20. – 30.4.13
We couldn’t find a better summary for Italy so far. The traffic and how to manoeuvre is a story itself.
Most Italien are really good and experienced car, motorbike or scooter driver – allways observing what’s going on, not only in their own lane, but also in front of them, in the back, to the left and right. Only with this attentative behaviour the tremendously chaotic traffic can be managed without any bigger damage. To give you an example: imagine a normal two lane street (two-way traffic) in a small little town. On both sides of course cars and delivery vans are parked, sometimes also in the second row. In between the traffic agonizes slower or faster, depending on other drivers searching for something or not. Right in the middle of everything you find the endless swarm of scooter driver, who pass on the left and right hand side of the cars. In between pedestrian who cross the street without watching out for the traffic.
Overland motorbikes definitely have right of way. If a car driver detects a motorbike coming along, they immediately move to the right (sometimes with dangerous little swings) so that you can pass without crossing the solid line between the two lanes. A wonderful deal for us. But as we learned it works also for cars, which are even faster than us and often move with more than 100km/h in a 50km/h marked area.
Great fun was also our experience on a beautiful road lined with old cypress trees somewhere in the countryside: we drove with moderate speed, it was a 70km/h marked zone, on a street with a solid line between the two lanes. 2 cars in front of us was a police car. All of a sudden the traffic slowed down, because a very old italian car poked along. Then we saw the police car overtaking the old car – Peter immediately decided to follow it – crossing the solid line and speeding up to 110km/h!!!! Whow. Nevertheless we decided to not force fortune, but rested at a moderate driving pace of 90km/h J And it happened quite often that police cars moved to the side to give us room to overtake them: your friendly police department!
This way even passing big cities becomes a pleasant experience.
Being concentrated and paying attention is not only asked in the daily city traffic but also – especially in the south of Italy – on the small little roads on the countryside. Sometimes they are full of holes and dints, that it becomes hard to detect the pavement at all. We have discovered so many beautiful spots and landscapes, but they were the hell for driving, what a pitty. Same with dead ends – often caused by landslides – which are annoying because the identification and signage is not always clear: sometimes it means the entire street is broken down so that you really cannot drive further and sometimes it just means, that the street is in such an awful condition, that it’s just difficult to drive.
So in terms of landscape Calabria is impressive, untouched country with lovely hills and woods.
In terms of cities we really liked Naples. Duli our private tour guide has shown us a bit of the other side of the town, the beauty of art and people.
We met Lello, a local artist, who specialised in working with the 4 emblems of Naples: Pulcinella the jester (who always tries to find something to eat), the Egg (as long as it’s not broken Naples will exist), the Horn (a lucky charm) and San Gennario (the city saint). Lello is a painter and creates sculptures. He combines the 4 emblems in ever new variations. As autodidact he expresses himself in a fresh, own way, which is very vivid. Lello himself is such a charming and warm person, easy to like. His studio is placed in the former stable of an old Palazzo. Great environment!
Another nice little experience we had in the hills of calabria, when we stopped for a lunch snack: while sitting there we saw a farmer driving by, in the back of his 3wheel delivery mini-van a couple of bags with some long green vegetables. We were curious what this is. The waitress of the restaurant then came to our table showing us the vegetable explaining what it is and how to eat. These funny beans are named Fave and are about 20cm long. Inside they are kind of furry, containing single little beans. Ok we thought that’s it, but no, these little beans you have to peel again to get to the even smaller (like a pea) very sweet beans. And thanks to her explanation we knew Fave and could order it the next time in a restaurant. Great to learn new things.
