Into Italy!

We retreated from Italy, we had spent 4 nights there and chosen our time poorly, the week after the Day of the Assumption, big holiday.

We chose the old Brenner Pass road to exit Italy back into Austria and as we drove through I was reminded of Arthurs Pass, except for the huge outlet shopping mall that was creating a shopping frenzy. Brenner had the same drizzle, steep dark hills, railway infrastructure and little chalet houses.

Brenner Pass

We had taken another Chausson owner’s recommendation to visit the Stubaital Valley and the little central campsite. It had views all around, grassy hillsides, pink limestone crags (are there Dolomites in Austria?), large yellow church and next to our truck, the alpine water trough made of a hollowed out log, decorated with carved Eidelweiss, clear icy water pouring into it.

Sculpture seat on the 'real tramp'

We stayed at Camp Stubai for 4 nights. It was sited next to a cable car which gave us an effortless ride to the ‘tops’ for an easy walk among the alpine flowers one day and a real tramp (I am not talking in a good way) another day. The day of the real tramp had no breeze and burning sun, and as we were squishing our toes at the end of our boots on the way back down to the cable car, para-ponters were hauling their equipment to their launch pads.

Back at the truck Stuart poured icy water from the trough into a washing basin apiece and we sat in deckchairs drinking cold Pepsi and soaking our feet while watching the para ponters twirling above us on the thermals. While soaking our feet we noticed a young couple setting up their tent opposite and obviously pleased with their site, as they were taking 360 photos on their phones. Don’t know if they caught the two old people with their feet in washing-up bowls but we gave a cheery wave.

While in Austria we watched farmers making hay. I have no farming background but it seems an awful lot of work to end up with what seems a small amount of hay. Some fields are too steep for tractors so the cutting is manual, using a big lawnmower. The raking and turning is all manual. The grass doesn’t seem to attain much height before it is turned into either hay or silage. The farms look very small and must enjoy subsidies from the EU for them to continue as working units. Perhaps a lot of them run B&Bs and guesthouses as a sideline. Travelling above the farmers on the cable car there was a real scene of ‘one man went to mow... two men went to mow’ the most we saw was 3 men in a meadow, disappointingly no dog.

Time to give Italy another shot so we went back over the Brenner Pass, a different scene this time – the sun was out, the roads had light traffic and the towns looked prettier. Then Mr Cock-Up visited, – at the end of the pass there was confusion between the satnav and what we saw and we turned right instead of going straight ahead. There was no way out, we had to go on the autostrada when we really just wanted to drive through the pathetic little barrier to get to the other side of the road.

Back along the Brenner road in the direction we just came from, paid the toll at the first exit, got back on the autostrada, paid the toll and back where we started.

Lake Braies

We headed for Lake Braies and ended up being ushered into a squeezy spot by the parking warden. ‘It’s OK Stuart, we can open our door without hitting the truck next door’.

It was a hot gravelled carpark and there were a dozen motorhomes squished together. It didn’t look like the picture in the aires book but we made a coffee and stared out at the rows of cars filling the carpark. The next door neighbours had an Italian soap opera on their television and then they erupted into their own soap opera. We couldn’t see or understand them but there was shouting and rounds of what sounded like teenage tears; the bouts of tears would start up again without the shouting – just anguished exclamations and sobs. Stuart wondered if we should ask for our money ($NZ30) back.

The surroundings were spectacular, great dolomite cliffs, clear blue sky and pinetrees as we walked up the road to find the lake. After we walked past acres of car park, and the REAL aire which was full up, it was like deja vue. It really was Lake Louise (Canada) all over again including the hotel, boathouse and row boats, lakeside walk ..... Truly beautiful. We did the lake circuit accompanied by thousands of others all talking flat out when there was a dramatic ‘mama mia’ (not quite but something similar) near us. A mother was rushing into the lake pulling out a baby buggy laden with the family bags – luckily the ‘baby’ had been pushing the buggy and he set up a wailing, proclaiming innocence I assume. We had arrived in Italy indeed.

Lake Braies

The highlight so far has been our stay at Misurina. The aire was placed in a fantastic spot with views of pinky-blue limestone peaks all around with swathes of pinetrees stretching up to the snowline. In the large open meadows cows were grazing, their bells tinkling. The German man parked next door told us of the big ticket item – walking the Tre Cime di Lavadero. Catch a shuttle nearby.

