Archive for November, 2007

From Lugano to Bergamo

I took advantage of the Lugano hostel’s free wireless (if you held the laptop in the air just right) to do a little reserach on places to stay that night. The website of one of the campgrounds in Switzerland that Berck had found said they offered caravans to rent for a night. So I found the hostel’s public phone and inserted my credit card to call them. A woman answered in German. “Do you speak English?” “Nien!” “Are you open?” “Nien!” She tried to tell me something else and then handed the phone to a male. “Hello?” “Hello! Are you open?” “No, we are closed until two of February.” Their website didn’t say anything about being closed in November and December, but apparently that’s what everyone does. So much for that idea. It had seemed like such a good one. I was back to square one and extremely discouraged.

We decided that Switzerland was just too expensive and just to head back to Italy. We drove through several connecting towns with a quite a bit of traffic (though all of it moving because of the roundabouts) down small roads with confusing intersections until we got near Bergamo. Then we headed north into the Italian Alps. I had Berck drive and drive until the road got narrower, the towns got smaller, and the terrain steeper. Finally, we entered a national park with a bi-directional road that was only one lane wide. We passed a lorry with him backing up a bit and us almost scraping the side of the mountain. Then the road ended in a little parking lot and a trail beckoned us upward. If we wanted to find our way to the hostel in Bergamo before dark, we wouldn’t have time to hike, but we decided to anyway.

The trail switchbacked nearly straight up the side of the mountain. I shed my jacket, my sweater, then my flannel shirt. It was cold enough for my breath to show, but I was marching upward in my t-shirt carrying my other clothes. We came to a fork in the road with a big rock spray painted what was in each direction, although we didn’t understand it. To the left looked steep and rocky. To the right was it continued above the treeline further up than we could see, and one sign said “PASO” and another “REFUGIO.” We headed right until we got to the top of a little ridge. The trail descended before ascending again, presumably to the PASO. There was a little stone house with a solar collector sticking out of it further along the trail, presumably the REFUGIO. We enjoyed the view, and I got dressed again because I got cold as soon as I stopped marching uphill. We could have kept going, but we did want to try to get to Bergamo before it got completely dark. The trip down was a lot faster.

We drove straight down the mountain, easily following the signs to Bergamo. Unfortunately, we ran into the same problem we had with every other city we’d tried to drive into in that we had no idea what road we were on when entering the city. The only way to figure that out was to follow the signs to the center of town to get our bearings. Fortunately, Bergamo actually had STREET SIGNS, which made navigating oh, so much easier. Once we figured out where we were, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out where to go, especially since Berck had pulled up the hostel website that morning and printed a PDF of the map it provided. We were going great, came to the right roundabout, but then I didn’t realize how poorly drawn the map was and had Berck take a left instead of continuing straight. I realized our mistake when we were on a suddenly on a divided highway. So I had him get off at the next exit and turn around. So we went the other direction, but forgot to exit because we were looking for the roundabout we’d gone the wrong way on. So we drove all the way down to the next exit and turned around again. This time we exited at the right place, but the roundabout was gone. Had we gotten off the wrong exit? Where had it gone? We got back on the highway and drove back and forth a couple of times trying to find out missing roundabout. By now it was dark, and as always happens, Berck had to pee. I had him pull off the highway and pee in an empty Coke bottle. Now he was much less agitated and we tried to find the missing roundabout again. I had him exit at what I thought was the right exit again and this time go right, but that didn’t lead anywhere.

Not knowing where to go, I let Berck wander around a residential area and get us lost. Fortunately, you can always find your way back to a big city because there’s a sign at every corner that informs you what direction it lies. Berck kept driving down smaller, narrower, and less busy streets. Finally, I gave up and told him to turn around. He started to pull into a driveway on the left when a scooter suddenly appeared outside his window. Berck didn’t seem to notice until there was a loud smack as the scooter hit our left front fender. The scooter kept going, wobbling down the road as its driver turned his helmet around to look at us. Berck pulled into the driveway and turned around, but the scooter was long gone and didn’t come back. A middleaged lady walking down the sidewalk laughed and said something to the effect of “Bene, no mala,” it’s okay, no harm. So we continued on our way.

