VENI, VIDI, VACATION
Or
THE ITALIAN JOB
2012
We drove slowly down another dark and dismal street in the decidedly foreign Italian town, truly lost. The girls were not particularly concerned yet. After all, it was very late, past midnight, and they were very tired. Besides, Dad always knows the way. The problem tonight was, Dad did not know the way, not at all. It was going to take a minor miracle to get us out of this maze of streets.
Brianna, my 18 year old, started lobbying for a vacation to Venice in March. After considerable persuasion, I said yes, we could do it. We would have to go in mid-summer before the university started, at the height of tourist season. But that would be OK. Cheryl and I have been to Europe many times, but always short trips. Bri had been to France for a month a couple of summers ago, and had gone down to Zurich, but had not been to Italy and had not gone with the parents. I decided we would go for two weeks, a very long vacation for us, but hey, Brianna is the last child at home and had had a difficult year. It would be fun to just vacation around Europe for a couple of weeks, right? This would be her European Tour.
I worked on an itinerary. We would fly into Munich and have lunch with my cousin in the farmers market at the Marienplatz, drive to Rapoldsberg high in the Alps in Austria, then on to Venice, Rome, Pisa, and Milan in Italy, then back to Konstanz, Germany, via Liechtenstein and Switzerland, then return to Munich. Not so long a drive as you might think. Everything is close in Europe, and the Alps are incredibly scenic. I arranged hotels for the most part, and tried to get the girls to arrange touristing about, but when the time came to decide what we would do when we got there, they were far to busy getting ready for Brianna’s Big Move to the University of Missouri to think about it. So, I decided.
We disembarked the plane in Munich and headed for car rentals. Cheryl has drilled into my head to shop the car rental companies to find the best price, and I had done that. Dollar was about half the going rate, and I thought I scored big just following the Shoppers advice. But, at the Dollar counter, the Fräulein started equivocating. I knew she was equivocating because her impeccable English turned into barely decipherable pigeon English. But I had her, because, you see, I speak pigeon German. It seemed that Dollar had a mandatory €20 per day insurance surcharge. We explained our company insurance guaranteed coverage for our car rentals anywhere in the world. No matter. €20 per day is required ~ extra. She showed me where it was Written on a Formular. Hmm. Fourteen days at €20 per day is €280. The cheap Dollar rate was no longer cheap. In fact, it just doubled. I told the Fräulein to wait, warten in German, and trotted over to the Hertz counter where their Fräulein was watching with some amusement. Well, the Hertz people had no mandatory insurance requirement, although their rate was about the same as Dollar with insurance. They picked up a lot of business from angry Dollar customers. We rented from Hertz, got a brand new car. I do not like being suckered. We left the terminal, set the Euro navi for Thomas’s house, and departed.
Hooking up with Thomas in north Munich, we headed for the Marienplatz and the farmers market. The Marienplatz is the location of the famous Glockenspeil, the ultimate Kuku clock located on the side of the City Hall. Unfortunately, the life-sized figures only do their act a couple of times a day, and we were going to miss the show. Brianna was unimpressed and jet-lagging at the same time. So, we did very little sightseeing in Zentrum München.
Veni, Vidi, Vertical
We Came, We Saw, We Drove Up an Alp.
We dropped Thomas off on the way out of Munich. My goal was an easy drive to Salzburg, Austria, then south a few kilometers to Bischofshofen and west to Pension Rapoldsberg. I picked Rapoldsburg as being on our route south but also close to Hallstatt and the famous salt mine, which I wanted to tour. Then, we encountered a difficulty. I did not realize that July 27 was the first day of the universal German six-week holiday. We no more than got on Route 8 Autobahn toward Salzburg than the navi started warning of traffic delays ahead. It turned out that all of southern Germany was headed for Chiemsee Lake and Salzburg. The 145 kilometer 1.5 hour drive turned into a 4 hour nightmare drive in stop and go traffic. I was very anxious that we reach Rapoldsburg before dark, because the road up the alp looked a little difficult.
At one point on the crawl, I thought to take a detour to the south and pick up a mountain road that might avoid all the traffic, so we tried it. After a few miles, the navi refused to recognize an alternate route, and my Europe map was too large a scale to pick up secondary roads. Back to Route 8, and probably just as well. There was a shortcut road that happened to be the same road Rapoldsberg was on, a severely twisting, turning mountain road. It would have been just grizzly.
The traffic vanished at Salzburg, but now we had no time to see the home of Mozart. We headed south to Bishofshofen in a hurry. Just before we reached the town we passed a huge castle on a hill overlooking the valley. This was Schloss Hohenwerfen. We went back and toured it and ate lunch there later. At Bishofshofen we took off west on Haidberg Strasse which promptly morphed into Hochkönigstrasse snaking up a narrow valley with huge Alpen on each side to Mühlbach am Hochkönig. At Mühlbach, we turned right onto a narrow road, climbing in a zigzag up the side of the Alp. The climb got steeper and steeper, and the road narrower and narrower. Then it turned into one lane gravel. No guard rails. Almost impossible switchbacks. Cheryl is afraid of heights. Some low screaming was coming from her side of the car every time she looked out the window. After several hair-raising minutes, we reached the Pension Rapoldsberg close to the treeline. The snow and glacier covered Alpen reared up above the lodge and all around. It was simply stunning. What an unbelievable find.
The proprietors were waiting for us. Thomas came out to greet us wearing full Alpine gear including leather shorts ~ Lederhosen. His girlfriend was there wearing a Dirndl and minding a pack of friendly dogs. His mother was there, not wearing a Dirndl and not speaking English, but very friendly for all that. Some more people were sitting on the southern porch drinking beer and chatting happily in German. These were more relatives and a couple of neighbors. The view from the porch was incredible. Looking down a few thousand feet to the village and a mile across the valley to ski slopes and other lodges. Some clouds were drifting by below us. Thomas introduced us to all, and carried our baggage to our room.
It was late and we were very tired, both from jet lag and altitude, but Thomas insisted on fixing us dinner. We ate inside with numerous dogs wandering around and a few interesting guests at other tables. We planned our first side trip to Hallstatt and the famous salt mine on the morrow, and, with no TV or Internet to distract us, we went to bed.
The next morning, Bri and I got up early and without waiting for Cheryl, climbed the mountain cow pasture above the lodge up a few hundred feet to a ridgeline. The cows, with bells, were up there along with more spectacular scenery. Our hearts were pounding from the effort to extract oxygen from the thin air. When we came back down we noticed Cheryl trudging up the driveway a switchback below us. She thought we had gone that way and jogged down, but couldn’t jog back up.
The trip to Hallstatt took about an hour and ran along the spine of the Alps. This area, the Salzkammergut region, might well be the most beautiful area on the planet. Numerous alpine lakes with quaint villages dotting the shorelines. Hallstatt was simply a jewel. The houses in Hallstatt climb on top of each other for a few hundred feet up the mountain side. We walked up the main street, which is really the only street, doing a little shopping and looking for one of those delightful Austrian restaurants to have lunch. We found one at a platz that looked good. The menu special was ravioli, so we all three ordered it. At that point, the waitress forgot about us for half an hour until Cheryl had to get her from the bar. Our food came shortly after. Cold, icky, Chef Boyardee fresh from the can. If there is anything worse than Chef Boyardee, it is cold Chef Boyardee. Fortunately, there was only enough for two servings so we didn’t have to leave too much on the plates. After all my extolling the virtues of German food. Oh, well. We were, after all, in Austria.
We hurried back down the road to the cable car lift that takes tourists up the mountain to the entrance to the mine for the last 3:00 pm run. Well, almost to the entrance. You have to hike up a trail for another quarter of a mile, but that is ok. It was trying to rain, because we were now up in the clouds, but we made it. The tour guides required everyone to put on jump suits to protect clothing from the salt, and in we went. The Hallstatt salt mine is the oldest commercial business in the world. Salt has been mined here for at least 5000 years, maybe 7000 years. It is still being mined here.
Well, we had an interesting tour. At two points we were obliged to slide to lower levels on wooden slides. Gave it a little fun park atmosphere. At the end we all rode a little narrow gauge train to get out. Back in the gift shop we took off our jump suits and shopped a bit. Our tour guide noticed my name on the company polo shirt I was wearing and commented that it was a fine old Bavarian name. It is, but there are so few of us now I am surprised he knew that. He let us take his picture. We had to buy some expensive plastic ponchos to ward off the rain as we walked back down the mountain. One of the attractions here is the Man in the Salt, a guy who died in a cave-in 3000 years ago. We did not, however, actually see the salt man as he was, unfortunately, buried some 100 years ago. Somehow, I thought he was on display.
We had some dinner in another café that was pretty good, and started back, all agreeing the Hallstatt diversion was worth it. Unfortunately, we had another diversion ahead. The navi started warning us of a road blockage on our route. I am not sure how the navi gets this information, and I didn’t know another way back, so we kept going. Sure enough, halfway to Rapoldsberg we found the road blocked by a rockslide. Well, glad we weren’t at that spot when it happened. We doubled back and eventually turned onto a crossroad not shown on the map. We asked the navi to take us home from this point, however, and it did.
