2010/3 Italy Tirol Sud/Dolomites/Fruili

12 June and we are in Italy.  However this is the part of the Alps that was bitterly fought over in WW1withtraces of trenches etc in all the passes as a record of the fighting that must have been conducted in some very very inclement weather. Ceded to Italy after WW1 the area now is bilingual with such incredible differences even in the names of villages such that the bus timetable has two columns for the names.

Turned east from the Brenner Pass about 20km to San Candido then onto find a parking spot – the sort we like –  reserved for campervans at no charge, near Sesto. With info from the tourist office and our Lonely Planet Hiking in Italy planned our treks. Fortified for trek 2 with a bratwurst  (50 cents extra for a curry bratwurst which proved to be just curry power shaken on top). Eating it Joanna said I looked just like a gnome from a cuckoo clock! – that from a frau with (the rest has been censored) !  Trek 2 was what we thought was ‘down’ the valley through meadow etc, proved to be a few kilometres along the river then up, up, and up before the down but scenery beautiful.  Up past farm yards, a Red Riding Hood house, to a very moving little chapel set in the woods to remember the victims of the war and a message of hope for  peace.

Trek 3 was to be a longer slog in the mountains to get close to the regions iconic Tre Cime de Lavaredo -3 outstanding rock formations (one of which David climbed in an another life), however clouds descended, thunder, lightning and lots of rain set in.  So we gave up and headed for Cortina through the cloud. 

Settled into a camper stop  (actually an old airfield) just out of Cortina – felt positive as the clouds swirled around and lifted to give us glimpses of  the amazing rock formations that surrounded us. However – not to be. It rained all night and a visit to the tourist office in Cortina next day confirmed what we suspected ,that we were in for a long period of bad weather. Did a quick tour of the town, coffee and cake in a cosy cafe, bought yet another umbrella and made the big decision to head south for the coast. Leave the mountains to all their clouds and rain.

Made it to a small resort – Grado – a sort of mini Venice – well it is set on a lagoon, with canals lined with pleasure craft, half way between Venice and Trieste. Has all the usual Italian beach resort features that us Kiwis find a bit difficult, like paying to sit on the beach,  then a bit more for the chair and the umbrella. Of course we don’t- can’t bear the idea, so take our own chairs and umbrella to the free beach,even though it is vastly inferior, and the water only comes up to your ankles after wading 100m. However we have taken  quite a fancy to Grado, free place to park with water and dump does help. Have made a side trip to Trieste, with a walking tour of the town. Wow, what a complicated history. A couple of village/coastal walks and now back at Grado. A phone call to the tourist office at Cortina tells us that bad weather is still set in. Seems this is over much of northern Europe, with disastrous floods in France. So we will keep soaking up the sunshine,swimming and riding our brand new bikes (upright ladies models, 7 gears plus basket at the front) around this super-flat countryside.  A bike ride to Aquileia, once a large and important Roman town with a basilica that has a fantastic third century mosaic very well presented with elevated glass walkways.  The Italy/New Zealand football game was entertaining watched outside a cafe. Our smiles at the end of the match were met with a stony silence, wonder why. The Italian press next day said - ‘Italy flop’.

Decided we must move on but low and behold the mountains appeared and half way to Verona we made a phone call to Cortina tourist office, which confirmed good weather, so North we go to our airfield.

Stan ground her way slowly in first gear up to the parking at 2320m altitude beneath the Tre Cime rocks.  David of course chose a round trip combining both the suggested routes in the guide map.  Well we made it from 10.30am to after 6pm passing Refuge Lavarado,  lunch in a delightful Refuge Pain di Cengia,  (how can we get NZ to adopt these wonderful catered mountain refuges?),  a stop at the closed Refuge  Locatelli with fantastic views over the Tre Cime. And a bonus was the family of marmots playing in a meadow, like oversized, cuddly meerkats.  The recent snow made the traverses very exposed and overall Joanna found the walk ‘challenging’ (a carefully chosen word). It’s Joanna speaking  now – in my defence I have to say that I coped easily with the fitness side of climbing up and down 6 to 700 vertical metres but it was the slippery snow on precipitous traverses that had me in a semi panic.  However it was exhilarating and I loved it even though it wasn’t always obvious at the time! We spent the night up there with marvellous evening and morning vistas of the Dolomites to compensate for the minus 5 overnight. Next day a    relaxed walk up a very pretty valley to the Refuge Ra Stua set in meadows with cows and horses. Once again we were reminded of the horrors of WW1, with evidence of Austrian and Italian trenches and frontlines on both our walks. Back to our airfield park and the 24th we quit the Dolomites to head South.

