Eurotrip Part III: On the Road to Tarquinia, Italy

 Italian Truck Stop

Jon, studying at Virginia Tech’s Study Abroad program in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, took the train to Bern and then drove to Italy with us. Once again, getting out of Bern was a mess, as the GPS continued to insist that we could drive through concrete construction barriers; it took an hour to maneuver the morass of highways, still bucking and stalling on occasion, before hitting the winding mountain highway south to Tarquinia.

By late morning, the Kennys (Jon and I) were hungry again, and Dave, having learned years ago that a hungry Kenny is not a happy Kenny, pulled off the road just over the Italian border to check out an Italian food truck. Parked on a pull-off with picnic tables overlooking the mountains, Mario’s Pannini truck offered several sandwiches and a variety of beverages, all of ample size and dirt cheap.  Mario and his wife were delightful, as we tried to communicate despite the language barrier, when we asked about rest rooms, Mario laughed and held his arms wide in the universal expression for “wherever you can find a bush.”  The friendly lunch ended with free espresso and desserts from Mario’s wife.

Check out the menu. 3 Euros for a sandwich. We ain't in Switzerland anymore!! Mangia!

Espresso and pasties courtesy of Mario and wife.

The Ancient Walled City of Tarquinia 

It took 9 hours to get to Tarquinia, an Etruscan walled city with cobblestone streets, ancient churches, and tombs dating from 500 BC.  There are families there who have been living in the same buildings for centuries. Every street has some type of treasure-- a tiny seafood market, a crowded espresso bar, a hidden church courtyard, a view through an arched walkway of the turquoise ocean just two miles away. We were staying in a living postcard.

This is the main street through Tarquinia. It's a hopping place.

Our host, Rosalind, was at the apartment; she would be in Tarquinia for 4 days, staying in a grotto studio below our flat. Rosalind, a retired British school teacher, has traveled the world, living in the US for 4 years and in Rome for 20. And, she speaks Italian. After showing us the neighborhood square and our new home for the week, she led us on one of several walking tours of Tarquinia.

We loved Tarquinia, with its welcoming shop owners,  friendly next door grandma sweeping pigeon mess every morning, and  gatherings in the community squares, a convergence of legal parking spaces and benches for visiting with neighbors.  True, there were some issues. It was warm (how did we get 80s and sunny for 2 weeks?) so all the windows were open and the buildings are only feet apart. Thus, you can hear literally everything happening in the apartments above, below, and two streets over. This takes some getting used to, and if we could understand Italian, we’d likely have enough material for several novels and a soap opera. One night Jon went sleepless because the newborn baby in the next building was having a rough night. Another night, at 3:40 am I awoke to the sound of water coming from just outside our bedroom window. At first I thought it was some guy relieving himself on the street, but after 5 minutes of stop-and-start tinkling, I realized even an Irishman couldn’t go that long. My imagination grew as the continuing splats gave me visions of someone pouring gasoline around the building to torch the place, wondering what the insurance payoff would be for an apartment building built in the 1200s. I got out of bed, opened the heavy shutters and peered into the darkness. A movement caught my eye from above and I spied the silhouette of a woman hanging out the window of the fourth floor apartment across from me. I realized that she was hand washing rags, squeezing the excess water onto the street before hanging her clothes on the balcony to dry.

The gathering place for our neighborhood. Jon heads to the apartment to the left. You have to go to Facebook for better photos since this blog does not take verticals.

Tarquinia also has a long, lovely beach with black sand and palm trees. Sand volleyball is a favorite of the young and fit, and rows of gellaterias beckon. (Gelato, the better version of ice cream, was a recurring theme during our week in Italy as Jon sought to find the best in central Italy. Good parents, Dave and I supported him on this mission and contributed to the research data. I must report that the sour cherry gelato on the beach in Tarquinia tops my list.)  

Jon doing gelato research.

The locals generally do not speak much English, but they work with you in good humor. Jon was able to negotiate a great deal on some sunglasses, again using a universal language: original price neatly written on paper, then carefully crossed out, and a lower number written below. Then smiles all around as another universal symbol, VISA, emerges from the pocket.

Tarquinia, apparently like most of Italy, does move at its own pace. The Internet café we needed to buy Vatican tickets was closed. Just for a week... but it was that week.  Many of the ATMs were apparently also on vacation or simply out of money. When one ATM simply ate my debit card, we had to work closely with the bank employees who were “too busy” in the morning, and then opened in the afternoon for exactly one hour, 2:30 to 3:30. (All the shops open from early morning until about 2, then again from 530 to 8.) But if you were in search of an excellent pastry shop or a wine bar, chances were good that they were open when you needed them. 

Another view of the neighborhood square showing old church under renovation on right.

This square, in front of a church, offered fresh olives for a local.