The next morning we packed up to leave, all thoroughly satisfied with the visit to Austria, except for the gigantic traffic jamb, cold ravioli, and rock slide, and backtracked to the castle we passed coming down from Salzburg. This castle is called Burg Hohenwerfen and it is a big tourist attraction. We took the tour, ate lunch in the castle restaurant, and started south again. Cheryl entered our next destination, Preganziol in Italy, and the navi couldn’t find it. Shortly we found Preganziol wasn’t in the navi. Nor was any of Italy. What was this!!! The Euro navi did not cover Italy? Had Italy gone ahead and withdrawn from Europe? Well, further investigation found our expensive euro navi did not, in fact, cover Italy, Spain, Greece, and a number of other southern countries. I don’t know why.
We had a problem. Cheryl had picked this next hotel, the Best Western Villa Pace Park Hotel Bolognese, hereafter known as the Best Western, and I had not even seen the town it was in on a map. All I knew was it was close to Treviso, the town where I had picked a hotel. My Europe map did not show Preganziol at all. I decided to pick up an Italy road map when we stopped for fuel and see what we could do, so I did. Guess what, Preganziol didn’t show on that map, either. Treviso did, however, so we headed that way figuring someone could direct us. Of course, we hadn’t figured out yet that Italians generally only speak Italian. We speak three common languages between us, but no Italian.
It was a nice drive except for Italian drivers who don’t seem to understand the concept of ‘driving lanes’. Anywhere on the pavement seemed to be ok with them. There were also no speed limit signs anywhere, although I was sure they did have speed limits in Italy. (Unlike Germany and Austria where they don’t.) And endless tollbooths. We ended up paying over €60 to drive on Italian roads. No matter. 20 miles from the turnoff to Venice we came to a large exit sign for Preganziol. It still wasn’t on the map, but who am I to criticize. We exited into the town and started looking for the Best Western. Our road ended at a tee, and I turned left back toward the highway, but shortly realized this was a mistake and went around a block to get back to the tee. Just for the record, I was successful in this, which is the first time I have successfully gone around the block in Europe. Normally, this is simply impossible. Getting back to the main road, we passed a gentleman on a bike. Stopping, we asked him if he spoke English and where the Best Western Hotel might be. I am not sure about the English, but he did recognize Best Western. All we had to do is girare a destra, gesturing right, where I had turned left. The hotel was down this road a due of kilometers on the right. Sure enough, it was.
The Best Western in Preganziol, the town that doesn’t exist, was great. The desk clerk spoke English after a fashion, and so did the waiter in the hotel restaurant. The hotel pool was really great, and I actually got in it. The trees and shrubs were all tropical in nature and beautiful. The next day we were going to Venice!!
Veni, Vidi, Venice
We came, We saw, We rode in a Gondola
I had allotted one day for Venice, so bright and early, about 11 a.m., we headed down to the desk to get directions for the train station. I had been warned to not drive to Venice, there would be no place to park. The desk clerk, the same young lady who spoke some English, gave us directions. I must interject here that all the young Italian women seemed to have Roman noses, dark tans, and good looks. Later it became a challenge to find an Italian woman that did not have a Roman nose, dark tan and good looks. Obviously genetic attributes….So, the desk clerk discussed the advantages of going to the Preganziol station or the Treviso station. She thought the Treviso station might be best. It was only three or four kilometers up the road on the right. And, they had free parking. Actually, the station was on the left. It turned out the Preganziol station was a much better choice.
So, off we went. Having relied so heavily on navigators, we did not even consider taking a map and did not bother to note street names or landmarks. This would come back to haunt us later. Our hotel, for example, was on Via Terraglio. It would have been very helpful to remember that, but we didn’t. We actually had no trouble finding the train station, although we did have considerable difficulty getting into the parking lot. Eventually, we got into the station and found the ticketing window. I should note that this would be only the second time I rode on a public transport train, anywhere. The clerk at the window, of course, spoke no English, or German, or French. She did understand Venezia and that we wanted to go there and come back later. She could not tell us which track the train would be on, but the tickets said 6. After a while, we found the appropriate track and settled down to wait. We realized we had to validate our tickets in a beat up electronic device, so we did, although I am not sure why since no one ever checked our tickets, here or anywhere else.
The train came. We checked the destination stops and noted the final one was Venezia, aka Venice, so we boarded and settled down again. After another 45 minutes or so, the train crossed the causeway and deposited us in Venezia. I could have driven here three or four times in the time it took to ride public transport. But, Venice was definitely über-cool, also über-dirty, über-hot, and simply covered with graffiti. All the walls were spray painted, even the church walls. Apparently this is valuable graffiti, as it has never been cleaned off. The crowds were phenomenal. We quickly ducked off into a side street to get clear. The side street was 4 feet wide, but the adjoining facades were cool, and old, and apparently never repaired. We noticed this all over Venice. The architecture was fantastic and deteriorated. Stucco missing, holes in walls, ground floors all empty and full of debris. I wondered if this was because the entire city is only about 6 inches above sea level…some areas not even that. Later I found out this was the case. Ground level floors simply aren’t used because of the regular flooding. I should think the constant water would render everything moldy, and not just incredibly smelly.
Well, the girls had come to Venice to shop, and the entire city consists of thousands of shops of every sort interspersed with small plazas, cathedrals and canals. The larger streets were, in fact, canals, and the canals were covered with boats of every sort. The water was very, very dirty. So, we shopped our way across Venice, stopping at the occasional cathedral, and crossing famous bridges like the Rialto. Brianna bought a fancy masked ball mask. No, that’s not true, Cheryl bought the fancy mask for her for €70. They bought other things, I don’t know what. I spent a lot of time leaning against walls and watching the girls go by. Doing a number count, I determined 80% of Italian girls have cute Roman noses, great figures, long legs, and deep tans. Probably the other 20% were Americans or English or German. Late in the afternoon, we stopped at one of ten thousand street cafes for something to drink. The only table was right in front of the door, so the waitress kept falling over us and getting mad. Across from the door was another table with a man and a woman relaxing with drinks. The woman had badly done blond hair and horrible eye makeup, and the man had some of the worse toenails I have ever seen. They were speaking English, and perhaps being relieved to hear someone else speaking English, starting talking to Cheryl. Soon, an animated conversation was going on that didn’t interest Bri or me in the slightest. But, it turned out these were interesting, and very wealthy, people.
The woman was Katy Stern, fashion designer of tony high priced women’s clothes and dresser of the stars. In fact, the dress Jennifer Aniston was wearing at a fancy shindig held that very week came from Katy at a price of $4000. Katy’s husband was an architect who no longer practiced seeing as how his wife made bookoo bucks. Katy had a primary shop in New York and other shops elsewhere. Then Cheryl mentioned her new book on embezzlement and Lo and Behold, Katy had only recently discovered her trusted right hand man had been embezzling her. Well Cheryl and Katy were now best friends in the ‘Women Who Are Into Fashion and Been Embezzled Society’. After an hour or so, Katy agreed to do an interview for the book and Cheryl agreed to come to New York, or perhaps back to Venice, to get it. Vacation had just become a Business Trip, and thus tax deductible.
After a considerable while, we managed to drag Cheryl away. We still had to cross the world famous Rialto Bridge, tour the Doge’s Palace, and go for a gondola ride. We did all three. The piazza at the Doge’s Palace is incredible. It was built in the days of Marco Polo when Venice and the Doge ruled the seas. The wealth of the world came to this place and much of it stayed. Unfortunately, the entire city is sinking. After touring the palace for quite a while, we exited only to find seawater creeping along the edge of the sidewalk. At the east end of the piazza are the sea docks on the Adriatic. The piazza pavement just disappeared into the water. Huge cruise ships kept going by. This was also a big gondola dock, and it was time to ride.
We went to the waters edge and talked to a gondolier. A gondola, for 45 minutes, was €100, or $120 at that days exchange rate. These gondola guys do pretty well for themselves, but maybe they have to pay big permit fees to dock their gondolas. Well, no help for it. The primary reason for coming to Venice was to ride a gondola, and I forked over a C note. The ride did not venture into the Grand Canal which was rather choppy, but up the little street canals. It was cool looking at the buildings from the water side. The high water line on the stone walls, a good 4 feet above the current water level, made it clear that the lower floors of the building were, in fact, unusable except perhaps for fish traps. It was also clear that most of the sidewalks and streets were periodically available only to gondolas. Venice could obviously be a difficult place to live occasionally, and, did I mention, the entire city is slowly sinking. Brianna had a wonderful time. Being 18 she couldn’t say anything out loud, but the gondola ride was definitely a high point. The gondolier did not, however, sing.
It was dark after the ride, so we hopped a water taxi for a ride back to the train station. We were pretty gritty and sweaty by this time and were ready to get back to Preganziol. Unfortunately, Preganziol was not ready to have us back. A different train ran back to Treviso, on a different track. We found the right one, but you know, they don’t keep a single soul at these stations to answer questions, and we were practically the only people getting on our train. But that’s ok. The stops were listed and Treviso was there. Of course, if we failed to get off at Treviso, we were going to go who knows where. We stayed hyper alert and managed to get off at the right place.
