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Published: February 29th 2008
''In the last episode, our intrepid adventurers had conquered Western Italy and were keen to tackle the East coast. Let's join them as their train pulls into Venice.''
Thank you Mister Voice-over Man.
For starters, we weren't actually staying
in Venice. We got off one station earlier at Venice Menstre, which is like Venice's driveway. Everything going to Venice passes through here. It makes the hotels much cheaper though.
We were staying about 5 minutes from the station, and the woman who ran it has been the most helpful person we've met so far. She gave us maps, showed us bus and train timetables, and they've just renovated all the rooms. Nice. As has usually been the case, we had one afternoon and then one whole day to look around, so we quickly got to it.
One train stop and lots of water later we stoppd in Venice, along with a few Italians and half the population of America. Seems to be popular. I'm sure I was told this before, but its kind of weird seeing it first hand: no roads. There is a huge carpark near the train station, and that as far as any cars go. From there it's either walk or boat - we took the cheaper option. We had been told to just follow signs pointing to San Marco, but its easier said than done. Venice is built like a giant maze, and we were surprised to see the signs pointing us down small alleyways and what seemed like deadends. There were lots of shops on the way to entertain us though. The Piazza San Marco is very impressive, lots of monuments and old buildings, and the ground is just a carpet of pigeons. There were a few stalls selling pigeon feed and every time someone opened a bag thy were inundated by wave after wave of the little flying rats. Utter madness.
We looked at all the shops (lots of arts and crafts), gawped at the prices, and quickly got ourselves hopelessly lost. This remained the pattern during the next day too.
All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed Venice. Highly reccommended.
We left early next morning to start our marathon train trip. Venice to Verona, up through Austria to Munich, and then on to Heidelberg to be picked up at 9pm by Andrea's cousins. The surrounding landscape through Innsbruck, Austria was amazing, I can't wait to drive through there later.
We met the Schleissman family: Gerd (no English), Marianna (last used English 13 years ago), Bianca (excellent English) and Fabian (good English). They live in Lorsch - a small town about 1/2 hour south of Frankfurt. Our tour of Lorsch took about 1 hour, and we met about 5 members of Bianca's extended family while we were out walking.
One of these was Reinhardt Launer: Bianca's uncle and a professional photographer. He reminds me of the professor from the Back to the Future movies. He's a lot of fun, and insisted on speaking English so he could practice. He almost practiced my ear off.
Highlights so far:
- We went and saw a local Uni band consisting of 2 sax's, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 1 tuba and 2 drummers. They were very cool.
- We went to Frankfurt, a vey modern city similar to Brisbane. Nice place, lots of shopping, picked up a GPS with Europe maps for 200Euro.
- AUTOBAHNS! Holy cow this is mad fun! Bianca drives a '95 Renault Twingo, and we were pushing 150 on the 'bahns. BMW touring wagons were passing us like we were standing still!
I'll be back later to continue this.
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Ashe
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I like Mr Voice-over Man
Sounds pretty awesome Steeeeve. I discovered that meeting/staying with a local kicks ass - if only we had done it more... Things are sounding pretty great, I hope it continues in a similar fashion! Getting lost is kinda fun isn't it!