The bus went up a series of switchbacks higher and higher, into the Parco Natzionale Dolomiti. The views were stunning – series of mountain ranges in regression, the close ones showing mid blue with the distant ranges a pale blue. The days walk was to circuit the three peaks (Tre Cime) – huge rock megaliths. As we passed as close as the path would allow, we could see tiny figures scaling them, gaining footholds in the crenalations and striations on the otherwise monolithic faces.

The three peaks at centre of the circit

We were not alone, we were accompanied by thousands of other visitors, mainly Italian as the 4 hour track looped past 4 refugios selling food and drink. We stopped at the largest – it must have been 5 stories high, for expensive luke warm cans of coke. It was a cloudless day and we were in full sun all day, I was looking forward to my can of Radler (shandy) in the fridge. However, we hadn’t even disembarked the bus before Stuart said ‘lets go for a bike ride’. Someone is going to get his money’s worth out of Misurina!

Lake Misurina

 I argued for another nights stay and had to clean out my precious supply of coins to pay for the parking – the machine only takes coins and parking is 18 euros a day (NZ30). The polizei make their rounds checking up.

That day we caught a Landrover shuttle up to 2200 metres on an ex-military road near to where we camped, up to the WWI battle site between the Italians and Austrians. Monte Piana/Piano had seen 14,000 soldiers killed on the site between 1915–17. The area was huge, with trenches and gun emplacements and tunnels spread over the pockmarked limestone landscape. The sharp needles of the Dolomites once again were the backdrop wherever you looked. Stuart went into a tunnel at a machine gun station and popped head and shoulders out where a gunner would have stood. Conditions must have been extremely harsh, a far cry from the pleasant summer afternoon we were enjoying. There were no crowds at this open air museum and no 'ealth and safety either, you had to be alert to where you were walking.

Monte Piano/Piana

We walked until we were tired of it and still didn’t see it all, we chose to walk the hour back down to our truck. Too tired to cook, we had pizza on the restaurant terrace next to Lake Mizurina.

Next big ticket item is Venice and I need to do some research beforehand.

Austria, so good we had to return

Innsbruck

Achensee, an emerald green lake with turquoise highlights, a cross between Lake Louise in Canada and Whakatipu. Anything with ‘See’ in the name indicated a lake to us. It had been recommended by a fellow traveller, and we parked in a ‘campervan park place’ next to the motorcamp with full access to facilities. Wow – bathrooms that would get a 5 star rating if they were in a hotel. Large individual shower rooms finished in granite.The loveliness was reflected in the price, the first night $NZ40 and subsequent nights $NZ70.

We took Howard and Hilda around Achensee as far as we could on the perfectly formed cycleway then headed back to camp-de-luxe, knees aching. We parked next to two English girls and we were pleased to be able to swap travel plans in our mother tongue. The next day broke grey and raining and it made the decision to move on an easy one.

Our early arrival at Hall in Tirol, near Innsbruck, was fortunate as there were only 10 places for motorhomes and we watched an endless stream of later arrivals drive in, only to reach a barrier which said ‘full’ and they had to back awkwardly out again. Why Herr Camp-man didn’t put the sign at the street was beyond us.

Hall in Tirol

Motorhomes were only supposed to have one nights stop but Herr Camp hinted at another day so give us an inch, ... and we were still there on day two. Gorgeous weather on day 3 and Stuart did some grovelling to allow a third day, Herr Camp-man said we were now ‘a problem’, but he let us stay. We used the time in Hall to explore the wonderful old fortified town area on our doorstep 

We took another day to cycle to Innsbruck and back. I wish I could bottle days like that; cycling alongside the Inn river promenade under the dappled shade of the trees with the warm dry air balmy on the skin.Innsbruck was ringed by high rocky mountains that were bathing in sunlight the day we were there, it had a lively feel with street performers and a traditional band playing.

'Giant' sculpture at Swarovski Crystal World

Swarovski factory

On our last day in Hall we pressed Howard and Hilda into action again and headed to Wattens, the home of Swarovski crystal. The factory and Crystal World weren’t our intended destination but we couldn’t find the entrance to the cyclepath and ended up following the signs to Crystal World. Oh well, might as well take a look while we are here. It was a hot cloudless day and by the time we cycled back we were hot and tired and sat outside under the silver birch trees that rained an endless shower of bran flakes on us and the truck. 

Our time was more than up and we headed off to a valley chosen on our map. Aire number one didn’t measure up – it was no less than an expensive lumpy paddock, so we set off for number two. Along the way the road divided and Mrs Satnav sent us left, while I tried to recall the road signs, the road was narrow and I thought I had seen a ‘max 2.5 tonne’ sign and we are 3.5 tonne. Stu turned around in a tricky place and we got back on the big road, within 2km there was a tollbooth – something like paying for parking. It was a national park road to Krimml waterfall but we didn’t take time to visit as there was traffic for Africa, it being a long weekend.