It was easy to find the car since the entire lot was deserted, but we couldn’t get out. Our parking pass would not actuate the gate. Remember, this was a free lot. I looked around and eventually found the casa for the lot and inserted my pass in the reader. I owed €9.00. Of course, by this time, I didn’t have much small change left and no small bills. I was reluctant to insert a €100 bill for fear it would just eat it. We scratched around and between us came up with the fee. We left the lot. Now, we just had to reverse course to the street whose name we couldn’t remember. Unfortunately, that street and the entrance to the train station were one-ways. I would have to go around the block and pick up the street where it was two-way. Remember about going around the block in Europe, right?
We wandered around for half an hour trying to get back on the street with no name with no success. I think we actually crossed it once or twice. At one point I notice some tough looking boys grouped up at one end of a bike roadway. Cheryl protested going around the barriers and driving on the bikeway and stopping to talk to the toughs, but these were the ONLY people we had seen. They were toughs, but one of them had had English 1 in high school and was willing to talk with us. After some pigeon language, he gave us directions, sort of. Go that way to the light, then turn that way, and ahead, ahead, ahead. OK. I tried it and found when I turned left I was back to the train station. That might have been considered progress, but, of course, there was no one there, and we could not go ahead, ahead, ahead without bumping across the railroad tracks. I tried going around the west end of the station, having gone east before, and going ahead, ahead, ahead, thinking perhaps I was paralleling the street with no name. But the streets wandered in typical Euro fashion. After a while I realized I didn’t have the slightest idea where we were or where Preganziol might be, and we just kind of meandered around. No lights, no cars, no people, just dark buildings and crooked streets.
I was clearly out of my depth and did the only thing available. I prayed for help. At that Very Moment we were driving by a dark football stadium with a large dark parking lot, and a light popped on. It was the dome light of a yellow taxi parked in front of the closed gate to the stadium lot. God said, ‘Let There be Light, and Lo, There Was Light, and It Was Good’. I stopped, got out, and jogged over to the taxi. I tapped on the window and a good looking, tanned, Roman nosed, Italian boy rolled it down. Do you speak English? ‘No’. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ‘No’. ‘Parlez Vous Francais’? No. Well, that’s cool. No known language. I suppose I could try Latin, but I only remember Veni, Vidi, Vici, and Hic Haec Hoc and Quid pro Quo. I guess we will do this in English then.
I do not speak Italian, I said, but we are lost and need to get to Preganziol, to the Best Western Hotel. I couldn’t remember the rest of the name. Could you just drive there and let us follow you…..Nothing. Then he babbled something that ended in Preganziol, but nothing like I was pronouncing it. We went back and forth with pronouncing Preganziol until I got it right. I tried again with the correct pronunciation and mentioned the Best Western Hotel again, and Euros. I did not show him my C note, however. I pantomimed driving the taxi and my car following behind. He said OK, and started up. We pulled in behind him following along a totally unfamiliar route, except it was the road with no name. Just as Cheryl was protesting that he was leading us off somewhere to be robbed and probably killed, the Best Western sign popped up and we were back. I flashed my lights at the taxi and turned in to the hotel. The taxi turned a corner just down the street, and we got out to wait for him to come back and collect some well-earned money, but the taxi and nice looking Italian boy simply vanished. We went in and I tried to explain to the Italian only speaking desk clerk on the night shift that a taxi driver might appear looking for some Americans to pay him. The clerk didn’t understand, and I eventually gave up, but went out one more time to look for the taxi. It never came.
I have since concluded that the taxi was an apparition and the nice looking Italian boy an Angel sent by the Lord in response to my sincere prayer. I never saw another taxi in all of Italy until we got to Milan, and those were white, not the familiar yellow with a taxi light on top. I promised the Lord that I would do the basic Pimsleur series on speaking Italian before I came here again. Back in the room, I opened up the Ipad on the hotel WiFi, and starting looking for the problem why I could not get on 3G Europe. If I could figure that out and get it up and operating, I could use it for locations and directions. It actually didn’t take long. I had bought the extra Europe time through my U.S. service link, and it simply added to my available U.S. time. I tried to transfer the time to the international plan with no success, so I bought another $30 worth. Shortly, I had 3G hookup. I then used Google Maps to check out the route to Hotel Paradosso in Viterbo, our next stop, and went to the trouble to write it all out. The next morning we inquired of the English-speaking desk clerk where an electronics store might be. Turned out there was one just a couple of blocks down the road, and we went there and bought another navigator, a Garmin, this one with all of Europe mapped, and the voice prompt speaking American English as opposed to British English. (A significant improvement.) From then on the navi was either on the windshield or in my pocket.
Veni, Vidi, Va VA Vom
We Came, We Saw, We Bought Shoes in Roma
Sitting in the parking lot of the electronics store, we activated the Garmin and entered the address for Resort Paradosso, Via Di Pianoscarano 63, 01100 Viterbo. Viterbo is a smallish town located some 20 miles north of Rome. I selected the town as being close to Rome, but not too close. One gets better hotel rates this way. Cheryl picked the Paradosso, a 13th century hotel located in old town. Like the Best Western, I had not seen it on a map, but, hey, we had a navi again and I didn’t need a map. The Paradosso sounded pretty neat. So, off we went.
We turned west on the highway, and after 20 kilometers or so turned south heading for Bologne. The girls promptly fell asleep. It looked like it was going to be a four or five hour drive down the peninsula, crossing the spine of Italy before we got to Viterbo. I was still rattled by the events of the night before, and did not feel like stopping for sightseeing, although I did occasionally wake Cheryl up to tell her we were driving through Italy and she should look around. The countryside was gorgeous and the architecture of the houses was strange but interesting. Some of these appeared to be 2000 years old or so. I have gotten accustomed to really old things in Germany; these were obviously much older.
Late in the afternoon I pulled off the highway and headed west to Viterbo. We circled around the north side and approached the ancient City wall from the west, following the navigator, and drove through a 1500 year old gate. Immediately, I was required to turn sharp right into a narrow cobblestone street. The route worked its way further and further into a maze of alleys that could not even charitably be called streets. Things got tighter and tighter until Brianna started yelling from the back seat that I was going to scrape on the passenger side and couldn’t possibly get through. Obviously, cars did get through, and I have considerable experience driving in medieval walled cities, so we proceeded. Finally, after negotiating a couple of impossible corners, it was apparent I could go no further. I stopped at an intersection. The alley ahead ran straight up a steep hill and was clearly too narrow for the car. The cross alley just might be negotiable, but it didn’t look like it. Besides, the navi said we had reached our destination. OK. Gray stone walls on all sides just inches away. No hotel sign or even signs of a hotel. The navi had been indicating some confusion on the street address a few minutes before. Had it lost us?
About this time, and older gentleman suddenly appeared out of nowhere next to my window. He started talking in an animated Italian manner, in Italian, of course. I lowered my window. English, I asked? No. Deutsche? No. Français? No…..Well, crap. He went on jabbering at me in Italian. After a few moments, I noticed an Italian version of Obermiller had appeared, and paid more attention. He was pointing at a door next to us, and I saw, craning my neck, above the door and chiseled into the stone wall was, ‘Paradosso’. Was THIS the hotel Paradosso??? We all got out to investigate. About this time a good looking, tanned, Roman nosed, pregnant girl came out of the door and started speaking volubly in Italian. English? I asked. Deutsche? Français? Not a chance. At this moment another old guy on a Vespa type motorcycle came down the alley and stopped in front of our car. He had a dog curled up at his feet on the bike. He couldn’t get by and immediately started yelling at the pregnant girl. Just as quickly, she started yelling back. In mere seconds she was starting to climb over our car, (she was too pregnant to squeeze between the car and the building), screaming imprecations, which sounded like pretty foul language in Italian, gesticulating, fists raised, anxious get at the old guy and beat him up.
Our old guy and the girls were quickly getting our bags out of the back. I just needed a second, but I had to act. It would never do to have a pregnant, good looking, Roman nosed Italian girl with a nice tan and a grouchy old man having a fist fight on top of my rental car. I stepped between them and raised my arms, palms out. ‘Uno Momento, uno momento!’ I cried, thanking the Lord for all the times I have watched the Godfather movies. ‘I will move the car.’ The bags were now out of the way and I jumped in and backed up. The pregnant girl would clearly have preferred to continue the fight, but gave it up and went inside with Bri and Cheryl in tow. The motorcyclist went on by. Our old man came around to me now that it was safe and said ‘Parcheggiare l’auto’, which I interpreted as him wanting me to park the car. ‘Que?’ (where) I said in French, which apparently is close enough to Italian ‘Qui’ to be understood. I am stuck in an alley with just enough room to slide sideways by the car. There are NO parking places. He beckoned me to follow him, which I did. 100 feet back south we were on a six-foot wide bridge, and down in the steep little valley to the west was a parking lot.
