy experience so far.

A chicken on the way to Burgundy

After leaving our “gypsy caravan” in Versailles behind, we made our way onto the highway, heading west towards Fontainebleau then south towards Lyon. Though our day-trip to Chartres and back technically saw our little Peugeot challenge the highway, it was really when we merged onto the A6 that this really began to feel like a European road trip.

I’m shifting gears and weaving through highway traffic while Tara is browsing our Burgundy and Rhone Valley travel book, trying to get a sense of what we can do on the drive. The book mentions a town called Sens, describing it as a picturesque medieval town with a nice Gothic cathedral. Tara knows I have a weakness for cathedrals, so we figure out what exit we have to take and head to downtown Sens.

We arrive near the town center and park next to the tourism office. It’s Sunday, about 11:30, so that’s closed and we know there’s a chance the cathedral is in mass. However, Tara tells me there’s a Les Halles in the town and it’s near the cathedral, so we chance it and start walking up to the town square.

The almost-deserted town square.

The 20 feet high wooden doors to the cathedral are shut tightly. A few restaurant owners are setting up outdoor seating in the square in front of the cathedral, with maybe 5 older men sitting by themselves wearing fisherman hats sipping espressos or beers, seemingly waiting for their families to emerge from the mass. Tara has an anxious determination to get out of the square before we figure out what to do next, but I’m just looking up in wide-eyed wonder. No building in my line of sight can be less than 200 years old; most of them look like pieces are nearly medieval. Even the pharmacy, the neon green cross, is in a building made of stone and wood that might easily be found in a medieval recreation.

We make our way through the square, past some buildings, where we find the Les Halles, the indoor food market, which too is shut. It’s only open Tuesday through Saturday. Making our way back to the square, we sit inside one of the restaurants – inside, because after hitting a high of 85 degrees during our first week in Paris, it has steadily dropped to the low 60s of that day and all Tara packed was a light sweater.

Tara and I order espressos – Lavazza, an Italian brand I hadn’t seen advertised yet. As we sit, sipping our coffee, the church bells begin to chime – it’s now noon. The doors to the church swing open and throngs – actual throngs – of people emerge. We settle our bill and head over to the door where maybe three hundred people come out of the cathedral to the sound of the triumphant organ – the miracles of mass are complete.

After most of the attendants leave, we entered through the large doorframe, the organist still vigorously playing her tune. Slowly walking down one side of the arcade, it occurred to me I might not have encountered a real mass since college. The air was somehow more charged than I remember. The bishop – I recognized the white frock with red accents – said his good-byes to many attendees he clearly knew, or at least recognized. We saw several families come in to the cathedral with babies and children dressed in elaborate white dresses – the bishop might be christening this afternoon too.

Before I could ask Tara if we could watch, she leads me back to the square. On our earlier walk, before the coffee, we had passed a butcher with an especially inviting selection of rotisserie chickens. Before we entered the church, we had already decided to return to the butcher to buy a chicken and eat it at the next rest stop. We returned to the butcher to now find a line eight deep, many just emerged from the service. Two of the rotisserie racks were missing – they were behind the counter, next to the awards and certifications the butcher had been awarded. The line is slow – the elderly woman at the front is ordering small cuts of many kinds of meats. But one by one, each person places his or her order, the butcher patiently fulfills it before acknowledging the next customer.

One woman requests a small game hen – all the whole poultry we’ve seen so far looks as if it had just been plucked – so he takes the hen, lights a Bunsen burner behind him on a counter, and sears the last of the feather ends off the bird. Another person orders a rotisserie chicken “with juice”. He takes a jar, walks over to the rotisserie, and ladles the juice and fat at the bottom of the machine into the jar.

The chickens on the rack are AOC chickens - Appellation d'origine contrôlée – which is to say they’re a particular chicken with a regional certification (think Champagne) such that only chickens raised in a particular way and from a particular place can truly be called Bresse.

We finally get to order a chicken – 15.70 euros for the whole thing – that he packs into a double-thick wax paper rotisserie chicken bag. We quickly make our way back to the car, hop onto the highway, and stop at the first exit we can find. We sit at a picnic table with a knife, half a baguette, and an open wax paper bag devouring the parts while the wind whips around us, trying to blow everything away. Amazing!

The Best Pizza Truck in Briancon

After a picture perfect day in in the Alps - hiking, thermal baths, a wildflower walk - we were starving. Fancy French food (i.e. - the only cuisine available at our hotel) would not satisfy, I wanted pizza. Yes, I was hit hard with a craving for pizza. Despite the fact that we will be in ITALY tomorrow morning, I needed pizza for dinner. We drove off in the direction of the largest town around keeping our eyes peeled not just for a pizza place but for a pizza place that was actually open in the sleepy pre-summer season valley. As we descended into Briancon, there it was like a beacon - the Pizza Truck. After a moment's hesitation we turned into the parking lot and went up to the truck's window to place an order. We selected the grande chorizo pie and sat to wait while the pizza maker tossed the fresh dough and slid our pizza into his tiny oven built into the front window of the truck. Ten minutes later a steaming, delicious pizza pie emerged. Ahhh.