We wandered around for a very long time when suddenly Berck’s random driving brought us to… the missing roundabout. There was a dadgum sign for the hostel on the correct turn too. From then on we followed the signs to the ostello up into a residential area that we wouldn’t possibly have been able to navigate without them. The hostel had a measly number of parking spaces with signs all around saying there was towing 24 hours a day on the ample curbs that weren’t blocking anything. Berck creatively parked one end of the Sirloin into a parking area, and we went in to register. The guidebook had promised us 50 Euro doubles, but they were all out (in November??) We could pay 70 Euros for the privilege of taking up a whole dorm room or 18 Euros a piece of we slept dorm style. Of course, it was an HI hostel, so males and females were separated. We were exhausted, had no other ideas of where to go, and decided to just stay where we were.

We still hadn’t had supper, though, and in the neighborhood where we were, there were no restaurants or bars around. So we went out to the bus waiting at the OSTELLO stop right outside. Berck thought he could buy tickets from the driver (he said it said so on the side of the bus), but that would have been the only bus in all of Italy where that would have been the case. The driver said no but he had five minutes to buy some from the hostel before he left on his route. Berck ran back in to purchase four of them, and we left when he got back.

There was an Aussie on the bus who struck up a conversation with us. He hadn’t bought a ticket, and Berck explained to him that there was a tiny chance that an inspector would board and demand to see his ticket and then a fine, and that some Italians never bothered to buy tickets because it just about evened out to pay the fine whenever they were challenged, and it saved them the trouble of having to find an open shop that sold tickets. The Aussie said he was working in Switzerland and had come down for a quick holiday. He had studied the bus map and the last bus came back around midnight or so.

The bus we were on was very small, and we soon found out why as we climbed the hill and passed through the narrow city gate of Bergamo Alto, the high part of the city. It dropped us off on a cobblestone square, and the Aussie took off to find a pub. The driver and a another guy on the bus took off too. Berck studied the bus schedule at our stop to find out exactly when the last bus left. It said 7:54. It was 7:30! Berck wasn’t sure, so he asked a lady who had just boarded and was waiting for the driver to return. She told us it left in a few minutes, obviously not understanding had his question. So I tried, “When is this bus fine.” “Ahh! Eight o’clock,” she answered deliberately. We had just enough time to grab some pizza. I picked a delicious one covered in mushrooms, and Berck picked an exciting one covered in all sorts of things. As soon as he took a bite he exclaimed, “Aaaugh! Fish!” so we traded. We wondered around the city a little bit and then had to hurry back to get to the bus. We got there right before it pulled up, and he took off as soon as we boarded. We didn’t even have to use another ticket because once you stamp your ticket in the stamping machine on board, it’s good for 75 minutes.

Anybody need two Bergamo bus tickets?

We’re staying in a hostel in Lugano, Switzerland, just inside the border. It has free wireless, if we hold the laptop just right in the air. I posted everything we’d written so far, but there are gaps that have to be filled in. Check back for them.

The dollar has no value; things are very expensive.

Nov. 16 (Friday)

Autostrataing

In the morning, it seemed high time to head North and find the Alps. Though the memory of the cold night at the campground had just started to fade, the bruises from sleeping on the rocks had not. If we’d had our thermarest pads, I think it would have made all the difference in the world. But the ground was cold and rocky, so we thought we’d try to find cheap beds for the night. We elected to do our first real travel on the autostrada (like our interstates), which we’d avoided so far for a couple of reasons. The first being that they are all toll roads, and in our original estimation, we thought they’d be very expensive, though it turned out not to be too bad. The second reason is that we wanted to see the countryside. And the third, big reason, was that Berck wanted to drive on the fun, small roads. But we wanted to make some progress, and we could only average 30km/hr on the small roads, with all the curves, roundabouts, and stops.

