Random Musings

Prosecco country..vineyards to the left, right, in front and behind

• If the really real reason for stopping on a slogging looong uphill is to take a photo...it doesn't count as a stop...right? 
• When in Italy, how do you tell if a driver is foreign?  they stop at pedestrian crossings, indicate which way they're planning on turning and vaguely keep to the speed limit.
• As above regarding a cyclist?...they go out in the siesta time ie 1230-1600..it's hot, but the roads are quiet.

The bike's BB is now quiet...not totally but almost.  The TT bike has finally been unpacked and is currently with the bike shop being pimped..ie brake, gears and saddle height being tweaked...the saddle is a major problem for me..once the bolts are loosened you have to give the saddle a good belt to make it move and I just don't have the explosive power to do that.

All I need now is to find a bike shop with a box for my return trip as I've ditched the bike bag..it would never survive another encounter with baggage handlers..the decathlon shop near Treviso that I'd been banking on has closed down.

This was the third of these signs proesting plastic bottles.  What I fail to comprehend is why people here buy mega large amounts of bottled water when tap water is drinkable
Tomorrow I move from Follina to Feltre for a 2 week stay attending an Italian language school there.  I'm lucky enough to have a scholarship for 1 of the weeks, so that lessens the financial load a bit.  Map: A is where I am today, B where I will be tomorrow:

This pix below might look to be just a lump of old moss covered stone, but it's actually the remains of a gun emplacement from 1917. Italy had suffered a major defeat in what is now Slovenia at the hands of the Austro Hungarian army with the help of the Germans. By the time the armies got to this point I think the German army had left the others to it and finally the Italians managed to stop the retreat and had begun to regain the area they'd just lost. There is a museum at Vittorio Veneto that i will try and visit, but in any case there are many villages here that are called "........da Battaglia" indicating the location of a battle, so if I don't get to the museum, I can visit these villages which also have displays.

and finally final:

•  I've been in Italy for 2 weeks and if I have to eat any more pasta I might have to get feral! (the culture absorption bit seems to have failed) 
• I keep being asked if I'm German which is certainly different from last year when everyone assumed I was English.  However, given the finacial problems between Germany and Italy (and Greece of course) it's perhaps not a good thing to be thought a German right here and right now.