I can’t believe its been 5 days since I found a ‘net connected computer. Evidently I’ve been suffering withdrawl :-)
Had a fairly crappy couple of days, actually. Really just been on the road the whole time because I couldn’t find any cities I wanted/could stay in. Venice is far too touristy/expensive to have more than one hostel (which I obviously couldn’t get to by bike). As I mentioned my plan was to spend a couple of days somewhere beachy.
So I tried Lido di Jesolo, about 40km east of Venice, on the Adriatic coast. The frustration began a solid 15km away from the coast; the traffic was just incredible. Eventually I managed to tear my way into a campsite despite mounting concern that I wouldn’t be able to find a vacancy anywhere anyway; I don’t have a tent with me. Anyway I poked around there for half an hour before deciding that 50 euro a night for a caravan next to a beach I also have to pay for was crazy.
So rather unimpressed I struck North.. once again without a concrete destination.
Lessons learned:
1. Make sure your destinations have hostels. Any other option – even ignoring price – is too boring if you’re travelling alone. I spent last night in a tiny town (Paluzza, near the Austrian border) where no-one spoke any english whatsoever. Not too much fun! But I’m very well rested and finally (hopefully) over my jetlag.
2. Assuming your destination has a hostel, book ahead! This time of year they really are all full, theyäre not just saying that to make their life easier.
3. The other option is to (as Purple Jules plans to next year) do the campervan (or camping) option. I’ve been blown away by the number of campsites everywhere here. You’ll have no problem at all finding somewhere to hitch up each night without needing to plan ahead at all. Pretty cool way to go. Probably not altogether that sociable, though. Seems lots of families and not a lot of English speakers go for this option.
Anyway I’m now in Salzburg. Took rather longer than I anticipated to get here which is becoming something of the norm for me. I’ve no idea why, but I’m having pretty major difficulties navigating Europe. I don’t know if it’s a language thing or if my nasal compass doesn’t work in the Northern Hemisphere! I took so many wrong turns today.. and tried in vain to avoid the autobahn. Anyway, I made it finally and this hostel looks pretty fun. The city looks quite nice too. Will have to venture out tonight I reckon.
Can’t be arsed going anywhere in the next few days. I was going to go to Prague but am feeling really uninspired by the idea of doing more riding than necessary for now. Need to be in Germany for the MotoGP on the weekend anyway. That’s only 170km from Prague so I might go after.
Fact:
Italian pizza is awesome.
Far fewer bugs get splattered on my visor than in Australia.
Every petrol station in Italy has a bar with good beer on tap.
Food at petrol stations all over europe is far more edible than in Australia.
My German is better than my Italian.
German keyboards are still troubling me.
Austrian alpine architecture is so cute. It’s very Sound of Music.
Ah, you probably didn’t calculate in the fact that schoolchildren Europe wide are on their summer holidays right now. Which means a lot of families heading to the coast (hence the traffic), and prices about triple what they would usually be. Soz – should have mentioned that before you left!
Prague is awesome according to evryone I know who has been. You’dll be gutted if you miss it. And the beer is *really* cheap.
Yeah I really hope that you make it there too. If not, as a descendant of Prague I would love to take you there some time… (k)
Don’t worry mate – you get used to finding your way! As Simon said, don’t miss Prague – beautiful city, cheap beer, good food!
Not coming to the GP cos I’ll be too buggered after this week of 12 hour days to do the 800 odd km’s. Have fun though and make sure you take some piccies.
Hey don’t fret about some ‘bad’ – it is what makes the good ‘good’ no?
I’m pretty sure these things are relative and there is no real absolute ‘good’ in a vacuum. Unless the axis of evil is like the 0 Kelvin Bad definition or something. I don’t know about that. Have to ask Chris.
I’m slightly less like ‘plan to’ about the Lagwagon next year now, and more ‘half there already’ since I PASSED ALL MY SUBJECTS Bwaaahahahahaha. 44 down, 2 to go. Can’t believe it man. You and Jess can fly over for a week and chill out on the Jarrah decking I put up on the roof. My boss better not hang any on me this weekend or he is going to get a dose of reality now that I’m not staying there past November.
I’m still not finished with the Switzerland thing. Maybe Olly can tell me – are Swiss Rolls (Jam Sponge things you eat) related to Switzerland at all or have I been sorrily misled all along? I ate a whole one before and the beer I just drank in the shower almost made me sick.
We layed out all the schematics on the floor today and divided them into 2 A4 sized PCBs. Sometime next week we will be up to etching the boards and soldering the 550 components (laboriously specified and listed in a bill of materials this week) on. We are going to make a white ply box (white box, y’know?) to strap it to the front nacelle pod of the car, and act convincing when we ask for Dyn time with the Honda Motor. THAT will be a sleepless week. You can come down at night and help us make it play Happy Birthday. Or maybe Waltzing Matilda. Or maybe fhqwghads would be cool. I’m sure we’ll have time to put together a whole album. Get that SM-78 off Adrian and we’ll let my MP3 player encode it for us.
Dude how come you are having so much fun in servos? I just cracked it at some pom (no offence Simon) lady who VERY nearly rammed up the ass of the RGV as we both pulled into a BP. She admitted that it was the first time she had driven in this country and I was really nice to her (original description of events altered slightly for public consumption).
Moto race should be cool. I’m going to need you to do something high profile and obviously noticeable so we can see you. Short of interrupting the race by streaking. I’m thinking white paint… maybe a loud horn (I’m sure there won’t be any other ones there)… don’t throw anything on the track or anything… HOW ABOUT commadeering (comandeering? comodeering?) one of the TV camera towers for some specially produced Jules footage mid race. Let me know anyway, so I can make sure we are paying attention.
PS can’t text because of broken 2 button. Turns out the letters abc are frequent to the degree that omission leads to incomprehensibility (and I’m only a small step from there with a full Aussie qwerty at my disposal anyway eh) soooooo…
REMEMBER to float off some beer labels for a reference if you find anything remarkable. Or just pocket the finger nailed off shreds caused by your doubtless sexually frustrated (honourable) state. We can piece them together later on to save me drinking anything sub standard.
Put up some photos of you and Olly and Helen. Or some other people.