Journey to Reunion in Italy

The idea came up already a few months ago. At Maritha's good bye party in the end of June Ward told me about his plan to surprise small Marco at his restaurant opening on the 15th of September. The decision was made quickly and in July Christian, Ward and I had booked our flights. Who else would join was never sure until the end. In the end we were quite a lot of people who came to Brescia.
Therefore, in principle, the reunion started already here in Aken two weeks ago, when Ward, Anne and Christian came. But Anne could not join to Italy and Ward left for a short stop in Spain before going to Italy. While he enjoyed already sunny weather, Christian and I spent some days in Aken. We went to the cinema, some pubs. The usual things.
At half past 2 at night on the 11th of September, we had to stand up in order to catch our direct train from Aken to Cologne airport. I like those journeys. If you have to get up early for going in holidays, it feels like a little adventure. Maybe because the trip already starts with something unusual. Starting in daylight does not make it that exciting. At quarter to 7 in the morning our plane took of to Milano. At 9 we picked up our car at Europcar: a Fiat Punto - THE Italian car.
Hiring the car was already messy. Europcar said, my credit card would be registered as "stolen" - but who else than me can register my card as stolen? But students of nowadays have more than credit card, so I just picked another one for paying the car. However, during the day I got an SMS from home that everything is ok with my account.
The Italian traffic was better than I thought and it was not difficult at all to drive. Well, I had problems with the Punto, because this car is just impractical. You have a bad overview through back. Crashed almost into other cars while driving backwards. But as I said. The traffic itself was not difficult. But the signs are a mess. The arrows on the signs point only in a vague direction. If they point to the left, it could also mean that you have to follow your street instead of going left. And city names reappear only every few crossroads on signs. And most of the time the signs stand too late at the exits: "Oh, that would have been our exit".
The first day we drove a lot around missing streets. But we made it until Pavia, watched that city and went later on into the mountains further south, the Apennine. The nature there was awesome. Still not as pretty as Scandinavia, but after having only seen the dirty area around Milano, it was amazing. All in all I was disappointed of landscape in Italy. You never could look until the horizon, because of the smog. I missed the colors green and blue. Everything seemed to be dusty in a way. If not for meeting my friends, I would not go there.
We stopped in the middle of a mountain where they grew wine and ate chiabatta and salami while sitting in a field watching the farmers harvesting the wine. Driving around in the moutains was fun. The view was amazing and the small villages there were cosy. I liked those much more than the cities. In Bobbio we stopped, walked around, bought postcards. In the evening he headed back to Piacenza in order to find our hostel. But as lousy traffic signs are in Italy, as bad a descriptions how to find a hostel. After two hours driving around we had to give up and chose a place in the middle of nowhere to sleep in the car.
But a Punto is not very big. Even if you lean the seats back as much as possible, you still have more a seat than a bed. And it is not comfortable at all. The most in some way comfortable way of sleeping was, sleeping upside down with feet on the trunk and my head squeezed under the steering wheel. At that point we went already crazy and laughed all the time. We figured that we need alcohol to fall to sleep under these bad conditions. And luckily we still had (really accidentally) a bottle of wine with us! We drank out of the bottle and looked like alcoholics: dressed in pyjamas, standing on a street, drinking good red wine from a bottle. Sometimes car passed and I expected every minute the carabineri who might think we had a kind of gay party. But they did not show up. Even better while drinking we figured that we were standing next to a playground for kids. There we even found flowing water out of a crane. And benches. The wine inspired and in the end I slept on a bench under a tree and Christian slept in the trunk of the Punto.
That was our first day in Italy. A very long day with some challenges. That's how good holidays start. Some pictures you can find at my picasa.