Last time Berck was in Italy, he mostly remembered the Autostrada routes as being 4-lane, but most of the roads we drove on were 3, sometimes even 4 lanes per side. Such large, wide and generally well-paved roads seemed somewhat out of place with the general Italian character– but before we get too cozy describing them to our Interstates, I should point out that they are very much not. Where as a car on the interstate takes up barely 2/3 of a lane, the Italian lanes are just wide enough for a car, and there’s not really much wiggle room. There is no median– merely a small concrete divider, and there is no shoulder on either side of the road. I suspect that a breakdown or flat tire is very dangerous, since you’d simply have to stop in an actual lane of traffic. The signs are quite cryptic, even with our guidebook helping to decipher some of them. The lane markings are sometimes white, sometimes yellow, sometimes solid, and sometimes dashed. Sometimes double solid and/or double dashed. In general, there seemed to be little standardization, merely the construction crew’s mood. I experimented with different speeds. Even while driving at the top speed of our little Sirloin (about 160 km/hr on level ground), German-made BMW’s would fly by me. Attempts to pass other cars often resulted in four giant circles in my rearview mirror of an Audi about to mow me down. Not wanting to waste petrol (≈$8/gallon) and fearing speed cameras, I tried to stay somewhere around the speed limit, which was rarely posted unless it dropped below the typical speed limit of 110 or 130 km/hr.

The Lakes

So we managed to get out of Modena far less painfully than we got in, just following the green signs to the autostrade. After a couple of hours, we were almost in Switzerland, and decided to exit at the Italian Lakes and see what we could see. The lakes are at the foot of the Italian Alps and are a favorite summer holiday location for much of europe. The towns all had that summer resort feel, with almost all the hotels and much of the other establishments closed for the winter. We enjoyed driving around Lake Maggiore, but it seemed too early to stop. Berck wanted to start looking for an open and hopefully willing to bargain hotel in the Lakes, but Joanna wanted to press ahead to Switzerland. While driving though Como we saw signs about road closures for a rally. We’d have loved to stop and watch a bit of it, but there was no good way to figure out where to go when.

Switzerland

Border control mostly seemed to consist of show, with traffic momentarily slowing down to a crawl and endless uniformed men waved cars on through. With no ceremony, we found ourselves across the border. The language may have been the same, but there was no doubt we were in a different country. The roads suddenly became relatively wide and smooth and well marked. Traffic had a car’s length or two space between vehicles and people seemed to be posting the now oft-posted speed limits. Turn signals were used whenever they might be applicable. We stopped as soon as possible at an ATM and were horrified to find that the Swiss Franc was now worth just over $0.90. Which made everything insanely expensive. We drove by Locarno to Lugano, where one of our guidebooks mentioned a hostel. We had little difficulty locating the town, but as soon as we arrived, traffic simply stopped. The traffic was so bad, we’d spend 15 minutes or so at each stoplight, and it appeared that this was normal for this town. With none of the marked streets matching up with Joanna’s rough map of the town, she found it difficult to navigate, but after a couple hours, we managed to find the correct road to the hostel. Unfortunately, we drove to the end of it without finding the hostel and wound up on the main road again with a half hour wait to get back. This sort of nonsense continued forever, and eventually we pulled off somewhere that happened to have free internet. Berck mucked a bit with the internet while Jonah stared into the dark, it seeming nearly useless for her to continue to look at the same maps that didn’t get us where we needed to go. We eventually went back to the road where the hostel was supposed to be and drove up and down it with no success. We eventually stopped somewhere and Jonah got out to walk around and try to find it. Berck noticed that his laptop was getting free wifi from an SSID with the same name as our hostel, and it was nearly full strength. Joanna came back 10 minutes later and pointed at the building we parked next to and said, “That’s the hostel, and I have no idea how to get in it,” and stormed off again. A long time later, she came back and showed Berck where to park, saying we had a room. It was 75 swiss francs.

