From Germany To Tuscany
Since I like it to connect smaller travels to a large one, I started my this year’s journey in the very south of Germany, where I already was before last year.
After a long train passage, I arriveed in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, that already is in a valley of the alps.
I followed the road into Austria and crossed my first pass to arrive in the big valley of the river Inn. Although the sun shone in the morning, I finally caught some rain in the evening and there was a heavy thunderstorm when I entered the steep valley of the river Oetz, which I was going to follow until the end, where a pass would finally lead into Italy. Or, to be more precisely, into southern Tyrol. That province is not Italy at all. Some people will speak Italian there, but most still prefer german with a typical accent. But for the beginning it is perfect to have all those road signs bilingual and the people still understandig German when you got stuck with your knowledge of Italian…
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Somewhere in Austria | Yeah! The pass! 2502 Meters! | Road along the river Adige |
On the next day, there was sunshine again and I started to make my dreams come true: crossing the alps just with the power of your muscles. A challenge, most people at home considered me to be completely crazy.
There were many steep kilometers with gradients between ten and thirteen per cent over a distance of about 30 kilometers. Thus I was really shattered in the end but the amazing scenery at least compensated for the hard work within the last few hours.
In Italy it was oppressively hot and in the late afternoon I finally reached the camping site from where I started on the next day my ride through one of the greatest fruit cultivations in Europe and to the Lake of Garda, one of the most popular lakes in northern Italy. Especially people from southern Germany spend their short weekend vacations there.
After some days between tourists on the beach and magnificent mountains, I had to cover a pretty boring and monotonous part of Italy. The great agriculturally cultivated valley of Italy’s greatest river “Po” was a mess to go through, indeed. In Parma all the motivation was gone and I seriously thought about giving up this journey. My knees were aching, I was done in due to the sultry and at the end of this day I got completely lost in the mishmash of thousands of streets which were not on the citymap.
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The Lake of Garda | In the Apeninns |
But I managed to carry on and when the landscape changend to be more mountainous, all the motivation was back again. Thus I reached the Mediterranian sea on the eighth day of the journey. I decided to have a break on the next day and so I stayed in a hotel at Montecatini Terme until my body recoverd and I was ready to continue the journey together with my friend Christian, who arrived by train in Florence.
Travelling towards Rome
Together we rode through one of the most marvellous landscapes I have ever seen. The Chianti, where the famous and also named vine comes from, for example. The landscape consists of many soft swung hills, what makes it so special. Especially strenuous due to all those thousands of short steep uphills, that are followed by short downhills until the next steep uphill follows. Sometimes we were already done after forty kilometers.
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The Chianti with its smooth landscape |
Church in the city of Siena | Le Crete - The most unreal looking landscape |
After we arrived at Siena, which is one of the most beautiful cities in Italy, we headed off into the Crete. This landscape gives you the feeling of moving through a surrealistic picture or some other kind of almost unreal landscape. There were hardly any trees nor bushes. Only a few avenues of cypresses along the narrow roads put a stress on the barren landscape.
On the following days we made our way through southern tuscany and finally reached Rome and spent a day there visiting all its ancient temples and buildings, eating ice cream and having a look on the Colosseum.
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Little italian village | The Collosseum... | ...and the foro romano in Rome! |
The day after our sightseeing-trip, we took the train to bridge the boring valley of the river Tiber, which flows through Rome. In the late afternoon, we arrived another valley this time by bike. This one was quite a lot more interessting because the small valley was surrounded by the steep, bleak and high slopes. When the sun began to set, we decided to find a place for camping and we put up our tent on a little hill behind some trees. Thus nobody should be able to see us. But nevertheless, we had a very restless night, because we awoke very often and thought that somebody prowled about our tent. Looking back, I guess that it was just some animals and we weren’t in real danger at any time. But that’s a different story. If you sometimes do some illegal camping, you may know, what I am talking about.
On the next morning at 5.00 a.m., some workers started their loud machines just a few hundert meters away and we decided to disappear as soon as possible. The least thing we wanted was a farmer coming up to us, to ask us some silly questions about knowing the consequences of doing some forbidden camping on his land…
Marvellous Landscape - Going for the plateaus
We made our way further through the valley, since our goal for today was a great pass. This pass went up to an incredible plateau which was many kilometers long and wide without any trees nor houses and only one street running along it.
We spent the evening on this amazing plateau and on the next day we reached the region of the Abruzzo; one of the highest and most natural mountain chains in Italy (except the alps). We spent the night in a cheap lodging and started with new energy to met a couple from poland on their bikes. After a long conversation (they happened to speak german) we began to ride up to the pass which was 1,700 meters high and therefor the highest altitude, Christan has ever been to. At least by bike.
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On one of those plateaus... | ... | ... |
We decided to stay on this plateau for one more day and I hiked across the landscape. After some long and tiny beaten paths across the lonely countryside, I arrived at riverbed full of dusty gravel and afterwards already after two hours of walking I reached the top of a hill from where I was able to make out a street, far away on the horizon. Realixing and enjoying the great peace and seclusion, I sat down on the green grass.
On the right, there were jagged and steep mountainchains, which slowly came to an end and went over to the slightly hilly and almost endless plateau. No tree, nor any bush could be seen while I let my gaze wander.
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Uphill to the next plateu | Greeeaaaat! | The best photograph taken on this journey |
I looked around and was not able to make out anybody anywhere, although I was already on my way for hours. Here and there, every few kilometers apart from eachother, there were some abandonned huts of shepherds the only evidence for civilization apart from the noise of some barking dogs, the shepherds have here.
There was a smooth wind blowing and it played with my hair. I could smell nature with its cool, fresh and clean air. Some insects were buzzing around me, and even grasshoppers jumped on the short grass. Only a few clouds were moving leisurely across the sky and droped their small and dark shadows on the ground. It was just like paradise.
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Finally! On the Adriatic. | On our way to the airport... | Italy...the last sunset. |
After that marvellous day, we discovered the milky-way at night and on the next day we started our long downhill to the adriatic, where our journey finally ended. The rest of the days, we relaxed on the beach and hammock until we prepeared our bikes for the flight back to Germany with Ryanair.
The flight was wonderful because we were able to see our first plateau from the sky. It was almost unbelievable that we drove across that mountainous landscape on our own.