I was not going to try to back the car across the bridge, so I laboriously turned around in the alley intersection with the old guy watching my corners and sides. I made it, drove to the entrance to the parking area which I could not get into without backing and filling a bit, then taking a blind plunge down the 60 degree slope driveway. But, I made it without damage and walked back to the Paradosso, relieved the car was in a safe place and unscratched. Later, I noticed all the cars in the town were scratched up and dinted on the sides. No surprise there. The old guy and the girls were waiting outside with the baggage, Cheryl having checked us in. Hoping the pregnant girl hadn’t gone into premature labor, we started walking up the side alley. So, where was this hotel anyway? We started passing stout looking doors in the heavy gray stone wall. They were numbered. Number 25 was ours. We opened the door and stepped down and back 800 years or so into our rooms. It was hot and humid. No windows. Our old guy bustled around speaking in Italian all the while but eventually showed us the air conditioner and turned it on.
We were hungry. Cheryl said the pregnant girl told her in sign language there was a place to eat just up the alley a ways. I checked the Google Map on the Ipad for Viterbo, found the blue pulsating dot indicating our location, and saw a restaurant label just up the alley. We went out. Passing a bar gate, Cheryl said our key would work this gate and it lead down to a swimming pool. We went in and down into a little fairyland. There was a small pool, lots of palm trees, old stone things, grass, a green pool with ducks, and the hotel restaurant, which was closed, but we ate breakfast there the next day. We left the fairyland and wandered up the crooked six-foot wide alley to the distant sound of orchestra music. At the top of the alley, a larger cross street ran east and west. We could see tables and umbrellas at a small piazza with a fountain to the right, but we went left tracking down the music. It was coming from a larger piazza in front of a really ancient church, and emanated from a high school orchestra practicing for some upcoming event. We listened for a few minutes then went back to the tables.
Seating ourselves at one of four tables, we waited perhaps 30 minutes for an older woman to come over. First we ordered water ~ aqua ~ , no English, and eventually got it. Then we waited another 30 minutes while we drank all the water. Eventually, the woman came back and we ordered, variations of spaghetti and pizza, and in even more time, the food came. We must have spent two and a half hours having a not so good dinner. I should note, that from this point on we had passed some culinary line crossing the peninsula. The only food we could get was spaghetti or pizza, period. Some restaurants had only spaghetti. As a family, we don’t eat much by way of carbohydrates. The Italian food had a definite negative impact on our digestive systems.
After dinner, we walked across the piazza to a little tourist office. Two really cute, Roman nosed, tanned, shapely, long legged Italian girls were sitting on the steps. They jumped up to help us. I must admit I had a lot of fun trying to talk with these girls. They had both just finished English 1, and one had had French 1. Brianna got to use her French language skills with a novice. Cheryl talked with them about Viterbo and Roma just down the road. I talked with them about driving to Roma. Of course, being teenagers, they didn’t have any idea how to actually get to Roma and called a boyfriend to discuss it with him. Eventually, they decided we could leave by a south side gate and the road would take us to Roma. I had already found that info on a tourist map, and we went that way the next day.
We left the tourist shop looking for the place where everyone was getting ice cream. The foot traffic had really picked up, with everyone heading toward the church with the orchestra. We fell in and ended up in the now crowded piazza listening to an excellent high school orchestra and choir doing classical music. It was all just too charming to describe. The 1200 year old church with a tall bell tower. A colonnaded building to the south. More colonnades behind the performers. The only off note was the police closed circuit TV cameras stuck on the sides of the buildings. After we left the performance we encountered some police busy writing parking tickets. Maybe Viterbo wasn’t quite as charming as it seemed.
The next morning Cheryl and I went for an early walk, discovering an easy exit route from the Paradosso. This route lead straight to the road to Roma. Great. We went back for breakfast. A lady waited on us while we sat at a table in the charming garden area. She was apparently from Poland. Unfortunately, her English wasn’t so good, and she didn’t speak German. I kept trying it on her figuring any self-respecting Pole should be conversant in Deutsch. Surprise, surprise. We tried to get hot chocolate and got some kind of really thick coffee instead. We are Mormons. We don’t drink coffee. We discretely fed that to a tree. Oh well. We saddled up and headed for Roma and some tourism office Cheryl had found.
The drive to Rome was surprisingly easy. We were on a two lane secondary road and every junction had a sign pointing to Roma. Gradually, the city built up around us and traffic increased…and increased. Soon, we were in a mayhem of small cars and motorcycles, none of whom paid much, if any, attention to basic traffic rules. They paid virtually no attention to red lights or lane markings. They parked anywhere and everywhere. I soon noticed with some dismay that Roma was like Zürich. There were simply no available parking places at all. We wound through the twisting one-way streets until we found the travel agency. There, we parked illegally across the street in some spaces reserved for a bank.
They spoke English in the travel agency, and Cheryl was soon into a deep discussion about things to do and what they cost. I paid attention to the time required to do the various touristy things and decided we just might have time to visit Vatican City and the Coliseum. I talked to the girl about parking possibilities and the City rule that forbade outsiders from driving in the inner city. The girl told us about a parking garage located just around the block that probably had space. Just around the block!!!. Great. Brianna went outside and then jumped back in. Someone had just left their parking place right in front. I checked with the girl whether we could park there all day. She assured us that if the curb was painted white, we could. I instructed Cheryl and Bri to stand in the space and not let anyone take it, while I dashed to the car. I maneuvered over the one-way to the space, which was on my left, automatically making it difficult to parallel park, and eyeballed the available room. Perhaps one foot longer than my car. It took an embarrassingly long time, due in particular to the stupid trailer hitch sticking 6 inches out from the rear bumper which persisted in putting little dints in the bumper of the car behind me, but I eventually got the car parked.
We had some spaghetti for lunch at a restaurant around the corner, then walked up the hill to a subway station. Underground, we had started deciphering the various subway instructions, which were provided only in Italian, of course, when we ran into a couple of missionaries from the church. LDS. Our Church. One was from York, England, and the other from Utah. These guys spoke English and, since missionaries are always helpful, they walked us to the correct place and explained how it all worked. I would not want to be a missionary in Roma. I asked if they had any converts, and the older one who was at the end of his mission, told me one ~ in two years. How about that for dedication.
We went first to the Vatican. It took quite a while. The line to get into the facilities was extremely long, and we reluctantly turned away. But then, a freelance tour guide hit us up to join his group. Only €40 each for a 2.5 hour guided tour of the museum including the Sistine Chapel. He could bypass the line, he said. We discussed it and finally decided we would not see it at all if we stood in line, and bought the tour. We probably didn’t need to do it because, by the time we walked all the way around to the entrance, there was no line. However, we undoubtedly got a lot more from the museum. The guide, a Canadian, was quite knowledgeable and entertaining. And, we could understand him. We were quite suitably impressed by the whole Catholic thing, particularly Saint Peter’s Basilica. The building, and everything in it, is simply huge and beautiful. One is simply dwarfed by the height of the vaulted ceilings and the size of the columns. We have now seen in person where the Pope gives his televised Christmas Mass and can forever relate to it.
We finished up about 6:00 and started back to the subway. The tourism girl told us we needed to get to the coliseum at least a half hour before dusk or 7:00 pm. Cheryl was thirsty and wanted to stop for a drink. We did, but then we had to eat, too, for some reason. The snack shop was right on the street running to the Vatican so the food was bad and the drinks very expensive, tourist rip off expensive. They billed us double on some things and Cheryl had it out with the waiter and cashier, eventually getting it right. We took off late for the coliseum and, sure enough, they had locked up by the time we got there. We had to be satisfied with looking through the gates. We walked around for a while then took off to a special restaurant where Cheryl’s friends had eaten.
The restaurant was the —–, and was famous for serving 300 dishes of spaghetti, and, of course, nothing else. It was, in fact, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. Cheryl’s friends had eaten there because they’re friends had eaten there. We had a photo of Cheryl’s friends at the restaurant holding a photo of their friends at the restaurant. We were seated at the English-speaking table, which was nice. There were some Americans and New Zealanders to talk to. After dinner, we had the proprietor’s son take our picture holding the photo of the photo. The proprietor’s son, a man in his late 30’s, started a conversation with me on the sidewalk in broken pigeon English. It involved all the crooked politics in the neighborhood and how the Mafia protected his competitor’s restaurant but not his. He became more and more voluble until he was talking entirely in Italian while I nodded in understanding. This went on for some time until Cheryl and Bri came out. I don’t know where they had gone. We said goodbye, shaking hands repeatedly all around, and headed uncertainly for the subway and our car. After traveling a couple of stations and walking around for a bit, we found the car and headed back to Viterbo. The traffic leaving Roma was worse than the traffic coming in. It is a miracle we got out without having an accident or running over an insane motorcycle rider. The Garmin had some confusion on the road back and we ended up taking a slightly different route, but it didn’t take any longer and we didn’t care so long as it took us back. About midnight we stumbled into our room at the Paradosso and collapsed, gritty and dirty. We discussed returning to Roma the next day since we really not seen a whole lot, but in the end decided against it. My nerves simply weren’t up to it. Besides, we were right here in the charming city of Viterbo, there was a lot to see, and we had the time.