Aire number two looked very hopeful, as we wound our way up the narrow steep road we passed gnomes crouched in the moss and ferns. It was a good price, free wifi, panoromic views and free if you ate at the restaurant, and (believe it or not) schnitzel was on the menu. The aire had other personal touches like a small chapel, a children’s playhouse, antique caravan and a welcoming Austrian cook cum farmer. The sign on the kitchen read “I kiss better than I cook” - it didn’t raise expectations but the dinner was fine.

Krimml falls - highest in Austria with total height of 380 metres

We took Howard and Hilda on a 40 km challenge, cycling to nearby Mittersil following the river, stopping at a bakery for a bun that encased a sausage, and apfel studel. We didn’t have much time to spare before catching a train to the massive Krimml waterfall. The bikes paid child fares, the helpful conductor stowed the bikes for us. A thunderstorm broke while we were on the Krimml waterfall walk and we took shelter in a coffee shop, arriving home dry but dirty from the wet gravel splattering over us.

The fields in Europe generally don’t have fences as the animals are kept inside barns that are alongside farm houses in the villages and hamlets. When we cycle through the villages we get a close up view of farm workings. We stopped in a hamlet recently to watch cows demonstrate their back-scratchers. Cows had come out of the barn and were in the yard, one yard had the budget version back-scratcher which was the heads of yard brooms that the cows had to rub up against. The farm yard across the road had a motion-sensor which triggered an electric circular brush to rotate. The cows looked blissful as they positioned themselves underneath the brush, moving their faces across the brush to have a good old scratch.

If Italy can be regarded as a thigh-high boot we dipped our toes in the thigh part of the boot. We were unprepared for the volume of traffic, we must have picked the most popular time of year to enter Northern Italy and are re-scheduling our plans to head to Venice. Everywhere we looked was booked out and teeming with people.

We spent 3 nights in Brunico, Northern Italy. The highlight was a visit to Brunico castle that serves as the venue for one of Reinhold Messner’s museums. He is a famous mountaineer originating from the area who climbed Everest without oxygen. Nearby was a cemetery of war graves from WWI and WWII, the cemetery was designed to blend harmoniously into the forest. Soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army (669), plus 103 Russian, 13 Serb and 7 Romanian soldiers are laid to rest here in individual and mass graves.

Nineteen German soldiers from the Second World War who lost their lives in bombing raids also lie here, together with an Italian officer and five citizens of Brunico, who fell nearby in the final days of the war and were brought here. The war cemetery is taken care of by a ladies' committee, who give equal attention to every grave.

Brunico castle

War graves in forest setting

After an enjoyable three days in Brunico we took the old Brenner Pass road back into Austria, it was raining lightly and we could see the new toll road at a standstill, absolutely chocka with caravans, motorhomes and cars. We will do some more exploring in Austria before dipping our toes back into the boot of Italy.

Austria - Salzberg, bucket list drive, liar liar pants on fire

Typical Austrian scene

Salzberg didn’t look much from the riverside – a glacial green fast flowing river, but once into the actual city we saw beautifully restored buildings, often painted with murals or trompe d’oeil motifs that give the impression of carvings on the outside of the building. There was a huge marble fountain in the middle of main square overlooked by the large slab-like castle on the top of the hill. Spinning off from the main square were lots of perfect little lanes and some minor squares. Horses seemed to be the theme of Salzberg, the big fountain featured horses strangely squirting water from their noses. There were pairs of small horses pulling carriages for tourists, and horses as motifs and statues.

Salzberg

Ice caves, that sounded interesting. I have been to alot of caves but not an ice cave. The caves were near the town of Werfen, famous as a setting in the Sound of Music. We caught a shuttle to the cave ticket office and thus relieved of Euros we trekked uphill in the clouds to the cable car where we were whisked further upwards, then another trek to the cave entrance. There we waited quite a long time cooling down rapidly, the moisture of our expelled breaths condensing in the cold air.

Eventually the English tour set off, the group was handed out little (Davy?) lamps that burned with a naked flame. I was given one to hold – it was quite heavy and we were warned about the dangers of the flame. A heavy door blocked the cave entrance. The difference in air temperature between the cave and the outside caused a serious draft when the door was opened, and the little lamps had to be re-lit. After a while the going got a bit difficult holding onto both the lamp and the freezing steel hand-rail so I gave the lamp to Stuart, all the while feeling a bit nervous about safety of my synthetic trousers and shell of my down jacket. There were some natural ice formations growing in the cave and a lot of stairs to keep your eye on while moving through the tour.

