Austria - Italy
The calendar reads 5/7/2010, I wake up to pack my things and Luna who was kind enough to host me at Dornbirn sets off to work. We say goodbye and I start preparing my breakfast in no hurry as I waited for the rain to stop (without giving sound signs of stopping actually). The view of the surrounding mountains full of fog, clouds and rain was not attractive at all for riding. Finally, just before noon the weather cleared up a little bit so I decided to start my way East for Innsbruck.
I leave Dornbirn behind on L48 heading East and was happy to experience a nice route from the very start with beautiful open curves. The scene is similar on L200 right after but rain came up again as I reached Au. Yep, that place named "as short as it gets". This was the point though were the route became even more interesting with some tunnels on the way providing me short but pleasant breaks from rain. Speaking of rain, it became even harder later on and didn't allow me to enjoy the ride as much as I would like to but fortunately things got better as soon as I reached Otztal – Bahnof where I left B171 for L309. This looks like a circle deviation on the map going to Innsbruck but it worth doing so.
These extra km offer a very beautiful route with no traffic at all. Lots of tight bends going up the mountain up to Kuhtai which lies at 2020 meters.
If you are luckier than I was there on a dry day you will enjoy the route much more than I did. What was totally indifferent about the rain was a group of cows staying idle on the road obliging me to make a slow slalom through them in order to start my way going down to Innsbruck.
Actually I had to go to Igls which is about 5 km South of the city. This would be the meeting point with Axel, a very good friend and experienced biker since he works as a tour guide in motorbike adventure trips for a long long time. It is nice to be able to chat with such experienced persons but enough laid back to not show off and Axel is one of them. Even better, he kindly hosted me for the few days I was there.
Unfortunately the weather was not the best one during my stay as it was raining almost all the time and though we wanted to do some riding around we decided not to. We had time to walk around Igls instead and see the beautiful local forest,
as well as in Innsbruck which is at a great location surrounded by Alpine peaks.
This city deserves the title "Capital of Alps”. Especially the old part of Innsbruck is just magical. Looks like a history movie scene. You can also find lots of nice restaurants around, many Italian once since the borders with Italy are quite close. This is another advantage of staying at Innsbruck – it is dead easy to do Germany or Italy. It's only a short drive North or South respectively.
During the first night at Igls after a very cool restaurant me and Axel visited a bar around the corner. As soon as he introduces me to his friends one of them turns at me in fluent Greek “Are you Greek?”. I had to do almost 5000km to meet the first guy speaking Greek. His mother lived in Greece for many years and he has worked in the island of Rhodes for a couple of years so he knew the language quite well resulting in spending the first and last night chatting in Greek during my trip.
The next day Innsbruck was for me the meeting point with my good friends from Australia, Patrick and Belinda Peck. This couple followed a lifestyle of working for a year and travelling the next one on their YAMAHA Super Tenere 750. You can check this out at their page www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/peck . This time they were going from Austria to Switzerland while I was going the exact opposite direction so we had the chance to meet for a few hours at Innsbruck.
On my last night at Austria Axel and Michaela invited me for dinner at home. This is how I said goodbye to the beautiful view from Axel's balcony drinking red wine and later on trying Michaela's tasty local recipe.
Next morning I woke up with a weird feeling. For the first time after almost one month my trip had a scheduled end. That day I had to ride up to Venice to catch the ferry to Patra and then ride back to Athens. Axel offered to keep company with me up to the borders with his bike and so we rode together following some side roads in order to make the route as scenic as possible, though the whole area there is very nice regardless the route you choose. The funny thing was that we met a police biker up on some remote mountainous roads who probably had the same idea with us rather than chasing the crime in the middle of nowhere. He also greeted us like bikers do when they meet on the road.
Few km before Brenner we had to split ways with Axel and after thanking him so much for all, I continued South to Italy leaving behind the last good friend I made on my trip. The area around the borders is nice but SS244 later on was more interesting with lots of tunnels close to Onies and nice bends after the 22nd km. Things are even better on SP37 which leads you higher on the mountain passing through beautiful villages and SP24 right after takes me to Passo Valparola at 2192 meters on the watershed of the Dolomites.
One stop there is not a bad idea at all as well as at Passo Falzarego which is pretty close only a few km later going South.
From there I started descending via SR48, but unfortunately the closer I got to the sea the less scenic the roads became while the traffic was more and more heavy, especially close to the cities where it was often unbearable. In other words it was clear that the joy of riding was over and I just had to commute myself up to the port of my departure. Before Venice I made my way to Padova for personal reasons since last year I skipped it though I was pretty close.
The family of my father has routes (a few centuries ago) from this city. Back in the day (1300ish) 3 brothers shoemakers left Padova to go to Crete as it was the time that this Greek island was colonised by guys from Veneto hence they got the last name "Padouvas", same as I do. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to see the city cause I had to catch the ferry from Venice but I managed to ride around for a while.
Arriving at the port of Venice later the weather was already a bit too hot for my taste. I enter the ferry leave my stuff at my cabin and I go outside to enjoy the view from the deck and I start taking pictures since Venice offers countless unique images to capture.
This is more or less how I ended this trip after riding for more than 5000 km, passing 17 (at least) Alpine passes, in 5 countries and 3 little states. Regardless the statistics most important is the whole new world inside you that this experience creates which is hard to describe since it's all encoded by yourself. Sometimes when asked to describe the trip I say that it was actually a movie. A well directed one with perfect casting: the people I met on the road in other words, without them it would never be the same. Of course I've been to amazing places which in any case would impress me but some of the people I met around really made the difference and I want to thank every single one from the bottom of my heart, those who are already included in my stories and those who were “behind the cameras” and helped me or chatted with me but it is just impossible to include them all in a text. All have a special place in my memory and that's what counts.
Thank you so much for "riding" with me and showing your love on my posts, I promise that you won't regret motivating me to keep this going - there's great stuff following and you've been warned! Have a goof life :)
P.S. Here's the whole trip on a Google map: