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Wednesday, November 9 to Saturday, November 13
Frank picked me up at the Munich Pasing train station rather than the Munich Haubtbahnhoff (or main station) because it was closer to his work. He surprised me with a rental car, explaining it was better to put a lot of miles on a rental than his car. The Renault Scenic was kind of a minivan/station wagon hybrid. The driving position was excellent. It had a turbo diesel engine mated with a six speed tranny which, as I would find out, gave it excellent power and a top speed of about 196 km/hour (122 mph) as Frank would later find out on the Autostrada (Italian highway). The only drawback that I noticed was poor side defoggers and a navigation system that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Also, there was no key, just a remote control device that was inserted in a slot on the dashboard and you then pressed a button to start the engine. The display was all digital.
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We had dinner with Sabine and Regina at a restaurant (circa 1500's) in Herrsching. I had typical German food of pork, kraut, potato salad, and a Radler which is a mix of beer and lemon soda. In the evening Frank showed me photos of his travels to Cuba and Madagascar and Regina practiced her English on me and showed me her room and pet mice. Against my protests, Sabine washed my dirty clothes.
On Thursday, Frank and I drove through Austria to southern Italy. We switched off on the driving. It took me a little to get used to a manual again, especially one with a six speed transmission. Sometimes I would be trying to find fifth gear only to realize I was in third. Frank preferred to let me learn on my own instead of explaining why the engine was revving so high at a moderate speed. Once I figured it out, the six speed gave us good power at all speeds, since I cruised at 130 km/hr to to 140 km/hr (87 mph) and Frank cruised 10 or 20 or so km/hr faster. To see how it would feel, I briefly took the car up to 178 km/hr (110 mph). In general I drove only at an average speed relative to others, not real fast and not real slow. When in the left lane passing someone, I would have to keep a sharp eye out for someone zooming up on my tail and weaving back and forth to try to get me out of the way. In Italy we only saw signs for lower speed limits for road construction or curves, etc., but I later found out that the maximum speed there is 130 km/hr, as it is in most countries in that region. Germany is the exception with certain sections of the Autobahn having no limit.
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In Germany we stopped at a store and picked up some snacks and drinks to have during the trip. Reaching the Alps, we got a little snowfall which stopped as we headed into Italy. Northern Italy looks like Austria or southern Germany and Frank told me German is still the primary language in some of these towns. We had lunch (sausage, kraut, a "tennis ball" like dough ball, and a spezi [Coke and orange soda]) at a mountainside restaurant with a beautiful view of valley down below, with the Autostrada winding its way through it.
Later on it started to rain, and we had intermittent showers for the rest of the day and evening. There are two things we found out about driving in Italy. The first is that there are a huge number of trucks on the roads. I thought England had a lot of trucks, but Italy has more. From what I've heard, neither country has a good rail system, so apparently the roads have to carry the majority of goods. The second thing is that the tolls make driving expensive. We must have paid over $100 in tolls in a little over two days. It must be better to take the unreliable, but inexpensive train system, sit back and arrive in the center of towns rested.
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Late in the evening, after a very long day of driving, we arrived at a hotel near Naples. I had heard from other travellers and read stories about people who had been cheated in Italy and we were to have an experience to talk about ourselves. I was willing to go straight to sleep, but Frank was hungry so I joined him in the hotel restaurant. A waiter greeted us and told us what some things that they had and rather than ask for a menu or prices, Frank ordered the vegetable soup. I did likewise.
After a few minutes the waiter came back and asked how the meal was? Frank said jokingly, "Oh, it's just wonderful! It's the worst soup I've ever had!" The first statement got the waiter in a jovial mood and I wasn't sure if he heard or understood the second statement. He should have realized it though as it tasted like some frozen vegetables that were dumped in some boiling water and brought out to us. Our bill for this horrible food and a beer and water was 25 euros!
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Frank told the waiter to go back and think about it. The waiter returned a few minutes later with a menu with handwritten prices. We paid the bill and left and Frank said we'd better go ahead and pay the hotel bill so we don't have any surprises. We went up to the reception desk and asked to pay the bill and the clerk said to just pay it tomorrow when we leave. "But we're going to be leaving very early tomorrow, five o'clock, and we don't want to wake anybody..." We weren't leaving anywhere near that time, but it was a polite way of getting out of a tricky situation. I demanded the receipt to show we had proof of payment.
We retired to our room at about one. Frank still had energy and wanted to go to the disco, but I was worn out. Then, as was the case throughout the trip, Frank asked me what time I wanted to get up. Knowing that this time-conscious, punctual German likes to get an early start and doesn't want to waste time, I think I said 7:30, hoping to find a midpoint between what he wanted and what I wanted.
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At 7:00 on Friday, I awoke and we were quickly on our way into a beautiful day. Most of the clouds had deserted the skies and we would experience great weather the remainder of our time in Italy. We journeyed out on the Autostrada and early on found more trucks than cars by a wide margin. A little later on we were caught up in the rush hour traffic as we made our way towards Pompeii. It was only a glimpse of the traffic that would surface later on when we switched to the surface streets.
Pompeii is slightly inland from the Naples Bay and just south of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that erupted close to two centuries ago covering Pompeii, the vibrant city of about 10,000 people and Herculanium, the small resort town on the bay. It's a gorgeous location and modern cities have sprung up all over such that now the whole bay area is densely populated, starting from Salerno in the south up to Naples in the north. Vesuvius could still erupt again and would kill many people, but the citizens are taking their chances.
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The Pompeii ruins are located within the modern city and are not easy to locate amid the narrow streets. Eventually we found our way to the entrance, not exactly a sparkling enticement for tourists, but rather somewhat unkempt looking. For some reason there doesn't appear to be the money for proper upkeep of this archealogical masterpiece. I was completely unprepared for the size of Pompeii. Imagine how long it would take you to walk through a city of 10,000 people? We started at the colloseum and walked up and down many roads, some of which were in great condition, including the sidewalk. We saw wall paintings, floor mosaics, and areas where there once were fountains and pools.
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Eventually we came to an area where there were two theaters almost side by side. We climbed up to the top of each one for some great views, but as I started to go down the steep steps I felt a soreness on the front part of my thighs. A couple minutes later while walking normally, when I felt a sharp pain just above my right kneecap. It was so severe that I almost fell. I waited a couple of minutes and slowly carried on, but I was hobbling around for the rest of the day. Soon, we started to walk back towards the entrance. There was so much more to see, but I was hurting and our map didn't really explain what were the best sights to see.
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