Italy and Innocents Abroad
November 11, 2003
Some folks plan trips with great care – we seem to follow the advice of the old song “Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread . . . .” Of course, we did a little planning, bought a book on where to go birding in Europe and a couple of travel guidebooks. But the travel guides recommend visiting the great cities of Europe – not the best places to find exotic birds. Friends gave lots of advice. Be sure to visit Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Prague, Barcelona, Amsterdam etc. we were told. But “don’t ever drive in the big cities or the small, medieval towns with very narrow streets.” In our travels through the USA in our motorhome, we generally avoid large cities whenever possible. Driving and navigating in cities is difficult and drivers there are more aggressive than back in Edinburg, Texas, where we grew up.
Driving in foreign lands is not a total novelty since we have driven in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Venezuela, Brazil, New Zealand, Thailand, Mexico and Canada. But some sage advised that in Europe, we should learn to drive like the Europeans. Well, that is fundamentally impossible, because there are as many types of drivers in Europe as there is any place else in the world. Of course, there are some trends that we expected: some Germans drive very fast on their autobahns and some Italian drivers drive with reckless speed. But many Germans like to drive at slower speeds and many Italians are careful drivers. Overall, I was impressed with the fact that most Europeans are excellent drivers. My driving strategy was to “go with the flow.” Drive fast enough so as not to clog up the highway, but slow down when “white knuckles” appeared. We also tried to leave the freeways to take the smaller, country roads as often as possible. Exploration of small, country towns and the countryside delights are always more fun than the boring freeway travel. But, when we fall behind on our ill-defined schedule, we could usually catch up quickly by merging into the freeway traffic for a few hours.
Most of the driving in Europe was fairly simple and uncomplicated. We had some minor problems negotiating all the circles (roundabouts) at first but managed to learn the rules mostly be watching the other drivers. I remembered that a circle in College Station was replaced by a red light intersection because the incidence of fender-benders there was higher on the circle than any other place in the city. So I was biased against circles. However, as I became accustomed to the circles, I began to see certain advantages. They slow traffic, but also allow it to keep moving. Accidents on European circles are mostly of the “fender-bender” type. Unlike the major tragedies experienced at a country highway, redlighted intersections, when a collision occurs because someone failed to see a red light and rammed into the side of another car at 60 mph. Another major advantage of the circle is that if the road signs are unclear, we could just keep driving around and around the circle, where we could read the signs at a more leisurely pace.
Navigation, on the other hand, proved somewhat more difficult. Traveling through 16 countries, some of which speak several languages, means that often the language on road signs was virtually impossible to translate. Of course, knowing a smattering of French, German, Spanish and Italian helped, but understanding the different languages used in each Scandinavian country, or the Catalan, Portuguese, etc. greatly complicates understanding. Europeans have made considerable strides in developing non-linguistic icons for use across the continent. For example, the red “P” with a slash mark across it means “no parking” but it took us a while to understand the difference between the speed limit sign and the road number sign. My brother Peter tells of finding his way along the Greek highways by following highway 60 – only to discover that he was lost and had been following the 60 kph speed limit signs.
Usually, when we made a wrong turn, we discovered our mistake fairly quickly and corrected the problem. But one day after a stressful drive over the high Alps near the Jungfrau, through thick fog on a narrow, steep, winding road, we were fighting exhaustion and were ready to find a room for the night. Checking the map, we could see that we were near Lago di Como – one of those beautiful lakes in Northern Italy. Why not find a hotel on the lake? The highway to the lake was barred by the city of Como, we had no local street map and the signs directing the way to the lake were mostly absent. Guided most by a general sense of direction, some road signs, and gut feelings, we continued on a busy city street. The street began to narrow and climb more and more steeply. “Maybe this is just a hill that we must cross and the lake will be on the other side,” we reasoned. The street was now so narrow that often two cars going in opposite directions could not pass and the hairpin turns were so tight that we could barely negotiate them. Our skepticism mounted as we continued up and up, passing a small church with a wedding party on the lawn and finally a sign indicating the end of the road.. Now we were certain that we had taken the wrong turn, found a place to turn around and headed back down the mountain we had climbed. A van coming uphill held up traffic while autos squeezed through the narrow opening by pulling in the outside mirrors so that they would not hit the van on one side or the wall on the other. Again reaching downtown Como, I reasoned that if we continued to follow the drainage downhill, we would ultimately reach the Lake where we could follow the road along the edge till we found a hotel. The traffic congestion downtown was intense. Streets built for donkey carts were now trying to handle modern traffic. But, we inched along and finally broke out at the lake.
It was a Sunday afternoon and the lakefront highway also served bike racers. The bikers could travel faster than the automobile traffic because they could wind their way among the often stalled cars. But there were no hotels to be found. Motorcycles and motorbikes also sped through the traffic, around curves overlooking the lake far below. By now, exhaustion was nearly complete and we began to look for a place where we could park the car to take a nap. We could not even find a parking place. But, finally, we saw a sign for a hotel, followed a narrow, steep street down to the lake edge and were delighted to find a hotel with a gorgeous view of the lake. The owner found a phone jack that we could use, so while sipping a beer on his lakefront restaurant, I caught up on email and Internet stuff. We dined on lake fish for dinner and were at peace with the world again. We had survived our first day in Italy.
So why do we wish to travel and see other cultures and places under such trying conditions? Maybe it is due to being brain-washed by songs of our youth such as “Far away places with strange sounding names, far away over the sea . . . .” Or maybe the travel reports from around the world by my Aunt Mary and Uncle Rex played a role. Anyway, our itch to travel to exotic places has now been – at least temporarily – scratched and we can resume our more tranquil motorhoming adventures in the good old USA.
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