Goodbye the mountains (and Grado/Trieste) - hallo the plains and the lakes.

2010/2 Bavarian & Tyrolean Alps

We have had a fantastic few days at Gamische- Partenkichen in Bavaria.The weather has been brilliant, a good variety of things to do and good company.  We started with our trip up the Wank. An appealing name, even if they pronounce it differently! It’s Joanna’s idea of mountain walking, take a cable car up the really steep bit, then meander about amongst the meadows and the wildflowers.   Coffee and apple strudel at one of the numerous mountain refuges. Annoyingly David loves the hills, so there is much discussion over routes taken and a bit of compromise. It’s amazing how you spend hours trudging to these places, feel like you’ve really got away from it all, then you look around the back and there is a car. However we love it, it’s the only way to get a decent beer or apple strudel up there and it makes it accessible to most people and they use it. Every day there are hordes of people out there – striding up and down. We’ve even seen men in lederhosen.

We settled into our stellplatze (campervan parking place with limited facilities, but much cheaper than camping grounds – called aires in France, sostas in Italy – a brilliant European thing that NZ could do with.) Also met up with Frans and Cynthia again. Next day we set off on a rack rail up the Zugspitze – the highest mountain in Germany (2996m). It is hard to believe when you look up that a train could get up there – but it does, thanks to efficient German engineering. You take a cable car for the last hundred metres to the peak. All very impressive. The weather was brilliant, not a cloud in the sky. You can step into Germany & Austria, and see Switzerland and Italy from up there, but have to say that the mountains all looked much the same. We did a walk through the fresh glacier snow up there to a viewpoint with a precipitous drop of several thousand metres into Austria.

On the way back Cynthia introduced Joanna to the Deichmann shoe shops. Managed to spend some money there immediately – so did she!  Then back to the stellplatze for a Bavarian evening which involved beer plus lots of bratwurst, other meats and salads plus entertainment by 3 brothers on their piano accordions, in traditional dress. Was good.

Next busy day was a walk through the very dramatic (thanks to all the recent rain)  Partnachklamm gorge with waterfalls descending everywhere through the midday sunshine. Followed by a long walk up through meadow and forest to stop for a beer at a hotel and Joanna descended by gondola while David walked down.

Thence in and out of Austria to Fussen and another top stellplatze. It is interesting that we have noticed the different types of people at the different stellplatzes. Gamische was a mixed group,some quite young, enthusiastic hiking types. Here in Fussen it is a bit like a retirement village, Joanna being probably the youngest person here. They all ride bikes and hang about the place a lot. The most brilliant thing about this place is its close proximity (about 50 metres) to 2 supermarkets, a Deichmanns and other assorted shops where we can spend heaps. Campsites are usually miles from shops. Visited the town on foot (regretting that we have no bikes this trip) and up to the famous and much photographed   Neuschwanstein Castle of King Ludwig II- unfinished as he died at 40.  Managed some side walks around a lake and down through a gorge to fill in the day.

German supermarkets are not a patch on the French ones but items like herring roll mops are so cheap as is all alcohol. Australian shiraz in original (screw top) bottle for 2 Euros ($4), Williams pear liqueur for 10 Euro, and cheap grapefruit or lemon beer – quite refreshing and only 2.5% alcohol – good when driving and Joanna has given the grapefruit beer an exemption on alcohol free days. It sounds awful but it is really very refreshing – a bit like Radler beer at home. We only seem to be able to find the budget supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi Sud. They have a very limited range of products and the centre aisles are full of a wide assortment of stuff ranging from radios to clothing – all sorts of little knick-knacks. Things you can’t do without. We are missing the French cheeses already but every country has some new little delight – like the rollmops and bratwurst. Yum!

From Fussen we moved over the Fern Pass with fantastic alpine views , including the Zugspitze. Spent a few hours in Innsbruck then onto the Stubaital Valley – off the Brenner Pass highway. We settled in quickly to a campsite at Neustift and hounded the poor souls at the local Tourist office. We discovered that there were only 2 mountain huts open, so quickly selected one, packed up and set off for a night up in the Sulzenauhutte.  It was a steep ascent of about 650 vertical metres, but not difficult, spectacular scenery and a myriad of wildflowers. In about a week the slopes there are going to be covered with bright pink azaleas. Also fantastic waterfalls thanks to all the recent rain.