In a hostel. That’s $68. And we didn’t get any sheets– they would have been an extra 4 francs/person. Insanely expensive. After checking into the hostel, we discovered it was very Swiss. Built of hardwood and solid fixtures, it seemed like it could withstand nuclear attack. It was extremely clean and pleasant. Our room was on the top floor wedged in where the roof meets the wall, and the only window was in the roof. It swung open to allow us to stick a head through. After doing so, the view was spectacular, the hostel faced the train station below, and the town below that, with a lake below that, then the suburban sprawl climbed the mountain beyond.

We headed into Lugano looking for dinner. The restaurants were indistinguishable from Italian ones, save the fact that they were insanely expensive. We looked in all the window shops at the watches costing more than most cars, the crazy fashions, the meticulously laid out antiques. Berck hates shops, but in general really enjoys Swiss shops. They often sell things that interest him, and they are neat, clean and well organized, in sharp contrast to the average Italian shop. Berck suggested skipping diner, or eating at the only cheap place which was Burger King. (To put prices in perspective, a #1 meal at the burger king was 11.60 CHF or over $10.) We had 25 CHF, and after much discussion decided to get more money and go eat. We took out another 40 CHF, leaving us with 65, which should have been enough for dinner. Berck utilized his remarkable restaurant-picking ability and settled on a place, primarily because it only had 3 antipasto choices, 3 primi piatti, and 3 secondi. Berck’s tip: any place with only 3 things on the menu is bound to be good.

Berck ordered, because while he certainly can’t speak Italian, he can at least approximate the pronunciation, which is better than Joanna generally managed. He got a plate of meat and cheese as an antipasto, and one pasta dish to share. This totaled about 40CHF, which would have been fine, but the trouble came with the wine. Berck ordered some house wine, and the waiter told him how expensive it was. Berck thought he heard “15”, but when all was said and done, it was 35CHF, which put us over the 65 in our pocket, and made for an $80 meal, where we were only able to get wine, an appetizer, and a plate of pasta.

Still, it was excellent. The pasta was taglietelli with mushrooms, the meat and cheese were excellent, and the wine is the only Merlot Berck’s ever really liked. Fortunately, they took credit cards. Joanna said they were the best mushrooms she’s ever had.

Thursday, Nov. 15 (I know because we had to write it on our HI card applications.)

Murlo

We washed a load of clothes last night. We didn’t have enough change for the coin operated washer, so I went back up to the front desk armed with a ten Euro note. The lady wasn’t there anymore, so I rang the bell and waited. There was a button outside that said FOR EMERGENCIES, but not having enough change to wash your clothes didn’t seem all that urgent. No one came, but I could hear someone coughing in the other room watching TV. “Hello?!” I yelled a couple times, but no one came. The door to the office was ajar, so I went in and opened the change drawer, inserted my ten and got a collection of 2’s and 1’s in return. Then we returned to the tent and drank wine and wrote until it was time to put the clothes in the dryer.

The night in the tent was very cold. We hadn’t brought our inflatable sleeping pads, which act as much as insulators as mattresses. We were camped on cold gravel, and it sucked the warmth of our bodies through the thin tent floor, even through our sleeping bags. Finally, I put my jacket under torso and a spare T-shirt beneath my feet to separate them from the ground. Still I would wake up shivering. I always sleep best after the sun comes up and warms up the tent, but Berck told me it was time to arise. My arms were asleep from being curled up tightly around myself in a vain effort to keep warm. Berck said he was cold all night too, and he had the warmest sleeping bag, my extra tall I got on sale. We decided we were ill-prepared wimps and not to camp anymore.

Road from Sienna to Modena

We drove back to Sienna, in the daylight this time, enjoying the beautiful countryside and the curvy road we’d flown by in the dark the night before. We had to navigate around Sienna again but did so successfully this time and took the free “autostrata” (limited access four-lane highway) to Firenze, stopped for some “pizza”-like substances, and continued north on some curvy roads to meet up with a highway to Modena.

