There was a lot of excitement in the air as we woke up on day five of the road-trip and it wasn’t just the thought of the breakfast in our fancy Italian hotel. I mean, how can a hotel with a table that looks like this not have an incredible buffet? I think that the answer to that is that they spent all of their money on that table and none on proper-sized coffee cups and decent pastries.
It was a recurring theme of the trip so far, every time that we stopped for a coffee, the cups were tiny and we all craved a decent MUG of coffee. Maybe it’s an issue with the metric system? In the UK we use the ‘mug’ as the unit for hot drinks while in Europe they use the unit of ‘not-quite-enough’.
But the coffee was so poor that the fact it was only in a small quantity was a blessing and left us to focus on the other big news of the day, it was A-level results day and boy child had an email to open that would shape the rest of his life.
As we waited nervously for the results to land we watched in absolute delight as a young and high-spirited Italian boy who must have been about 8 years old, ran at full speed towards his mother and jumped two-footed and slid into his mother’s ankles. The look of shock on the poor lady’s face as she tumbled to the ground was a joy for us to watch as spectators but the fear on the young lad’s face soon put us off. He had just felled his own mother as if she were a magnificent oak tree. Once she recovered, got back to her feet, and absorbed what had just happened to her, she grabbed the young lad and marched him off into the depths of the hotel for what, I assume, would be the telling-off to end all telling-offs.
We were never to see that young lad again. I wonder to this day if anyone has to be honest, but I had to move my focus onto my own boy at this point as the big email had arrived. He got what he needed, he made the grade, he was happy and so I was happy.
Happy at the results, disappointed at the lack of nice pastries, we loaded up the car and set off for a new adventure, but only after we moved a set of stepladders in the underground car park that had been set up and then left on their own right in front of the exit gates.
Boy child had been excited at breakfast to see on a map just how close we were to Lake Como which, to him at least, was an exciting up-and-coming football experiment rather than one of the more famous and beautiful Italian lakes.
We headed east out of Vercelli and, just as we hit the western side of the Milan ring road, we made a quick cut to the north towards Como. It was a lovely drive and, considering the reputation of Italian drivers, was remarkably relaxed and scare-free.
I was delighted to arrive at Como and immediately find a parking space right next door to the football stadium and we spent an hour walking around it and seeing if we could maybe get a game or a stadium tour. We couldn’t get either, nor find a club shop, but as it was built right on the side of the lake, we could have a lovely walk along the paved walkways along with hundreds of others.
Despite these swarms of people, we found it very hard to find any with a smile or an appreciation of the absolute beauty of what was around them….and I don’t mean us. Everyone was incredibly serious and immaculately dressed and turned out. Maybe they were furious at us in our casuals and us laughing and joking with each other. Maybe they were disgusted, maybe they were jealous that we were happy, and we knew it, so we clapped our hands and they couldn’t.
It was as hot as Satan’s balls but we walked back into the centre of town and had a quick look around. It was very nice and immaculately clean. We spent too long in the club shop of Como 1907 picking out an exam celebration gift for the boy child but at over £100 for a polyester mess, I didn’t join in but was happy to take their air-conditioning for a while.
We stumbled onto the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, or Como Cathedral to the layman. How they managed to design these places to be so cool and refreshing goes a long way to explain the importance of religion in the hottest parts of Europe in my view. It was stunning and we lit a candle in memory of my Dad, who would have loved this trip, but only if he could have been the driver.
In fact it was so nice that I lost track of time and it was only when girl child was stopped at the gift shop looking for a novelty shot glass for her collection did I realise that my two hours of parking were nearly up. I ended up running back to the car to make sure I got back in time while the kids followed up. It would have killed me to have a fine and so I was happy to sit in the car while I waited for the kids and sweated like I have never sweated before after a 10 minute, moderately paced, run!
With the air conditioning working overtime in the car to try and dry off my moistened brow, we made our way out of Como and headed north towards Switzerland. I was half expecting a manned and efficient border crossing but we stopped for a quick fill-up of petrol and a refreshment break.
The kids came back to the car and said that they had just been charged Swiss Francs in the supermarket and that explained why I couldn’t get a mobile phone signal….we had accidentally crossed into Switzerland and none of our mobile providers offered coverage here!
We may not have had any mobile signal or data, but we did have quite a large bag of sfogliatine biscuits. They were incredible and, I would say, essential Alpine driving snacks. The closest thing I could compare them to was a Palmier. Flattened puff pastry with a sugar glaze coating. What’s not to love?
The lack of data meant that the kids had to find other ways to entertain themselves. Daughter child, in between snoozing of course, decided that she would pull faces out of her window. The local cars, with passengers on the right-hand side of the car of course, were not used to looking out onto other passengers and so the shock of seeing this gurning buffoon was amplified. She had fun, not sure about anyone else.