Tarquinia's Etruscan history includes being the site of  acres of old tombs in the necropolis just outside the city walls.

Each hut covers the entry to a tomb, most dating from 500 BC

  We made several side trips from our home base:  2 days to Rome, about an hour train ride from Tarquinia, and another 2 days to the verdant hills of Tuscany.

More to come....

Eurotrip Part II: Interlaken, Lake Brienze, and the Top of Europe

  Interlaken

Interlaken- the area between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz-- is a big tourist destination, not only because of its own charm but also because it is a departure point for lake and mountain tours. We got to know it while waiting for our boat tour, and returned another day to eat dinner there. The skies are often filled with hang gliders in Interlaken, since a  large park on the main street is the landing site for the gliders—fun to watch. We ate outside at Krebs, and both had venison (we were trying most anything to avoid more sausage and cheese).

  

And to the Top of Europe

Interlaken is also the starting point for the most exciting excursion of our trip, to the top of Jungfrau, one of the Swiss Alps. Dave and I debated about this one a bit because it was so pricey, even for Switzerland, and to do it right we had to get up very early to catch the train- actually a series of three trains each way, as the trip is 3 hours up and 3 hours down. But this was a chance to walk on a glacier at the highest railroad station in Europe- over 11,000 feet up. 

One of the three trains we took to the Jungfrau.
 

The journey was amazing. You'd think a mountain vista would get boring after 6 hours, but each turn brought a different perspective, different shapes and colors, and all of it was breathtakingly beautiful. At lower altitudes there were gorgeous alpine villages, and many people got off with walking sticks to hike down the mountain along well-maintained paths. (That Swiss efficiency again.) The Swiss are avid walkers; we met an old Swiss woman who told us that she takes the train partway up the mountain and then hikes down every day!

 

At the top of the Jungfrau there is a cheesy “ice palace,” and an observatory overlooking the glacier. We had heard that there are crow-like mountain birds that will eat from your hand so we brought some bread, and Dave kept himself entertained with bird games. We both walked on the glacier, but Dave went further, hiking out across a large stretch of the glacier while I enjoyed Swiss hot chocolate in the Jungfrau cafeteria along with other sane tourists. He said it was beautiful, hot, and blindingly bright.

Pizza Joint by the Lake

In all this driving back and forth between Bern and Interlaken, we had noticed a roadside pizza joint on Lake Brienz, and stopped there on one of our last days in Switzerland.  We were taken aback by the fact we had to pay to park at the restaurant—a  government thing—but a gregarious waiter, claiming to be Italian but later admitting to Portuguese heritage, came out to the lot and convinced us to come in for pizza and the best table in the house. We bought his pitch, and the pizza and mixed salads were good, the wine and beer were cold, and the view was 5-star.

Eating pizza on a terrace with this view? Priceless.

Next Up: The Road to Italy

Eurotrip Part I: How I Spent my Home Exchange Vacation

 A Good Start

Swiss Hertz rental agent to Dave:

   “Mr. Brooks, if you drive a stick shift, you could rent this roomy Ford that needs to be returned to Rome instead of the tiny, automatic Opel you reserved… and we will reduce your rental fee by $600.”

    Dave, who has not driven a stick since he was 20, after imagining using a clutch to maneuver steep, Swiss mountain roads and the traffic-congested streets of Bern, while also considering the stare down from his budget-conscious wife, to Hertz: 

    “I, uh, of course, I drive stick.... We’ll take it. ”

    Let the lurching begin.

SWITZERLAND

 (Note:This blog doesn't allow me to publish most of my vertical photos so many of my best shots aren't shown here. I am sure you are disappointed. But check out my Facebook page for more photos.)

Home in Bern 

    Two hours later, after six stall outs and a whole lot of cussin', we arrived at our exchange host's home in Bern, the German-speaking Swiss capital so lovely that it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our new residence was a little townhouse on a dead end street overlooking a huge soccer complex. It had apple and pear trees in the small, lush yard. The house, with 2 bedrooms and a second floor bath,was brightly furnished with no-frills, Scan style furniture. And, it was in a fantastic location, just 5 minutes from a bus stop. 

       An odd, decorative light sat on a tall post attached to the railing of the balcony outside the bedroom. It was hard to tell exactly what kind of light it was because the balcony door was locked, but it seemed to be in the shape of a half-peeled banana.  
   That first night we watched the light repeatedly change from purple to green to red, casting its colorful glow through the sheer curtains and onto the bedroom walls. After a few minutes, Dave --and forgive me for being crass--but Dave noted that it really looked more like a penis.  And once he pointed it out, I could definitely see the resemblance, yes, indeed. So, we spent our stay in Bern sleeping in a bedroom with a gaily lit banana/penis light  to  guide us throughout the night. Alas, we failed to take photos.  
    We found that the Swiss have an approach to traffic calming that works. The residential streets are 2-way, and wide enough for exactly 2 cars. Yet parking is allowed on both sides of the street. Say what? This is possible because parking alternates from side to side: 4 cars parked on the right (so you drive on the left), then a few yards open, and then 4 cars parked on the left (so you switch to the right side). This means you must drive very s l o w l y, weaving from side to side, and constantly yielding to oncoming cars. Speeding is physically impossible on Swiss residential streets.