The road to Modena was spectacular, and Berck was having fun navigating the curves in our underpowered Dihatsu Sirion (or “Sirloin,” as I call it, which is still a very cute car). We rounded one bend and saw snow-covered Apennines ahead of us. Little did we know that’s where we were going. The road went higher and higher as the temperature dropped lower and lower. Soon there was snow on the side of the road. By the time we got near the pass, snow was covering the road, and we were driving very slowly. But as soon as we’d descended far enough, the snow turned to slush, then to simply wet, and we were on our way again.

Berck stopped again to get us some “lunch,” but it was already 2:24pm, and they were only serving sandwiches, no pizza. We strategized about where to spend the night, deciding to call it day by the time we got to Modena. The problem with navigating by car in Italy is that the map of the country will get you to a city, but the guidebooks only have little maps of the city centers, where all the interesting bits are. Then they’ll list some hostels on the outskirts of town with little arrows pointing down which road out of the city center you should take, but the hotel won’t actually be on that road. They’ll give you a phone number and possibly a website for more information, but that doesn’t help us in the car.

Modena

Modena is a fairly big city, but our best bet for affordable housing for the night was there. Still we were approaching during daylight, so we might have a fighting chance. I studied the maps diligently during the approach, hoping to fill in the gaps between my detailed but limited map of the center and my country map. We tried going straight into town, but we kept being deterred to the right by one-way streets, do-not-enter signs, and bus-only lanes. Soon we were heading out of town again instead of into. We turned around and tried to follow the signs to the center again, but Berck won’t drive into zona traffico limitato areas. Somehow we realized we were at the stadium, which is surrounded by acres of free parking, except, I think, on game days.

We found a spot and walked to the hostel, which was miraculously open. We had to fill out the paperwork to get HI cards, but we get a room to ourselves with clean sheets, a clean bathroom down the hall (our very own in the larger bathroom area with its own key… very strange). We’ve got dorm beds, but I shoved two together. Berck decided it would be worth it to pay to park closer to the hostel, since we only had to pay for the hour or so before parking was free plus two hours in the morning.

We hit the town next, finding an Internet cafe by the main square, where Berck checked e-mail, our flights, and transferred money into checking accounts so we can get it out of bancomats. Then he found us supper at a place nearby recommended by the guidebook, ordering two appetizers, a pasta, and a pizza. Our waiter looked a little confused as he tried to figure out what order he should bring it in. We also has a good bottle of Chianti, and I had a latte for dessert. Delicious. We tried to find some gellato afterward, but everything was closed. So we just went back to the hostel.

Day 5 (It must be; it’s time to do laundry. Nov… who knows, it’s Wednesday.)

We slept in at the Hotel Posta, awakened every quarter hour or so by the bell tower across the courtyard from us and shining into our room. It would give the hour by the number of bells and then a different bell would strike one, two, or three times, indicating which quarter hour had passed. It got hot in the room, so Berck got up and opened the window. Then we were awoken by the sound of pouring rain.

That’s the other thing about touring Italy in November. It rains. It rained pretty much all day. We toured the town with our jackets zipped up and Berck’s umbrella. The duomo is black and white striped. We also paid for the pleasure of walking down St. Patrick’s well and back up, all 496 steps each way. The well has a double helix of steps so that traffic only moves one way. They built the well so that if they ever got seiged they would always have plenty of water. They built it right at the edge of the city wall too so that any invaders would be sure to know they had a well and could outlast any army’s patience. The city was never attacked, probably because of their well-deterrence. What I want to know is, why didn’t they just lower a bucket on a rope?