With every turn there was another lake, another mountain, another perfect sky with white fluffy clouds or another castle perched on craggy outcrops. It was a beautiful drive and ALMOST worth the arm and leg that we had shelled out for the Vignette that permitted you to drive for the next 365 days (when we were only ever going to use one).
We stopped for a comfort break and to stretch our legs at a service area and it was impeccably clean and with perfectly manicured lawns but no shops or snack bars to offer. We had a bit of a car tidy up and the boy child emptied the accumulated rubbish from the back seat of the car into the bin next to the toilet block.
We all watched in absolute shock and horror as a well-to-do lady stepped out of a very well-to-do looking Mercedes, walked over to the bin, picked out our recently binned plastic bottle before walking over to the public fountain and giving it a cursory rinse before filling it up with water.
Just to be clear, when I say fountain, I don’t mean ‘water fountain’ this distributes clean potable water…..I mean a fountain, with algae and floating ‘bits’ in it and truck drivers’ spit. It was SO weird to see her happily drinking that water from our binned bottle. She would have, I think, been much safer to stop at any of the mountain streams and taken her chances there!
We had lost our way a little bit, the lack of data meant that we had lost the sat-nav, so we were just a blue dot moving slowly across the blank grey page that refused to load. We were not worried as we knew we were heading north towards Germany, but we thought it would be a great excuse to try a McDonalds in a new country to see what they had to offer in terms of country-specific items and in terms of their WiFi.
Exactly to plan, they had superb and easily accessed WiFi and chicken and cheese nuggets. We loaded up the maps and loaded up on carbs and calories before setting off north on the A13. All the way we looked out to the right and followed the route of a river. The other side of that was Liechtenstein, tantalisingly close to ticking off another country, but we didn’t want to get wet feet to try it.
I was more than a little surprised when the road cut to the right and over the river, to find that we were actually in Austria, an unexpected twist but typical of my lack of attention to detail. Mäder was a perfectly clean and quiet town but we didn’t stop, we pushed on north with new access to data to help us move with confidence one again.
It was only a half hour later that we crossed into Germany and another half hour from there to our hotel for the evening, the B&B Hotel in Ravensburg. Now, I could give you a lot of reasons why we picked Ravensburg in the end. Maybe the history, it was founded in the 12th century, maybe it’s famous landmarks such as the Blaserturm or the white Mehlsack tower, or even the well-preserved medieval fortifications.
No, none of those.
I picked it out because it is the home of Ravensburger, the jigsaw company, and the hotels near Neuschwanstein Castle were about a million pounds per night and I couldn’t justify that nor the extra mileage it would have put on us. We had done 269 miles today with seven hours of driving time and so we were worn out.
It was a pretty old place, but we just passed through the sleepy town at around 7 pm and so it was hardly bustling and seemed almost asleep, like most European small towns of an evening.
Our hotel was right over the road from the football stadium, FV Ravensburg, and so wandered over to watch their training session and then spend some time taking a good long stare at the automated pizza making vending machine. A nice idea in principle, but I didn’t trust it.
We walked back over the road and into the hotel bar where we kept ordering bottles of lager from a very friendly hotel manager and picked at crisps and sweets from their very own vending machine.
We were slowly getting pickled as we tried to make plans for the next evening, Friday. We asked the manager for his input to see if he would be any use. He asked what we were into so that he could best advise. “You know….drinking, dancing, casino, art, what do you like?”. Girl child, quick as a flash, responded with just one word. “Cheese”. “Cheese?” he repeated. “yes, like Edam or Gouda”.
“Yes, I know what the word ‘cheese’ means, but I am just not sure where you want me to send you that is cheese-related.” He was terrible as a cheese tour guide, but did come up with some excellent plans for the next day that you can find out more about next time.
It was nice to be in Germany. It was amazing how ‘proper’ everything felt compared to Italy and France. Everything worked and it worked well. Everything was finished. Everything looked like it should do. Take the hotel for example, the lifts worked, the reception was manned, they knew how the electric charging station worked and, for the first time this trip, there was fully working air-con in the room so it was cool AND quiet. You just know there would be a good night’s sleep ahead, naturally, this is Germany.
At some point today, we drove across an imaginary dotted line that separates the north and south of Europe. To the south of the line it is hot, tetchy, spicy and their meals are tomato-based. The north is ordered, disciplined, efficient, and most of their meals focus on potato.
I was happy to be ‘home’ in the north, but why on God’s green earth do no European hotels have a kettle and a proper tea bag? Bring back the empire!
Itchy Feet and Titchy Feet 