The next morning we went on a walking tour along the gray alley-streets. There is a huge contrast between the ancient walled city of Viterbo and, say, the ancient walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany. Viterbo is lived in and looks like it. People have been walking those cobblestones for almost 2000 years. The stone walls and streets are uniformly gray. The tile roofs are a reddish gray. There is no color to relieve the somber gray. Walking along, we came across a raised stone pulpit on the outside corner of a building. The building was the Church of Saint Maria Novo, and the podium is where Saint Thomas Aquinas preached to the people. It is just there. No signs. No fences. If one was so inclined, one could climb and stand where Saint Aquinas stood. The church was open. All the churches were open. It was gray and somewhat dismal inside. No one was there. The walls contained darkened and deteriorated Viterbese frescoes from the 14th century. In the apse on the south side there is a priceless tryptych painted on leather. It dates to 1180. We did not touch it, but we could have. Popes sermonized in this church in the 12th and 13th centuries. I have to wonder about a people and religion that is so dominant and so prevalent that the locals don’t steal artifacts.
Rothenburg is a younger walled city in Bavaria. It only dates back to about 1200. It, too, has cathedrals that are open to anyone, but they are huge and beautiful. The churches in Viterbo seemed small and mean by comparison. The streets and buildings in Viterbo are beautiful in their way, but nothing like the constantly restored beauty of Rothenburg. But then, Viterbo is a living city, and has been since the days of the Etruscans. Laundry hangs out of second floor windows. Some areas are smelly with garbage on the streets. There are not a lot of shops. Rothenburg is a walled shopping district. It is very clean and tidy. Very colorful. No laundry drying on balconies in Rothenburg. No trash anywhere. Everyone speaks English.
It was fun trudging around this ancient living place, but after lunch we had to be on our way. We would like to have hung around and gotten in the ancient Roman baths, still in use today, and seen some more. Perhaps we will return some day.
Veni, Vido, Vertigo
We Came, We Saw, We Climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
We headed west out of Viterbo toward the coast and eventually Livorno. In not too many kilometers, an ancient Roman aqueduct appeared on the right. The stone viaduct exited the side of a hill, crossed a small valley via the aqueduct for a few hundred feet, then re-entered a hill. We stopped. I climbed up on the aqueduct. The stone channel on top was still partially in place. It was 14 inches wide with 12 inch high sides and a 45 degree peaked stone roof. There was no water. Clever Roman engineers designed this 2000 years ago and then had it built, probably by slave labor. The mortar between the stones was eroded away, but it still stood. I walked along the top. 20 centuries. Would anything I designed and built be proudly standing in 20 centuries? The year 4012? Somehow, I doubt it. I could have built the aqueducts. I know how to design them and build them, even how to make the mortar and split the rocks. I know the required slope of the channel and how to determine the cross-section, but I will never have the opportunity. We engineers truly stand on the shoulders of lucky giants. Cheryl collected a small rock for posterity and proclaimed she had collected a 2000-year-old rock. I pointed out the rock was actually several million years old and it just happened to have gotten involved with an aqueduct project. It is on my desk along with some other significant rocks.
Back in the car we continued west, and in just a few more kilometers we were going past a large Etruscan cemetery. I did a U-turn and parked. This cemetery was once an archaeological dig. A couple of dozen large tombs had been laboriously dug into the solid rock of the hilltop about 550 BC by Etruscans. The park service, or whoever was in charge of the site, built covered stairways down into the rock to the tomb entrances and covered those with plexiglass. One could crouch down and take in the tomb art while a short audio tape described what you were looking at. It was fascinating, and also suffocatingly hot and humid. Almost too hot and humid to handle, easily as hot and humid as back home. After a while we gave it up without seeing all the tombs and went to a small snack shop that was doing a brisk business selling cold drinks and ice cream. We got both. As we left past the entrance ticket counter they made me give back the damp 8.5×11 copy of a map of the place, so I have no mementoes.
At the coast we turned north toward Livorno. Livorno is the port city for Pisa, and we were going to stay there and tourist Pisa. I had picked this stop and the hotel Atleti where we were staying two nights. Apparently, this hotel is the sports central for Livorno. Livorno is a naval town, and the navy academy was just north of the hotel. The drive into the hotel runs by an expensive clubhouse and between numerous clay tennis courts, all of which were in use. In back of the hotel is a one-mile horseracing track. On the other side of that is the sea and numerous beach resorts, docks, restaurants and swimming areas. No sand beaches, though. Somewhere Livorno was billed as the Italian Riviera, but it needed sand beaches. Plenty of bikinis and speedos, though. Loads of those cute Italian girls and boys with their Roman noses and great tans. No beaches.
The hotel Atleti is a bit odd. One has to work their way through lots of vegetation disguising the entrance, but the desk clerk spoke English, a big plus by now. We inquired about a place to eat since we hadn’t seen anything driving in, and found we could eat at the clubhouse terrace while watching the good looking Italian kids play tennis. So we did. Dinner was ok. I am pretty sure I had a spaghetti dish, although it might have been Pizza. Brianna plays tennis and enjoyed watching the good-looking Italian boys play. After dinner we walked around the horse track to the sea. Here, we found most of Livorno enjoying the evening. People walking the boardwalk, sitting around tables at the continuous restaurants, swimming off the piers. We decided to come back tomorrow to eat and swim, and walked back to the Atleti. At the hotel, we were watching strange Italian TV and washing our underwear in the bidet, when we heard the sound of a herd of horses running. Looking out the window we found, sure enough, a herd of horses running. The lights were on at the racetrack and racing was going on. We watched the horses racing by right under our balcony while we hung up our laundry to dry on the railings. You might think it strange to wash ones laundry in a bidet, but it was the only place to do it, and we were getting desperate for clean underwear. It was much better than the toilet. Besides, we saw other balconies with underwear draped over the railings. You know, Cheryl had to explain to Bri what a bidet was used for while I waited in the other room. The ignorance of American girls is just amazing.
The next day we started out bright and early, about 11:00, for Pisa. Pisa and Livorno kind of run together, but we still had to pay a toll to get there. Only €1.70. The navi lead us ever deeper into the town, and after a while we had a sudden glimpse of the Tower. The navi took us right into the pedestrian only area at the leaning tower piazzo, where I had to turn right around in the hoards of people and get out. We had seen no places to park, and no parking facilities, but in ducking down a side street/alley we quickly found a semi-illegal space tucked between a car and a no parking sign. I had the girls check while I pulled up to just touching the car in front. The rear bumper was exactly on line with the no parking sign. That would do. We considered ourselves fortunate.
We walked up the street to the piazza and, turning the corner, were confronted with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I had never imagined it was so huge, and so leaning. The piazza also contained the cathedral, which dwarfed the Leaning Tower, which was in fact only the bell tower for the church. It also contained a large domed building, which turned out to be a baptistery, and a long colonnaded mortuary full of saints remains. I had no idea, having not researched this at all.
The Leaning Tower is open to the public, but they only let 27 people at a time climb the 297 steps to the top, presumably so as to not overturn it. The tower is 49 feet in diameter and 183 feet to 186 feet high, depending on which side you are on. At the top, it is 12’-10” off center, so it still has a ways to go (another12 feet) before it falls due to overturning moment. You know how that works, or maybe you don’t not being an engineer. Once the center of gravity passes the center of moment, it is too late. Of course, before it could lean that far, the exterior columns would fail from compression and down it would go. Anyway, the thing was started in 1172, so it is really old. The marble stairs are worn 3 inches deep making traction tricky. The girls had to take their shoes off coming down. The worn groove wanders from the outside wall to the inside wall as you go round and round. Kind of like a fun house where all the floors and walls are crooked. There are still bells at the top, and the Italians ring them once a day in spite of the danger the vibration poses to the tower.
So, we climbed it. We touched the bells. Looked straight down from the leaning side ~ at least Brianna and I did. Cheryl couldn’t make herself do it. If the tower suddenly collapses tomorrow, we can always remember climbing it. The cathedral next door was very impressive as was the mortuary or whatever they call it, but the next really cool thing was the baptistery. This building is also beautiful. It is a circular cylinder with a perfect dome on top. Inside, there is a large baptistery that I think they still use. There is a gallery at the top of the cylindrical section that you reach by climbing up the inside of the walls. The really neat thing is the acoustical quality inside. A man came in and voiced a drawn out high note. After a noticeable pause, the note was echoed back. Then it was echoed back again a full octave lower. Absolutely amazing. Sine wave amplification, just like Physics 101. Cool.
We stayed at the piazza quite a while and ate lunch at a sidewalk café. Pizza, of course. Eventually, we made our way back to the car, which was miraculously still where we left it and with no parking ticket. We drove back to Livorno by a different route and somehow avoided the tollbooth. Our clothes still weren’t dry in spite of the extreme afternoon heat, and we decided to walk back to the non-beach to swim and have dinner.
There is not too much to say about the waterfront. We walked up and down for a mile or so and picked a pier at random. There was, of course a restaurant and outdoor café where we had dinner. I believe, no I am sure; we had pizza since that was all there was. Then we walked out on the pier intent on swimming a bit. There was kind an enclosed area between piers, boomed off from the sea, with easy entry stone steps and a swimming dock. The water was actually cool compared to the air, but then, the air was perhaps 95 degrees. Cheryl and I swam around a bit while Brianna watched. Eventually, she got her feet wet, but certain that the sharks would get her if she actually got in, nothing more than her feet. The problem is, you see, that I traumatized her several years ago by taking her to some shark movie, Deep Blue Sea I think, while her mother was in LA. She refuses to swim in the ocean since and even has problems with lakes. Oh well. Her loss. Cheryl and I can at least claim to have swum in the Mediterranean along with the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific.
