Arrivederci, Italia. Guten Tag, Austria. From Venice we drove on the Autostrada along the coast almost all the way to Slovenia before heading north toward Villach (the traffic-stopping accident being on the other side of the road this time). First swamp land in Italy and then the low, camel-humped mountains leading into Austria.The mountain passes we had worried about are not a problem on the interstate-like roads: the highest was 3400 feet, and the gradient was always manageable. (But then we aren’t in the really big mountains yet.)
As soon as we crossed into Austria we stopped to put more money on our “vignette,” the windshield-mounted toll counter. Austria knows how to collect tolls. In Italy you need to take a ticket from a very narrow toll booth and pay as you leave at another narrow toll booth. And sometimes instead of an attendant, you deal with a machine that speaks Italian in a tinny accent. But in Austria you prepay on this little gadget that beeps at you every few miles on the toll roads as it encounters a sensor above the highway. We were told it would cost us € 80-90 just to drive the 250 miles to Vienna. So we just put € 100 on the thingy and drove on.
We stayed at a huge campground on the Ossiacher Sea, a narrow, pretty lake surrounded by very high wooded hills trying to be mountains. The water in the lake was clear and warmer than the pool in Bologna. It was only about 5 miles off the toll road, through a tiny town to the campground, but already we can tell that drivers act differently. In an attempt to save some toll money and see a little more of the countryside, the next day we chose to drive about 30 miles on a “red road” (i.e., red on the Michelin map, meaning “secondary, not divided”) through some small towns. The experience confirmed our observations of Austrian drivers: David defined them as “predictable”: they do what you expect drivers to do--like stopping 3 or 4 feet back when approaching an intersection with a through road, passing only when indicated by the center line, staying in lanes . . . it makes quite a bit of difference in the driving-anxiety level.
We arrived in Graz, Austria’s lovely second largest city. We are at a campground that is an easy 15 minutes by bus from the center. It is very hot--90s during the day and mid-70s at night. But we are camped right next to the largest, nicest municipal pool we have ever seen anywhere--bigger than some Minnesota lakes. It is 3-4 acre pool, we estimate, with cement sides and loose smooth river stones on the bottom. The water temp is cool, but just fine for this hot weather. Best of all, access is free for campers.
The first day we arrived fairly late in the afternoon, so we just cooled off by the pool. The second day we spent in the charming city. It is a mix of new and old (the latter meaning “baroque and fru-fru”), but much of the look of the city center is spoiled by the ugly power lines and trolley lines that hang in the middle of many streets.
(The blue thing is an art museum, nicknamed "The Friendly Alien.")
The third day we packed up Rover and drove 20 miles back to the little town of Bärnbach to tour a glass factory and see a crazy little tiled church (apparently when the building needed refurbishing, the town had voted overwhelmingly to give some “artistic” up-and-coming architect free rein on the project). After we’d seen the town, we decided the heat was reason enough to return to Graz and its pool for a third night.
However, when we had arrived in Bärnbach we had forgotten to turn Rover’s lights off and when we returned to her after a few hours she wouldn’t start. We walked a few blocks to a large auto service place, and they sent us back to Rover with a young man and jumpers cables. He had Rover started in about 30 seconds and wouldn’t charge us anything, but David insisted he take a good tip. We have learned that if you are going to have any mechanical trouble, Austria is the place to do it. Meanwhile, Susan is lobbying for a new chassis battery.
P.S. One of our Faithful Readers has asked about our favorite foods and wines. A couple things come to mind: (a) we’re eat-to-live-ers, not foodies, so our favorite meal tends to be the one we just ate. And (b) we really do drink cheap wines (€ 2 or less from a supermarket!), so anything we mention probably has too little profit margin to make it worth anyone’s while to export it to the U.S.
But having said that: we’ve enjoyed Le Terrazze Sorelli and Grillo Villa Altichiari for white wines--along with any Soave we’ve had--and, for reds, Nero d’Avola (from Sicily) and Barbera d’Asti Soldo. For meals, just tonight we had big salads, the one garnished with fried chicken (!) and the other with German potato salad. Both were out of this world. But we’re not particularly adventurous when it comes to food, so we had skipped the octopus and squid along the Italian coast.