A couple of months ago we got a car. Benito likes to tell people that he drives a hybrid – “something between a real car and a scooter”. It’s old, tiny and has enough space for two adults, one tweenager, a dog and exactly three bags of groceries. We have to drive with the windows down because the aircon doesn’t work, the radio is connected to a Garmin which keeps shouting at us in German to “Biegen Sie links ab” (turn left) which we can’t figure out how to make it stop and we can only drive up hill in first gear at approximately 40km an hour. (We live in Switzerland – I’ll let you think about that last one for a minute).
Despite all of these things, we really love our little chorrie and how much freedom it has given us. Little things that we had taken for granted in our ‘previous lives’, like popping in to a store at dinner time to buy that one onion that was forgotten during the supermarket run earlier in the day are now a reality once again and have become little luxuries not to be taken for granted and hour long round trips to the shops to buy forgotten items are now a thing of the past.
To celebrate, we planned a few days away in Italy this Summer. First stop, Bagattini, Posina, a 6-hour drive from Winkel, to visit my Aunt and Uncle. We left early in the morning all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and decided to take the longer, more scenic route through Austria. Within the hour we had crossed the border which was when Julz pointed out our HUGE mistake … no data!!! What was she going to do for the remaining 5 hours? Talk to us? SHOCK! HORROR! DISGUST!
Wee breaks are also completely different when travelling through Europe. Gone are the days of stopping mid-way for a Wimpy breakfast of bacon and eggs and a quick loo break. Here, you can stop for breakfast which consists of bread, bread and more bread and running around trying to convert money or get change so that the family can pay 3 Euros to pee. At this point we decided that we weren’t all that hungry and continued on with our journey – three more hours to go! This was when I realised my HUGE mistake … I had forgotten to bring Quila’s passport!!! We had just smuggled a dog into Austria!
Eventually we crossed the border into Italy, 6 hours slowly warped into 7 hours, then 8 … I had just sms’d my aunt to tell her that we were about half an hour away when we came to a sign on the side of the road written in Italian which we couldn’t understand. Google Translate have a ‘wonderful’ app which allows you to take a photograph of something which it then translates into English. “Closed road for Mosses of Frankish at 5 km”. We sat in front of this sign for what seemed like forever trying to figure out what to do … Was the road actually closed? Would we turn off before the road closure? Why was the sign pushed to the side? How else could we get to Posina? And who the hell was Mosses of Frankish? Eventually a motorist passed us in the opposite direction giving us hope that the road was in fact open and we continued up the hill.
The longer we drove, the more confident we became that the road was open until we suddenly came to a halt … a landslide. Mosses of Frankish was a landslide (“Franosi” Google! Not “Mosses of Frankish”!!! – although in Google’s defence, it did say “road closed”.) which was completely blocking the road. We had to turn around and I nearly cried when I saw that our ETA had now changed and another hour had been added to our trip.
It was then that we all agreed that we had to name our little car which had taken us on quite an adventure … “MF” we agreed, short for Mosses of Frankish or any other mother f… words you can think of!
Eventually we arrived in Bagattini which is a little slice of heaven, especially when combined with our special people! Our 9 hour drive from hell was quickly forgotten and replaced with warm embraces, late evening catch-ups, bowls and bowls of spaghetti, long walks, lots of laughter, Italian shopping and a feeling of being ‘home’.
After a relaxing few days in Bagattini, we travelled to Meran in Südtirol, a German speaking city in Italy, which felt a lot like a little Switzerland.
And of course, nobody was more eager to get home than our very own private little stash of happiness who got smuggled unintentionally across three border controls. She’s a home-body, just like her mamma!
Yodelayheehoo 