The next day we started for Milano.
Veni, Vidi, Milano
We Came, We saw, Our Garmin Got Lost in Milan
I picked Milan as a stopping point on the way to Konstanz, Germany, making the longish drive in two shorter legs. There was nothing in particular we wanted to see in Milan, although it does have a cathedral rated as the third largest in the world, or perhaps in Italy, I don’t know. We had seen a number of cathedrals by now, including St. Peters Basilica, and we getting a little jaded. In any case, we found our hotel ‘Des Etrangers’ easily enough, on the south side of the city. Brianna says the name means foreigners in French. This is a businessman’s hotel, not touristy at all.
We got into our room, had a fight with the air conditioning controls, which we lost, and decided to go out on foot and check things out. The desk clerk, who spoke acceptable English, told us we should check out the cathedral and gave us a small print street map on which she highlighted the route to old town. It didn’t look too far, so we decided to walk. (Primarily so the girls could shop along the way.) We are accustomed to walking or jogging really long distances, but after a couple of miles it had gotten quite dark and it appeared we had only made it halfway. We decided to stop and eat and walk back to the hotel. Perhaps we could drive to the cathedral in the morning.
We selected a ritzy looking restaurant that was crowded with voluble Italians. The menu actually offered non-pasta food! Apparently, we had crossed back across the Spaghetti Line. I recall I got some fish dish, Sea Bass maybe, which turned out to be rather tasteless. Bri got a steak, and, although she ordered it cooked medium, it came cold and bleeding in the middle. She sent it back to cook some more, and it was returned warm and red in the middle. She tried again, explaining that she did not want red, but rather pink. By this time Cheryl and I were done eating. The steak came again, this time sliced in two with the halves cooked very well indeed. She didn’t eat it all.
We walked back to the hotel with our legs getting more and more tired. After all, we had doing an extraordinary amount of walking the past few days. We managed to make it back and collapsed for the night. The next morning we checked out early, about 11:00, and tried to set the Garmin for the cathedral. The Garmin was being stubborn and would not recognize the cathedral. Finally, we selected a street intersection next to the cathedral and started off.
I hate to complain about such stellar technology like navigators, but the closer we got to old town the more confused the Garmin became. For half an hour it lead us around the crooked one-way streets, crossing it’s own path and doubling back, but not finding the cathedral. We probably should have stopped and consulted the Ipad map. At one point, I drove up the wrong way on a one-way. Helpful pedestrians pointed out the one-way signs but it was too late. I had to go to the next intersection. I got there without anyone coming my way, only to have an old woman jump in front of me shouting in Italian and beating on the hood of the car. I had to push her out of the way with the bumper to get going the right way on the cross street. After another 15 minutes of driving at random following the Garmin instructions, Cheryl angrily turned it off, declaring it couldn’t work due to all the buildings around us. I ordered her to turn it back on. I wouldn’t even find my way back out of Milan with it off. In a few more streets, we arrived at an intersection we had arrived at twice before, now clearly just going in circles. The Garmin wanted me to turn right, again, but acting on instinct I turned left. Going around the corner we were face to face with a huge piazza and the famous Milan Cathedral, and absolutely no place to park.
I drove slowly across the west end of the piazza, and saw a blue parking this way sign directing me down a side street. I quickly decided I wasn’t going to do that and risk losing the cathedral again. Noticing a mostly unoccupied parking area just to the right, I slipped across a solid white demarcation line and parked next to the only other car, obviously an out of town tourist. Clearly, we were parked illegally, but I didn’t see any signs I could read and none of those universal no parking emblem signs.
We walked across the piazza to the cathedral where police were checking the bags of people wanting to go in. I kept looking back at the car to see if a tow truck pulled up. When we got up to the police check they wouldn’t let Brianna go in because her shoulders were uncovered. It is a rule in Italy. Well, one cathedral is as good as another, and we were pretty disgruntled by now anyway. I wanted to just give it up and head back to the car before trouble started, but Cheryl wanted to shop. We walked into this really beautiful covered pedestrian street full of shops, but my internal alarms were going full throttle now and I insisted we head back. As we passed a pharmacy, Cheryl and Bri immediately diverted to get some feminine hygiene products. I walked on down to the car because I had noticed a couple of gentlemen standing in front of it chatting in an irritated Italian fashion. A couple of white Mercedes were parked beside us now, and the other tourist car was gone. Sidling up to the other front corner of the car, I folded my arms and stared at the two, trying to look German. My license plate did have a ‘D’ for Deutschland on it. We had this standoff for five more minutes waiting for the girls. Finally they came.
As we prepared to get in, Cheryl waved the pharmacy bag around in front of the men. I asked them ‘ist das Parken hier verboten’. I didn’t fool them, they spoke in English, telling me this parking was reserved for taxis, and it was a €95 fine for parking here. Sorry, I said, we are just leaving. The girls had to go to the pharmacy. I was fully prepared to haul out the feminine hygiene products to prove my point, besides, there was no ticket stuck on the car. Giving my best superior haughty American/German look, I got in and we drove off. Program that stupid Garmin for Liechtenstein!
Veni, Vidi, Vaduz
We Came, We Saw, We Ate The Most Expensive Lunch Ever
Leaving Milano wasn’t quite as easy as I had hoped it would be. The Garmin guided us to the nearest tollbooth where we got to pay yet again for the privilege of driving on the Italian highways. We just paid up front this time, no toll ticket, for the road heading north to Switzerland. In practically no time, we cruised through the un-manned border crossing. Immediately, traffic became orderly, even though we were in Italian speaking Switzerland, and no more tolls. I did a mental tally and came up with €60 we had spent for tolls. I don’t see how Italy could be in a financial crisis considering how much they are raking in on their highways. We did not stop to look back on Italy from the Alps we were rapidly climbing. I am sure we all have fond memories of the country, but I am mostly glad we escaped without either getting in a traffic accident or killing a pedestrian, and could get non-pasta food again. Cheryl commented she was glad to be getting home. Interesting considering we were heading back to Germany, and she doesn’t speak German much better than Italian. But it was encouraging that she considered Germany home-like, since I want to move to Bavaria some day. I think Bavaria has grown on her.
We were heading up Highway 13 toward Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and lunch. When planning the trip, I wanted to stay the night in Vaduz, but the prices were simply breathtaking. Still, I have always wanted to see the tiny principality, which is, perhaps, the richest country on the planet. Certainly the richest in Europe. It is a monarchy run by Prince Hans-Adam II, and it is the banking center for the Swiss banking center. If you have too much money for the Swiss, you leave it in Liechtenstein.
We drove for an hour up the narrow valley of the Moesa River dividing Switzerland and Austria with ever more spectacular views of the mountains on both sides, until we came to the ‘Castello di Mesocco’, a defensive castle dominating the valley and road. This castle is a ruin, and we pulled off into the small town of Mesocco to check it out. Stopping at a restaurant to get a snack and use the facilities, I found to my dismay that the older proprietress spoke Italian. Hadn’t we left that behind! I couldn’t stand it so I spoke German to her, very slowly. Of course, she understood me, this being Switzerland where everyone has to have an understanding of German like it or not. We had our ice cream and drove back to a parking lot just off the highway designated for castle use. There was one car in it. We trudged up the steep drive, passing a small church, and came to the castle entrance. A Swiss government sign said enter at your own risk. We entered.
At Castle Mesocco there is the entry sign, a sign giving the history of the place, and no others. No fences, no guard rails on top of the crumbling walls, no restrictions at all except for the door to the tower, which was closed up. We climbed all over it, sitting on walls put up a thousand years ago. Standing on edges looking hundreds of feet down to the valley below. Walking through little rooms that looked to be chapels with no roofs. We collected a few small stones to commemorate our visit. (Being Americans and all.) We drank from a wall fountain serving up granite tasting alpine water straight from the adjacent alp. It reminded me of places I visited in the Old West 45 years ago before the Parks Service got to them and made them tourist traps. It was wonderful. Well worth the stop.
The pass over the range was only a few miles further along the road. As we neared the top, the highway switched back and forth climbing the steep grade. We stopped to look back with some longing. Perhaps in the far distance we could see Italy. Cruising on down we came to a sign identifying Liechtenstein and then the road east to Vaduz. The countryside got cleaner and cleaner. Everything sparkled. In just a few miles we pulled into Vaduz. Quickly, we noticed everything was closed and hardly any people were out and about. It was Sunday, after all. In the center of town we found the only open restaurant. Vaduz is, after all, a capital city of only 5000 or so people. We parked behind the restaurant in the sparkling clean free parkplatz, no oil spots on the pavement or anything, and walked around to the front on the shiny clean sidewalks. A waiter came out to seat us, wiping imaginary specks of dust from our table, and offered us menus with a flourish. Menus in German for a change.