Castle in Werfen,
seen on way up to ice cave - has been used in various movies

It wasn’t too long before it happened – only it wasn’t me. Flames were licking from Stuart's quick-dry trekking pants, he frantically extinguished the blaze with his spare hand. His fingers were burned and the trousers bore a congealed molten nylon mess down one side.

The guide was oblivious to the little drama being played out within his group of charges, however he singled Stuart out twice to ask him if he was ok. Must have been the white beard and the request for pensioner discount. Stuart soothed his burn on the freezing hand rails and had to rip open his melted pocket to get to our return tickets.

We had an unmemorable day of continuous rain before ending up by chance (aka the Aire Bible)  in Maria Alm where we navigated our way to an aire on a farm. Fabulous outlook but we had a stinky neighbour – a billy goat. I flicked water at him in an attempt to get him to sit by another motorhome. We enjoyed wandering around the music festival at Maria Alm, the participants and the audience dressed in national costume for the occasion.

View from aire at Maria Alm

Maria Alm street scene

A couple of days later we said goodbye to the stinky billy goat and set off under a blue cloudless sky for our trip over Gross Glockner pass.  

The road is a ‘must-do’ for motoring enthusiasts of all types, 48km long with lots of everything – mountains, hairpin bends, sweeping views, glacial valleys, marmots, choughs (black alpine birds) and did I mention vehicles? There were swarms of lycra clad cyclists, packs of motorcycles, buses, cars, scooters, a few motorhomes and it was the day for the vintage tractor club outing. Yes, chugging along the well formed road was a collection of ancient small frog-green tractors, one towing a tank and another with hay bales. The road is a magnet for vintage car, classic car, motorcyle outings and as we were blessed with a warm, clear, blue sky day. The tractors would have had a good day out. All this loveliness doesn't come cheaply and we had to pay $NZ55 for a days driving.

Parking at the highest parking lot near Kaiser Franz Josef glacier was at a premium and we had to wait in a holding pen until sufficient space was available. Once in the high parking lot we were ushered into a bus park and young man pointed out the free shuttle bus that took us all of 500m uphill (we must look very infirm, or too much NZ sun has taken its toll).
There was a multi-storey parking building at the top of the road - something I don't think we will ever see happening alongside the NZ Franz Josef glacier. Done in reasonable taste however.

Switchbacks, Chausson is the white box
photo credit: Stuart

Marmot

Kaiser Franz Josef Glacier

At the end of the day, after admiring the views of the glacier, glacial valleys, high mountain peaks, lakes, marmots .... we had done our dash and we re-traced our route back to the entrance. Much as some wild camping looked tempting, they have your number (XC16ACH)!

Chausson retained a hot brake smell even with using the gears to control descents, for quite a while. How the cyclists managed I don’t know.

I said a silent goodbye to the Frau at the campground where we had stayed for 3 (mostly) wet days. Admittance to her reception area was through a large maroon door, entry electronically controlled.

You had to push VERY hard to get in, and each time except the last, I managed to bungle the operation and Frau was not happy at getting off her seat to pull the door open. She would exclaim in voluble German how useless I was.

It was unfortunate that I had to call Frau and tell her that (history repeating) ‘Miele wachen machine kaput’. She grabbed a handful of over-priced tokens and dawdled after me, the candy floss hair nodding at each step. Frau opened the machine door then slammed it shut, inserting one of her tokens to get a result. ‘There, it is all in the slamming’ I think she said. 

It had only been a half hour previous that we had arrived and she leaned out the window and muttered ‘Grossen Wohnmobile’ before calling her son to sort me out. (On a motorhome scale we trend toward the smaller end and I hadn’t thought of us being ‘Grosen’). Frau also refused to take plastic and insisted I return to pay in ‘kas’ at the prescribed time – written down for me on a slip of paper and unlined. Stuart wasn’t having a bar of dealing with her, booking-in is a pink job and toilet emptying is a blue job.

We had managed however a good cycle trip to the nearby lake and it had been heaving with people – a lot of them from the Arab states. The wet weather keeping them off the mountain trails.

Next in our sights is another lake, Innsbruck and then tentative steps towards the Dolomites in Italy.

