Northern Italy, the Phrase Book and Hand Signals

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Italian Autostrada, Smog and Trucks

14/10/05 - The Mont Blanc tunnel made world news a while back due to the fact that 24 people died in there when a truck caught alight. Our trip through was much safer, although we almost died when we got hit with the 30 euro toll to make the trip through. On entering the tunnel you tune your radio to the traffic station and they welcome you to the tunnel in French, Italian and English, giving you all the safety instructions you must follow on your drive.

Once on the Italian side we found our way through the Italian Alps to Aosta and then the Autostrada in the direction of Milano. Aside form the high fuel costs the toll charges would discourage plenty of Italians from taking too many motoring holidays. The Autostrada was a nerve wracking drive for Lorenza, with lots of trucks, speeding cars and road works every 10 kilometres. The trucks do not bother keeping to their lanes and make overtaking a difficult task, with Rob as passenger closing his eyes many times as we passed a truck that decided to move partly into our lane.

It was also a nerve wracking trip due to poor visibility; the smog was like nothing we had seen before as we headed toward Milano. It is easy to understand why so many Italians immigrated to Australia if the air quality here is any indication of the rest of Italy!

We headed from Milano to Bergamo and got very agitated in the peak hour traffic. How would we ever cope in Rome? We decided to take a break and consult the map to find a smaller town to call it quits and get our frazzled nerves back in order. We headed to Clusone, in the mountains outside Bergamo and found a very comfortable hotel. We did our best to communicate with our host in a mixture of English, French, broken Italian and many hand signals. It all worked out for us and we got a very nice room, dinner and breakfast for a reasonable price. It was just what we needed after the trials of the Autostrada.

When ordering dinner we managed to work out via hand signals and farmyard noises what was on the menu. There was no written menu; our host simply told us what was available. When Lorenza questioned what one item was she made sheep noises by way of a question, our hosts response was to snort like a pig. Simple and effective, she had the pork and it was lovely.

Into the Mountains & forget the Autostrada

15/10/05 - Before leaving Clusone we consulted the map and decided to avoid the Autostrada, instead taking to the back roads indicated by very squiggly lines on the map. That was a great decision and the route took us through many small villages below the Dolomite Mountains. The stress of the trucks and smog was replaced by wonderful scenery and twisty mountain roads which led us into the real Northern Italy.

We made our way to Trento via the Passe del Tonale, which is obviously a very popular winter resort area. From Trento we continued on to Feltre via Arsie (great name). We then continued onto the town of Mel, where we decided to look for a hotel. We found one and inspected the room and decided to stay, but unfortunately when we went to collect the car and park it closer to the hotel a truck was blocking the way down the narrow lane the hotel was located in and we had to detour all over the village and got lost. We never found our way back to the hotel and after a few circles around the town decided to give it a miss.

On the way out of Mel, Lorenza spotted a sign to a B&B, so we turned off onto a country lane, through the village of Pellegai, and then following the B&B signs. The lane soon turned into a single lane track through farmland and fields. We began to wonder where exactly the signs were taking us, but after another 20 minutes we finally arrived at a farm house with the sign “Ai Pianai B&B”. We were greeted by two Italians working on some concrete paving and with some more hand signals, we managed to work out that they had a room vacant and that they charged 18 euro per person for bed and breakfast.

Considering the cleanliness of the room and the fact that the farm had views to the Dolomites, we decided to stay for two nights. The owners are very friendly and we did our best to converse with them about the fact that the village of Mel was holding a “Feste demaine” (a festival tomorrow).

We ate dinner in a local restaurant in Mel, which again had no menu. The waitress explained to us in her best English what was available, you could tell she was embarrassed at her limited knowledge of English, but then our Italian skills are a disgrace so we told her she had nothing to be embarrassed about. The restaurant is in a historic home which was originally built in Roman times; it has murals and artwork on the walls which were painted in 1500 and 1700. The food was reasonable, but the price was obviously aimed at maintaining the building via overcharging the customers. It’s hard to check the price when there is no advertised menu. When it came time to pay the bill, there was not written bill, the owner took you into his office and began negotiating what he thought was a good price for the meal. Obviously a local could have bargained the price down, but we had no idea of how the system worked and ended up paying the non-Italian speaking touristico price. Lesson learnt!