We perused the speisekarte, noting the prices with some dismay. This place was well beyond pricey. It was extravagantly expensive. I told the girls not to mind the cost, I would put mittagessen on my credit card. After a proper while, the Ober returned and we ordered. As we ordered, a red Lamborghini cruised sedately by. Looking around, we saw the Prince’s castle up on the alp-side to the east, we saw beautiful homes with flowers cascading from balconies, we saw shiny clean storefronts. We saw no dirt, no trash, no grafitti, no bugs, nothing, in fact, to disturb one’s tranquility except, perhaps, for the brilliant high altitude sun above our umbrella. But the temperature was a perfect 70 degrees. A yellow Lamborghini cruised sedately by. Tears came to my eyes. I looked at Cheryl and said, ‘I want to live here’.
Our lunch came while we struck up a conversation with a local man having a dessert. He was delighted to talk with us ~ in English ~ for practice. He told us all about himself, his travels, how expensive it was to live in Vaduz, and how no one could immigrate to Liechtenstein. It wasn’t allowed. He must have overheard my comments about wanting to live here. One could live here as a foreigner if your bank account was large enough. One would need a large bank account. Our lunch came to €138, for three of us having the less expensive items. Let’s see, €138 comes to $179. A shiny Porsche Boxster cruised burbling by. I was relieved to see there was at least one poor person in Vaduz.
Veni, Vidi, Bodensee
We Came, We Saw, We Shopped Till We Dropped.
The City of Konstanz on the Bodensee is the tourist attraction of southern Germany. It is a very old city, dating back to Roman times, and is divided between Switzerland and Germany, and it is mostly shops, shops, and more shops. I had to promise Brianna over and over that she not only would love Konstanz, but could shop to her hearts content. I had even arranged for her former roommate, Soline Watrelot, to come down from the Pas de Calais in France, and Anna-Lena Kraus, my German ‘daughter’ to come down from Bayreuth, Bavaria, so the girls could have a wonderful time without mom and dad hanging around.
The drive over from €Vaduz € didn’t take too long, but was interrupted by round-a-bouts each mile or so. The round-a-bout virus is very prevalent in Germany. So we occasionally got slung off a round-a-bout in the wrong direction, but we were always able to double back. As one gets close to Konstanz, the round-a-bouts increase in frequency until you basically just go from one to another. I think this is maybe a ploy to confuse invaders. The army convoys get caught in the endless round-a-bouts and get hopelessly lost. Finally, you are slung off dizzy to the port of entry where the angry German customs officers demand to know what you bought in Switzerland where there is no VAT tax (19%) in order to make you pay it when you cross the line. Somehow we were waved through the exam this time. They made up for it later.
Cheryl and I had spent an enjoyable few days in Konstanz the previous fall and knew our way around. We drove right to the Gästehaus Centro Hotel located across the street from the train station. I had tried to book the Graf Zepplin Hotel where we had stayed before, but the cost was astronomical due to it being tourist season and all. Centro was much less costly, probably because it was next to the train station, but it could have been for other reasons.
Six weeks before our trip I started working on the reservation at Centro. Originally, I planned to have Vera from Zürich come up along with the other two girls, so I reserved two triple rooms, but only one for the first night, the second for the next two nights. As vacation time got closer, problems developed. First Vera did not think she could make it. She was on tour with a circus company in Germany working as an acrobat. Soline said she would be there at first, but then her computer was stolen and I didn’t hear from her. Anna-Lena finally committed to the last night only.
Just before we left for our trip, I reviewed all our bookings. When I got to Konstanz, I decided I should drop the second room altogether. The triple I had reserved was listed as able to sleep 6 using extra beds. The extra beds were only €20 each and the room had a lake view. Obviously, it would do. We arrived at the hotel and checked in with no difficulty. The Fraulein spoke perfect English, of course. Our room was a surprise, however. It was a smallish double with one extra bed and no room for any more. Further, it was in the back of the hotel over a service alley and bar, and had no air conditioning. We went down to confront the Fraulein, reservation in hand. Suddenly, our girl could only barely speak English and got into a convoluted chain of logic about how we really had what I had reserved. Of course, you will recall that I speak German. We argued for quite a while and finally gave up because the hotel was completely booked and there was no other room to move to. We would just have to do something about it in the morning. Perhaps we could all sleep in the tiny room. Nein, says the Fraulein. Only 3 to this room. It is the rule. Cheryl was steamed.
We went out for a walk around, shopping, and do a little touristing, determined to have a good time regardless. The girls made a beeline for the completely modern Americanized shopping center on the corner. It was only with considerable effort that I was able to drag them out and head into old-town and the shops, but after we crossed the street their mood improved. Konstanz is charming. So we went from shop to shop until we reach St. Stephans Platz and pulled into a restaurant for dinner. After a typical German dinner, no pasta, I forced Brianna to go into the cathedral across the platz and climb the bell tower. Well worth it I thought. After that, we headed in the direction of the hotel for more shopping. I had to double back to the restaurant where I had left a package with some things I had bought. Being Germans, the restaurant Frauleins had set my sack aside waiting for my return. Eventually, the shops all closed and we were forced to return to our room.
Back in the room, we quickly discovered that the bar in the alley was picking up business and spilling out onto the pavement. We had to close the window to shut out most the noise, and went to bed. Later, when the bar patrons had gone home, Bri opened the window a crack, but it was raining now and her bed was right under it, so only a crack. During the night, Cheryl and I seemed to be suffering from mosquito attacks and had trouble sleeping. At five in the morning, delivery trucks arrived to stock up the McDonald’s restaurant located on the first floor of the hotel. Closed the window again.
We went down to the desk to complain some more about getting screwed on our room and ended up arguing about whether any room in the hotel actually had a lake view. We had some bad free breakfast and went back up to the tiny room. Up to this point, I still didn’t know the fate of Soline, but then I got a facebook message. She was actually on a train on the way and would be here at noon. We talked some more about where people might sleep, and concluded the room had bedbugs, at least in the double bed. We headed out, stopping at the desk to see if another room had magically become available. No. So, I told the desk girl to call around and find us a room in another hotel. She did, in the 5-star hotel next door. We went next door to the sumptuous Hotel Halm and reserved a room. I didn’t ask the price, because at this point it didn’t matter. Cheryl thought it would be nice to bask in a little luxury without any extra people.
It was close to noon by this time, so we wandered over to the bahnhof to get Soline. There is a café on the west end of the station next to the tracks with outside tables. We took one and ordered drinks for our wait. We waited and waited. The trains are supposed to be punctual in Germany, right? At 12:30 we started looking around for an electronic schedule board. Finding none, we went in to the ticketing windows to ask where the train might be. Cheryl went up to a window where the gentleman told her she would have to come in the correct way before he could talk to her. She went around to the eingang and approached the window again. Now, the gentleman was on a mandatory break and could not talk to her. We waited. Eventually, break time ended and he consented to talk with her. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about any reason for a train delay. It just wasn’t here yet. He could not, or would not, help us.
We couldn’t just sit around all day waiting for a train. We were not going to be here that long, and time was awasting. I suggested maybe I should go back to our room and check the Ipad to see if I had any messages from Soline. I did and I did. Soline was in Karlsruhe. The train got delayed there because it ran over someone and officials had to sort things out and clean up the tracks. Somehow, it was decided it was the train’s fault the man was run over which complicated things. Not sounding his whistle at the appropriate intervals, perhaps. The passengers all got out to inspect the body parts. I guess suicide by train is relatively common in Karlsruhe. Maybe something to do the name of the city. Look it up. Soline’s cleaned up train would get into Konstanz at 3:00.
We went shopping some more. Around 3:00 we wandered back to the station and resumed sitting in the outdoor café. 3:15 the train rolled in from Karlsruhe and Soline got off. Poor little Soline. She lived with us for a year in America and we managed to fatten her up a little. Now she was so thin and frail that you could practically see through her. We immediately fed her at the outdoor café, dropped off her knapsack at the room, and went shopping until the stores closed. That night Cheryl and I moved into the Halm Hotel, leaving the Gästhaus Centro to the girls. We all went over to check in. There were new people at the desk, so I walked up and said ‘Mein Name ist Herr Obermiller, und ich habe ein Zimmer bestellt. Thus, the entire process was conducted entirely in German, although I am certain the Fräulein knew I was American and was just playing along. No matter. The girls were enormously impressed.
Anna Lena was scheduled to come in at noon Sunday, so after locating the shopping girls, we headed for the station again. This time the train was on time, and out strode Anna Lena, in control of everything as usual. We met up and all went ~ shopping. After a while I suggested we could do something besides wandering from store to store until our feet fell off. Perhaps we could go out to Insel Mainau, the privately owned island just up the coast that is famous for being a gigantic formal garden, I suggested. It is just possible that the girls were getting tired of endless shopping.
We had free bus passes for Konstanz tourism, so we had the girls figure out which bus to take, and off we went. I must say, Insel Mainau was impressive. The gardens and walks were impeccable. The flowering plants beautiful. We walked around for a couple of hours and stopped at the restaurant at the top of the hill for dinner. There is a castle up there, too, but it was too late to get in for a tour. We wandered back down the hill to the bus stop in time to catch the last bus to town. By the time we got back, the stores were closed. We stopped at McDonald’s, which occupies most of the ground floor of hotel Gästehaus Centro for a drink, and headed for our rooms. I don’t know what the girls were planning, but Cheryl and I wanted to try out the very fancy spa tub in our suite.
