“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” Lou Holtz

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Confucius

Sunday 3 July 2011

Austria to Italy..added to on 4/7

Jet lag and fatigue meant that I went to bed at 7pm yesterday and woke up at 2am...I must have crashed the moment my head hit the pillow...

Today's trip is ~700 km with just the first and last bit not on freeways..actually they're not "free" at all..I've bought a 28 euros vignette that allows me to drive the motorways in Austria for 2 months and will fork out ++euros to toll booths along the way in Italy .

As there is quite a difference in driving here and in Aus, and not just the right hand/left hand side of the road issue, I've decided to do a series of posts on my experiences on the road.  They'll just be personal, uninformed comments but as a regular recipient of demerit points due to speeding, I'm interested in the "speed kills" attitude of our law enforcers.



Sunday 3/7
  • The journey today took 7 hours. I left St J with a shiver at 10 degrees and arrived in Urbania at 30 degrees.
  • During my trip I stopped at petrol stations twice and at both places the staff replied in German to my Italian ….well at least I didn’t sound like a Pom!
  • Since I was clearly the ONLY driver keeping anywhere near to the posted speed limit, here are some  Autostrada speed limit thoughts:Speed limits in Italy are considered to be
  1. ·         advisory only
  2. ·         a challenge
  3. ·         the legal minimum speed
Urbania..photos wil follow
On arriving it was clear that both my planned alternative routes via the Google earth map were both impossible due to the one way system, so I drove to the school and started to try and make phone calls..with no luck at all…first because there seemed to be no service and eventually because there was no reply.  Luck was on my side because someone I asked for help happened to work at the school…she called one of the directors and the rest is history!  My guide from the apartment couldn’t speak English and so I HAD to speak Italian..2 hours later my fluency was much better!
Monday 4/7
Today I’ve just finished my first class..the group I joined are all singers and are in their final week.  There are 3 levels and I think I’m in the middle one, this afternoon I get another guided tour around the town.
My jet lag still lingers but I’m now waking at 3am instead of 2 am(!).  Classes start at 9 and it’s light from 5am so the plan is to get out on the bike early while it’s still cool, but first I need to get the brakes fixed as I loosened them off to allow better packing and have no pliers here to reverse the deed.

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