Day 3 Offenburg to Vicenza
After surviving a traffic jam in Freiberg we took the road to Donaueschingen (the source of the Danube) after a long series of hairpin bends onto a plateau and the beginning of the Black Forest. It was a major disappointment. I remember hitching through the Black Forest in the late 60s and it lived up to its name with long straight roads driven through dense pine forests, but it is now cut up into farmland and not nearly so impressive.
Eventually we came to Singen where we stopped for diesel and I bought a vignette for 19 euos which would take us through the tunnel passing under the Brenner Pass into Italy. An exciting series of hairpin bends took us over the Amberg Pass to the ski resort of St Anton and we eventually passed round Innsbruck after driving through a large number of tunnels cut under spurs of the Alps. I think 19 euros was good value for all those tunnels compared with the 45 we had to pay in Switzerland for the St Gotthard Pass. The Brenner Pass tunnel was a piddling litle thing, perhaps 300 metres long, although we were able to see some glorious snow-covered peaks in the distance.
The road through north-eastern Italy to Venice via Trento, Modena and Vicenza was utterly boring not to say stressful. I know we have lorries in Britain and they can be a pain on the motorway but Italy seems to have ten times as many and they were all travelling on the road from the Brenner Pass towards the industrial towns of northern Italy. The one redeeming feature was the glorious landscape round Trento with limestone hills covered in verdant green forest and spectacular vertical white cliffs of up to 300-400 feet in height.
We had more fun at the toll booths. When you take a ticket, there are two red knobs, a higher one for lorry drivers and a lower one for car drivers. Jennifer pressed the higher knob and started looking round the lower knob for the ticket.A man in the car behind us came gesticulating wildly and gave her the ticket. We don’t think he was being unpleasant, only Italian. It seems they can’t say anything without waving their arms. At the next entry to the motorway leading to Venice, we collected the ticket successfully, but got through the barrier without paying as we approached Vicenza. I dn’t know why and perhaps Italy is another country where the motorway police are after us.
We spent the night at an Autogrill service station and had an extremely nice meal. I had a succulent tender entrecote steak while Jennifer had a chicken schnitzel, followed by a raspberry cheesecake and a panna cotta, washed down by some tasty white wine for 3 euros a bottle.