Three High Places

Chausson is on the right, the dark one

Garmisch-Partenkirchen, marked on the German Alpine Road as a highlight was up for our inspection. We parked on a 110 place aire, which was adjacent to a cable car operation. It was a glorious day and we paid our money, chose our carriage and ascended about 1000m up to high alpine pastures, where we alighted to a wrap-around view of jagged rocky mountains. Cows were grazing, their clanking bells the only noise in the still air, lucky with the weather, we could see for miles. The name of the experience was unfortunate – Wank, described as being suitable for families and senior citizens. Hmmm.

An experience for families and senior citizens

That evening we did some research on the next high place and set off in the morning on a lovely clear blue sky day for Lake Eibsee where we intended to catch a cog wheel train then a cable car up to the top of Germanys highest mountain – Zugspitze. The views would be stupendous, I had worked out there was an aire nearby and we drove through the chaos of Munich’s midsummer Saturday-traffic. There was a bit of difficulty finding the right entrance to the aire, but we parked up and started consulting our maps about the best route to the station.

Something wasn’t feeling right – we were next to a lake but there wasn’t much of any kind of services and also – no mountain! I had picked the wrong name out of the aire-bible and we didn’t have time to turn around and battle the traffic. We made the best of what we had and cycled the lake perimeter. The lake was deep blue fringed with a turquoise shoreline, the sun reflecting off the white rock lakebed. People had all manner of non motorised water toys out and sunbathers filled every little white beach.

X6 parked on glacier at Zupspritze

 To resolve that feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) we were up early the next day and after the rain cleared, drove back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, found the cog-wheel train station and parked on the side the road. We bought our tickets with 2 minutes to spare for the first departure of the day.

The cog railway went up a steep incline and into a tunnel arriving at Zugspitze Glacier at 2600 metres. The trains need the cog mechanism underneath to be able to pull themselves up. We had breakfast at the glacier restaurant and waited a few hours for the drizzle to clear, enjoying the free wifi. The next highlight was the cable car to the summit, it seemed to whizz along – 9 metres a second, covering 1km. Stuart climbed to the summit (nearly 3000m – Mt Cook 3700, using a via ferrata. I chickened out, heights have always made me nervous and the iron was wet and slippery.

When the weather cleared we didn’t get the blue skies of the previous day, but the views were still amazing – mountains all around. Stuart went on a tobaggan ride accompanied mainly by children and a bunch of Muslim girls out for the day, loosing his favourite $2 shop glasses in a tube - irreplaceable. Unfortunately the cloud descended as we took a different cable car down back to the cog railway catching glimpses of the forest below and whisking past the rock face.

Stuart during summit

Jane practising ferrata techniques

The third high place was a visit to the Eagles Nest. We had camped near Berchtesgaden, drove to the (need I say – free parking area), stumped up the entrance fee and with the rest of the great unwashed – we were ushered onto pre-designated buses for the 7km ride up to 1834 metres.

To get to the actual top we walked through a 124 metre tunnel and took a brass panelled lift up another 124 metres. The lift and tunnel were orginally built to transport Adolph Hitler to the mountain top residence. He rarely stayed there however, preferring a grand holiday residence lower down the mountain. The Eagle’s Nest (a name the Americans gave it) was used to receive dignataries, it is now basically a restaurant which disappointed me, to find out more I would have to visit the Dokumentation Centre back down in the valley.

Look at the cog rail

 We enjoyed lunch and morning tea to celebrate Stuart’s birthday, then were bussed back down to visit the idyllic valley close to the German/Austrian border, where together with his henchmen Hilter chased out the local people and erected fine houses, each with their own bunker. He turned this area close to where we stayed for 3 days, into an off-limits zone .

The Nazi leaders planned and strategized in this second seat of power. We visited an exhibition about the sinister history of this holiday area. Alot had been bombed by Allied forces, however some of the large communal bunker had been excavated and we walked through some of this massive bunker system , and even got slightly lost at one stage. The bunkers had been built for comfort with air conditioning and hot air heating ducts, and all the other necessities to house a small army. The exhibition was a massive information overload and after walking around in the hot sun most of the day I was flagging and looking forward to getting back to our aire for a cup of tea. At the aire some of the wohnmobiles scored a fantastic view of the mountains – I think they don’t moved as we never got a chance in 3 days to see the mountain view from our wohnmobile - and had to settle for a view of the men’s urinal (why don’t they close the door!).

Eagle's Nest

 On to Austria next, land of the cheap diesel – but our vignette is nearly expired and we only used 15 minutes of it. Will need to find some LPG for our tank before we go as we are not certain on the availability in Austria. The big ticket item in Austria is the Gross Glockner pass, one of the bucket list driving experiences apparently. We will need to pick our day carefully.

Two frauleins - one from Australia at Eagles Nest