Cortona

Our parking time was up, so we headed north to Cortona, the city made famous by the book and movie “Under a Tuscan Sun” (though that’s not why we went there). The city is more vertical than horizontal… they make a big deal about the one flat road in town. We arrived at a little before 3, and all of the shops and restaurants had closed at 14:30. All but a bruschetta and birra place, whose owner had apparently figured out that he could make a ton of money serving stupid tourists who want to eat between 14:30 and 19:00. We had an amazing pizza with some salami that was sort of like pepperoni and some brichutta with with truffle paste and prosciuto crudo and some rocket to boot. It was fantastic.

By then it was nearly four, so we hiked to the hostel to see if it were open. The doors were unlocked, and there were kids all around, but the sign at the desk said they were closed until 18.30. Then a kid who had been smoking outdoors came in and said they were actually closed for the season and had just opened to cater to a big group of Americans that had come to town. Stupid HI hostels.

Sienna (attempted)

We got back on the road, after me leading Berck with his hurt heel around the wrong way to the car, and decided to head to Sienna. It had an economical hostel and hotel. It had finally stopped raining, but unfortunately, Sienna is much bigger than Berck remembered it being, and we found that we couldn’t get close to the center where the hotel was with the car. So we tried for the hostel, but it’s outside of town, and the trick is figuring out which road it was on without knowing where the heck you are. Italians put their street names on the sides of buildings at intersections, so you don’t know what street you’ve turned onto until you’re already on it. By now it was night, and we couldn’t even read the street signs.

Traffic was nuts, so Berck was driving very fast trying not to tick anyone off. We kept driving inside the city walls where you’re not supposed to go unless you have a reason to be there into zona traffico limitato areas, but we would come up one way streets that we couldn’t turn around in. These streets are incredibly narrow, usually with stone walls separated by the width of your tiny European car and people walking up and down them. It’s like driving into and around a mall, except there would be more space to drive in a mall. Still Berck only got honked at once when he apparently entered a traffic circle too early. I think it was the third time we’d entered that particular traffic circle.

In desperation, even though I knew it shouldn’t work, I pulled out my compass and said I thought we should go north. Berck said it was more likely pointing at a hunk of metal in the car but would gladly follow it if he turned around and it pointed 180 degrees away. It didn’t.

Finally, I figured out that the hostel was on the same road as the railway station, so we tried to follow signs with trains on them. They led us completely around the city, and then to a roundabout where Berck insisted the train pointed to the right and I insisted a train pointed to the left. No wonder since we were right next to the train station we finally discovered. We still didn’t get on the correct road though, and Berck was ready to give up.

I told him we’d try to find the campsite whose website he’d printed out that was south of Sienna. I told him to follow the signs to Gossetto. That worked for a while, but I have to keep an eye on Berck because sometimes he’ll forget which way he was going in a roundabout and just turn a random direction. Like he did when he saw a sign for hotels. We ended up driving back into Sienna yet again and then back out heading some direction generally south but I couldn’t figure out where until he pulled off in front of a “white” road with some signs marking the towns ahead and figured it out for me. Once I knew where I was, I could get him on the right road for the campground again, and we took some more white roads to get back on track.

Murlo

Once again Berck was led astray by a siren sign promising “camping.” We followed the camping signs as the road got narrower and narrower and were suddenly at a campground. I went up to the lit door, and a woman greeted me in English! “Camping?” I asked. “Yes,” she answered, as if to say, itsn’t that what all the signs say? This is remarkable because as far as we knew, there were only three campgrounds open north of Rome in all of Italy past October.

Not only does it have campsites, it also sports hot showers and washers and dryers. If only it had an Internet connection as well… But we’re relaxing in our tent, taking turns taking slugs off a bottle of wine we bought at the SMA by our hostel in Roma. It’s quite good and only cost 3.50 Euro. It’s so nice to have stopped for the night, even though we’ll be sleeping on a 20.50 Euro bed of gravel tonight in the middle of nowhere. The stars are clear and bright. You can even see the Milky Way. The sky is clear now, but Berck says it looks like a thunderstorm is on its way.