Cannabis Tea: "Fantastic Natural Feeling." 

                   Heavy food + exorbitant prices =  often eating at the house. 

No, we did not inhale.----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bern -- "bear" in German-- has maintained a bear park along the Aare River since 1857; yes, that is a bear in the lower left. Joggers running along the river (tiny figure in red) get a great look at them, and with a field of sheep nearly adjacent to the park, the bears get a good view, too.

Bern government building at night. The Swiss love flowers along their windows.

Colonial Williamsburg Swiss Style

     We went to the Swiss open air museum, Ballensweig, on Sunday to see how life once was in Swiss Alpine villages. Most everything was in German so we didn't learn much, but it was a lovely place, spread across a valley ringed by mountains. And, they were having a donkey exhibition! One donkey, appearing to be a cross between a llama and a donkey, was a sad and lonely fellow. He kept trying to make donkey friends, but other donkeys, the suave, short-hair type that fit in with the crowd, would turn and give him a swift kick. This rejection led Mr. Lonely to utter the most forlorn series of brays that echoed across the valley. Then, as barking dogs often do, several other donkeys --  too far away for me to see what they looked like -- answered with their own series of haws. I can only hope that they were llama-donkeys, too.

The lonely llama-donkey of Ballensweig. 

   We hiked the very long path to a hilltop where there was a crafts fair going on. After standing in line for 30 minutes, we snagged 2 plates of a most delicious Swiss concoction comprised of battered apple rings fried and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Organ grinder at crafts show.

Mmmm..donuts. Swiss style.

Green hills, mountain backdrops, Swiss chalets, and perfect weather. (Excuse the cheesy photo set up; It won't be the last....)

Gruyere: Of Cheese and Chocolate

Cailler's tasting room. So many chocolates, so little time.

     
    After one failed, bucking (stick, remember?) attempt to get out of Bern and into Gruyere  --curse you, oh GPS which does not understand when exits are closed due to construction -- we finally got to Gruyere later in the week.

     We learned that Switzerland has four official languages: French, Italian, German and Romansh. The Swiss around Bern speak German, and despite rumors to the contrary, we could find virtually none who also spoke English. Turned out, that was not a big deal because there were pretty much none who wanted to talk to us anyway. The Swiss have many fine attributes,but warm and fuzzy is not one of them. However, when we visited the French-speaking part of Switzerland, including Gruyere, there was a marked thaw in attitude toward tourists. Between their good natured efforts and my meager high school French, we were actually able to piece together a conversation with a Swiss person. 
    We toured the Maison du Gruyere cheese factory with an audio tour narrated by Cherry, the cheery talking cow, and saw some cheese rounds being poured. It was pretty interesting. We also sampled the cheese. We then headed to the highlight of the trip, the Cailler chocolate factory; Cailler was the first to combine milk and chocolate for candy, giving birth to Swiss chocolate.We enjoyed the Disneyland-type walk through the history of the coco bean but the big payoff was the chocolate sampling room. And that most delightful buffet was all-you-can-eat.

The old town of Gruyere, where we met Chuck and Sue from Philly. English speakers immediately gravitated to one another since there seem to be so few of them in Switzerland.

The cobblestone streets of old Gruyere lead to a hilltop castle..and the best gelatto of our trip.

Boat and Castle Tour

      From Interlaken we hopped on a boat tour of gorgeous Brienz lake that included admission to two castles. We chose the castles in Spiez and Thun ("Toon"). There was not another living soul in the Spiez castle, and Dave and I had a great time exploring every nook and cranny of the period-furnished castle, including the uppermost towers, up 4 flights of narrow, creaking stairs. The castle in big and bustling Thun was not as enjoyable; it was crowded and filled with factoid posters and uninteresting displays, more a museum than a castle.   

Approaching the town of Spiez.

Arrow in Speiz castle-see below photo for explanation. Obviously predates Swiss policy of neutrality.

    In every city of size --such as Interlaken--there are hundred of bikes available for free use, usually at a train or bus station, with a 20 CF deposit. Swiss are married to their bikes like we are to our cars. That, and the fact virtually all of them seem to smoke, explains how they stay fit in spite of their love for sausages and cheese.

View from the top of Spiez castle.

Next blog: Jungfrau