Monday morning Cheryl and I had a very fancy breakfast in the Halm. Beautiful room, great food, and we packed our bags. We found the girls already packed and walked to the garage to load up the car, except for Soline. Anna Lena was riding with us to Munich, Soline was getting back on the train to Lille. We wandered around for a bit, not really shopping anymore, and then put Soline on her train. I was sad to see her go. She was one of our favorite foreign exchange students and we all love her. And then, it was time for us to go.
We stuffed ourselves into the now tiny car, having an extra person with luggage, and set off for the Tek Shop electronics store. I wanted to get a USB cable to connect to my camera so I could charge it up. We had bought our Euro Navi at this shop on our previous trip and knew right where to go. Unfortunately, the drive into the shopping center was on a short side road to our right, and it was closed for some kind of construction. I would have to go around the block. I think I have already mentioned the difficulty of going around the block in European cities. So I kept going, making a right on the next street, then making another right, immediately finding myself on a freeway with no exits. The road crossed the Bodensee straight into Switzerland. I knew we were in trouble. As soon as I could, I made a left to head back to German Konstanz and, of course, ran straight into the border crossing.
It apparently wasn’t going to be quite so easy getting back in. A very official looking young man came up to the car and started shouting at me in rapid German. He was talking too fast and loud for me to understand. It was something about declaring our goods. Remember the car was stuffed to the gills with suitcases. Resisting the temptation to make a snappy reply like, Jawhol, Herr Commandant, I told him I didn’t understand, in German, and he immediately recognized I was American, which got him even more excited. I think he was anticipating our unpacking all our bags so he could assess the value of our shopping trip and determine how much duty, 19%, we would have to pay. The Germans are permanently angry at the Swiss for not charging the outrageous VAT, and they are determined to get it. Fortunately, I had my very forceful personal assistant German sitting right behind me. I rolled down her window and directed her to take care of this guy. Rapid fire Deutsche Sprache occurred through the back window, and in just moments the official waved us through with a disgusted look on his face.
In five minutes we were back in front of the Centro ready to start again. Our goal was the Meersburg Ferry and crossing the Bodensee to Meersburg. I must explain about Meersburg. Cheryl and I stopped there the previous fall long after the tourist season had ended. The town was completely empty and almost all the stores were closed. We did talk with one shop owner and were given to understand that Meersburg was an extremely popular vacation spot. So we walked around for a while. The town is the center for a wine making district and there are large old wineries along the cliff face above the lake. The street along the lakefront is lined with attractive centuries old buildings dedicated to boutique shops. There is a ‘board walk’ along the waters edge that terminates in a pier on the east end. At the end of this pier is a pole or mast with a variety of sculptures attached to it. These sculptures are the most startling obscene things I have ever encountered. Devils being extruded from a burgers butt and having graphic threesome sex. Women with legs spread wide giving birth to bunches of grapes. Other things. I can only advise you to go there or check it out online. We had told Bri all about this creation, but had refrained from showing her our photos the previous year because of the graphic obscenity, but we decided she was old enough now to see them in person. Anna-Lena also had not seen the sculptures, and apparently knew nothing about them.
So, we rode across the lake on the ferry. Landing at Meersburg, we started looking for a parking place, threading through hoards of people. We looked and looked, along with scores of other cars. We drove west along the highway for a couple of miles looking. No luck. We maneuvered through the crowds on the boutique street to the east side of town looking. No luck. We drove north through the town for a couple of miles. Anna-Lena suggested we just find a grocery store or something, pretend we were shopping, but leave the car and walk back to the lakefront. We did that. So far away from the tourist area that only locals were around, and all uphill. We went into the store and wandered around like shoppers, then slipped out and started walking. After a mile or so, we decided we should stop and have lunch to fortify ourselves. After an hour we continued walking downhill to old town.
Eventually we got there. The crowds were so thick on the boutique street the girls didn’t even suggest shopping. Instead we forged on across the street and through an alley to the boardwalk. The crowd was diminished here. We continued rather tiredly to the east end and the pier, continuing to build up the girls. We got there. The mast with the obscene sculptures was still there. We walked around and around. I was still grossed out by all the devils having raucous sex and doing obscene things. The girls were not. I suppose this is the result of the internet generation. Us old people can be grossed out by pornography, the young cannot. Eight months of buildup for Meersburg wasted. We started back up the long, long hill to the car, and the drive to Munich.
We still had one more much anticipated event before we boarded our plane the next day. Cheryl and I had stayed in small city of Freising located next to the airport a couple of times. Both times, we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant call ‘La Familia’ located a couple of blocks up the hill from the hotel Am Klostergarten where we stayed. Both times we ate pizza. You might think we were very tired of Pizza by now, but this pizza was absolutely the best we had ever eaten. Just about worth flying to Germany for. The previous fall, we ate there and got into a complimentary discussion with the Italian/German family that ran the place. All the help were family members, none of them spoke much English or German, but they could tell we really liked their food. Before we left, most of the family had gathered around our table to talk with the Americans who loved their food. They tried to get us to drink complimentary wine. We had to tell them we were Mormons and could not drink wine. They kept trying, we kept refusing. Then they tried to get us to take some with us. Couldn’t do that either, but we promised to come back every time we were in Freising.
So we took Anna-Lena to the Haupbahnhoff, the central train station, so she could catch her ride up to Bayreuth. Leaving, a streetcar tried to run over us, jingling his bell angrily. It wasn’t my fault, I was stuck behind a car, but that doesn’t matter in Munich, or any other German city, where all the drivers are hyper aggressive, including streetcar drivers who will ring their little bells at you. Anyway, we escaped and headed up to Freising. We didn’t have a room in the Am Klostergarten on Alte Post Strasse this time. They were booked up. I had gotten rooms at a better rate at the Bayischerhof on the south side of town.
It was getting late, so we drove straight to the Klostergarten. But then, we tried to drive the three blocks to La Familia, and it wasn’t there. We were going to be forced to drive around the block. Of course, we couldn’t do that, so we were forced to meander around in the neighborhood looking for the place. Cheryl was getting frustrated. After all, we had walked to the place twice, in the dark, in five minutes, from the hotel. She spotted a guy on the sidewalk and wanted to ask him. I put the window down and leaned over Cheryl. ‘Weißt du, wo gibt es ein italienisches Restaurant hier in der Nähe? Yes, of course, he answered, in English. One block over that way. I could have sworn we had looked one block over that way, but off we went, and low and behold, there was the restaurant. No lights were on. There was a sheet of paper on the door.
Cheryl jumped out to look at the notice. It was a notice. The restaurant would be closed for eight days starting today while the family went on holiday to Italy. Damn. We just came from holiday in Italy. This just took the cake. Our holiday was clearly running out of steam. Fortunately, we were going home, to our real home, the next day. We went looking for the Bayerischerhof Hotel.
The Bayerischerhof was a nice surprise. An old grand hotel with large rooms and cheap enough that I put Bri in her own room next to ours. We checked in and hauled all our bags upstairs, no elevator of course, so that we could repack everything in preparation for the flight home. Remember, the girls had been shopping for two weeks now and had accumulated quite a load of stuff. Then we went out looking for a place to eat. We shortly found an Italian restaurant where we could have pizza one more time. It did not compare to La Familia or Italy. Afterwards, I had to find the parking lot for the hotel. The desk Fräulein told me it was above the hotel on the next street. I just had to drive around the block to get there. I did, and for a change it was just around the block. A twisted and confusing block, to be sure. The real challenge came the next day when I had to return to the front of the hotel, by a different route, of course, due to one-way streets. That reinforced my belief that going around the block simply isn’t possible in Europe.
Walking back and forth to the car, which I had to do several times, revealed a medieval side to Freising that I did not know was there. This part of the town was ancient and beautiful, and I wish we had more time to look around. The next morning we had a couple of hours to shop, so we did. On this, our last day, I decided to shop as well. The Bayerischerhof sported a couple of stores on its street front. One of these was a men’s clothing store, which offered an assortment of Bavarian dress jackets. I have always wanted one, and having 250 Euro left in my wallet, I decided to buy one, and so I did. A few weeks later this purchase encouraged me to buy Lederhosen online and a traditional Bavarian dress shirt, and knee high socks, and a green alpine hat, and an antler handled traditional knife to put in the Lederhosen knife pocket. I wore this getup to Silver Dollar City and attracted a lot of attention. Brianna is just appalled, however.
Well, it was time to go to the airport for the long, long flight home. This is generally fairly easy in Germany, except sometime over the summer the Department of Homeland Security (US) had forced the normally congenial Germans to add a second security check line for Americans returning home. They clearly did not want to do this, so they took it out on the unlucky passengers. A family in front of us with a couple of little girls almost made us miss our flight. The girls had a gameboy or something that could be a bomb, or triggering device. The security people all but stripped these little girls. We were getting really irritated, along with the German security woman at our end. The little girls wore them out so that we, at least, did not get a rectal search. We made our flight because the Germans always hold the door for late arrivals.
25 hours later we were home. The Italian Job had been executed to perfection.
slicesdotlive 