We love these serviced mountain huts. They go to amazing amounts of trouble to wine,  dine and provide you with a warm, comfortable bed so far up a mountain. All supplied by flying foxes. Sulzenauhutte, where we stayed is run by an Austrian guy and his Australian wife, so we were able to ask heaps of questions. David allowed a beer and a rest for about an hour before he dragged Joanna further up the mountain to visit a lake – all very pretty and lots more wildflowers. We really felt we had earned our evening meal with plenty of beer to assuage the thirst then a bottle of wine with difficult conversation with a German couple from Munich. We are not particularly enamoured with the German fondness of dumplings – the whole menu was pretty stodgy, but somehow it seemed suitable.

The long walk down the next morning – then bus back to the campsite. A casual walking day ( David’s idea of a casual walk involved 10kms up a valley!! We are getting fit.) followed plus restocking the beer etc before heading off to Italy over the very impressive Brenner pass with its huge viaducts, trucks and more trucks up to the summit and glide down into Italy (although all signage etc in German)

2010/1 On the Road Again

Well here we are,back on the road again. Seems like we never stopped, back into all the routines – sleeping in,consuming too much French wine, walking for miles. The only big difference is the weather. We arrived in England to a sparkling day of 30 degrees C. We lunched in the garden at the Hare and Hounds at Bidborough, David’s village pub, thinking yay we’ve left the wintry weather behind. Well things have gone steadily downhill since – 10 degree stuff. Thank goodness for the winter woollies that we store in Maureen’s cupboard, we look like we are back on the Alaskan cruise.

It was great to arrive at Maureen’s to find Stan all ready to go.  No mishaps over the cold and snowy winter, although we have had to replace the engine battery which took time and caused a bit of anxiety as we imagined a flat battery when it was our turn to move off the ferry. Well Joanna does all the worrying, David just gets on with it. Stocked the larder and set off for France within 2 days. Spent a couple of days near Arras in Northern France waiting for a new House battery. We took the time to explore some of the battle sites. Visited the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge,  which has rebuilt the trenches in situ, so you get a good idea of what it must have been like.  There are cemeteries everywhere over a huge area. It is hard to comprehend the enormity of the whole thing.

Heading on south, paying vast tolls on the French motorways. A brief overnight stop by the river in Metz. Finally felt like we were back in Europe as we sat in the shadow of the cathedral watching the throngs, sipping  beer and red wine.

Have made our way now to the Romantische Strasse in Germany to explore the old towns and castles. House battery still not charging so great gloom. Spent the night at Rothenburg, made a freezing expedition through the streets. All very medieval and charming, if somewhat touristy. We were expertly guided to a repair shop next morning, where we got a new fuse and voila, with typical German efficiency we are all operational again. So now we have an English engine battery, a French house battery and a German fuse.

Have made our way on down the Romantic Road via Dinkelsbuhl and now Nordlingen. We think it is probably a lot more  charming when it is warmer and not pouring with rain. Perhaps we have been a bit spoilt with our adventures to less touristy, less commercialised places, we are a bit disappointed,but looking forward to reaching our true objective – the   Alps and getting into a bit of alpine walking.

Friday June 4 and have awoken to sunshine for the first time in about a week. We are now in the Alps. Yesterday we queued for an hour and a half and were lucky to get tickets to the Passion Play at Oberammagau,along with 4700 others. It is only staged every 10 years. A sumptuous production involving about 2000 people. They have to be natives of the town or have lived here for 20 years. It is over 5 hours long, divided into 2 sections with a 3 hour break in the middle,hence from2.30 to11pm.It is needed because the whole show is pretty intense. It is all in German but we did have an English text which we managed to follow until it got too dark. It is partially open to the outside and so rugs were de rigeur, and poor Jesus on the cross must have been freezing. It is magnificent. They have been doing this show for several hundred years so have had plenty of time to perfect thing. We feel very lucky to  have had the opportunity to see it.

Otherwise Oberammergau has some fine painted houses, lots of tourists and the attendant shops with millions of wooden toys, cuckoo clocks etc.   

We have met up with another Kiwi couple,Frans and Cynthia who are living in London and  spend their summers in a camper van around Europe. Have spent the last few days exploring with them. Franz is a fluent German speaker which is helpful.

We are heading off to castle and walking country over the next few days.  Have just completed a trip up the Wankbahn at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Up a cable car to about 2000metres. We walked up there for a couple of hours. Panoramic views- great alpine stuff. David thought it would be a great idea to walk down. A somewhat circuitous route, took ages meandering amongst the meadows,cowbells and all that. Now time to send this and attack a red wine.