Feste in the town of Mel

16/10/05 - We had a lazy start to the day with a fine Italian breakfast courtesy of Mauro, the youngest son of the owners of the B&B. Around midday we departed for Mel to see what the Feste was all about. Half the town was closed off to vehicular transport and the town piazza (square) was now a market place. The goods on offer were not exactly unusual or distinct to the region; instead there was mostly cheap clothing and jewelry, shoes, handbags, etc. being sold by Africans or Asians.

The food and drink tent was the centre of local activity. One part of the huge tent was devoted to the local children selling off their second hand toys; they were having a great time and obviously buying as much as they were selling. The food was fantastic, Lorenza and I got a huge plate of pasta, plus a mixed plate of local specialties (polenta, venison, beans and pork patty), all washed down with a ½ litre of local rosso vino, for the princely sum of seven euro. That certainly made up for the price of the previous nights meal.

While ordering our food we got some assistance from a gentleman who could speak very good English, Alessandro or Alex. He helped us decode the menu (the first one we have seen in Italy) and then after our meal he insisted on buying us an apple gelato, which is specially made from local fruit for the feste.

Alex then extended a very kind invitation for us to join him for caffé at his casse; he told us he lived on the road to our B&B and that we should follow him home. We walked to our car while he cruised along beside us on a very large Yamaha cruiser type motorcycle (one of those Harley copy thingies). Once at Alex’s place, he gave us a quick tour of his property, including fruit trees, geese, chickens, the biggest pigeons we have ever seen, plus the pots and pans tree. The tree growing the pots and pans has become a local attraction and even made news in a Rome newspaper. You will have to travel to the village of Marcador, near Mel to see it for yourself.

Alex also had an interesting collection of bugs and insects he had collected while working in Liberia, which is where he had learnt English as he had worked with so many varied nationalities that English became a necessity.

The caffé which Alex gave us was also improved in taste by a drop of grappa; it certainly adds taste and lift to a coffee! We talked about work and life in Africa, the differences between the North and South of Italy, plus some stuff about how many Italians live in Australia. Alex suggested we drop past in the morning before leaving town, which we will definitely do.

We left Alex and headed to a castle approximately 5kms away, which Alex told us about. Again we traveled along very narrow roads turning into gravel tracks to get to this medieval castle. It was interesting enough but the journey there and back again was well worth the journey.

We decided to go to a town called Belluno for dinner. We parked the car at a parking station then traveled up three very long and steep escalators to the town centre. Belluno is a very large town but with a lot of history in its buildings. Walking through the town centre on a Sunday evening gave me a real sense of being in Italy. There were people everywhere drinking coffee, beer, wine and also promenading in their Sunday best. It was a very busy atmosphere but still had a relaxed feeling about it. This atmosphere was perhaps due to the fact that there were no cars allowed in the area.

We had our first Italian pizza in Belluno and we had another enjoyable meal at a reasonable price. In fact the price of food and other items in general is a lot cheaper in the Italian country side than we have experienced so far in our travels.

Night Life at “Ai Pianai”

We returned from having dinner in Belluno to a very noisy gathering of Italian family and friends. They immediately invited us to join them for a caffé and grappa. The group included our hosts Renato and Piera, their daughter Sabina, her fiancé Lorenzo, their son Mauro and his girlfriend Elisa, and many friends. Sabina did very well to translate any conversations with her very limited English. We had lots of fun trying different techniques to communicate, the grappa certainly helped it to almost make sense. They were a very obliging family.

Tomorrow we leave this lovely village to hopefully meet up with Lorenza’s distant Italian relatives. This may be very interesting as they do not speak any English at all.

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Photos

Ahhh no Autostrada
Away from the smog at last!

Pots & Pans Tree
Alessandro & Lorenza

Alessandros' Tower
The tower in his front yard was a church which was destroyed in WWII

Family Snap
The family at Ai Pinnai B&B