Wed 19th Apr 2017 – Sat 22nd Apr 2017 // Written by Jordan
Video of the country : AroundEarth: Italy
We haven’t been looking forward to being in Italy so badly, as we were so impatient to visit the more “exotic” countries to come. Though, Italy was reputed for being a beautiful country, and we decided to go across Torino and reach Milano within the day, Torino was more of a “step” toward Milano, as the city was huge and tentacular but didn’t actually have a proper city center. It was more a large expansion of houses and monuments, with long streets marked with regular traffic lights, which we had to ride entirely, all the way to La Superga.
La Superga was a massive church planted at the top of a hill, not a destination properly speaking, but attractive enough to get us up there. Our GPS, which helped us many times already, made the difference again and drove us straight to the top, where we decided to cook pastas with pesto sauce. The view was insane, definitely one of the rare views allowing to see the entire Torino at once. Unfortunately, the top of the church was closed to the public during lunchtime and the guard informed us with his basic English words and Italian accent the it would “open in hour”.
We didn’t want to spend so long at the top and decided to head to Milano. For the first time, Clement started driving and carried us all the way to Milano, through the most hidden roads we could find, as the GPS always was trying to send us back to the expensive highway, that we already had to pay for twice, after the tunnel.
Rap and Techno music was kicking in the cockpit, and around 4:30 PM, we finally entered the city.
Our first feeling was disappointment. Our impression of the Italian crazy way of driving was now getting confirmed, and buildings were neither really impressive nor special. We still decided to give it a try and parked the van in a street nearby the geographic center and famous castles that we already decided to check out, as it looked massive on the map. We did not regret it: the castle was immense, brown and magnificent, and very well introduced by a beautiful fountain. We were now starting to have beautiful recorded images for the next video. After being harassed once or twice by street sellers, we visited Il Duomo de Milano, the famous white cathedral at the center of the city. The church was insanely high and beautiful, and reminded us of Notre Dame de Paris, but whiter and with a more triangular shape.
We enjoyed a coffee and a terrible Wi-Fi on the Plazza (so we could answer our received messages and let our community hear the last news on social medias) and went back to the van. Logically, we were supposed to head east, and target Venice as the next destination. On our way, a recommended city would make a perfect stop for the night. In just 1h30, we arrived at the south of Bergamo, and parked the van in a parking nearby a residence. We had some carrots and peas, cheese, eggs and an apple. We are now ready to fall asleep as I am writing these first notes, but the fact that we could hear trains riding and planes flying from far, as well as neighbours doing what neighbours do (e.c. noise), we already know that the night will be either tough, either short, either both.
– Written on Thursday 20 April 2017 (Night 2)
The night was actually smooth. We were woken up around 8:30 AM, as the light was already bright early in the morning, but we had enough sleep to go back to the roads. It took less than an hour to have some biscuits for breakfast and brush our teeth, right before we head to Venezia, on the East side of Italy. We decided to skip Bergamo as we were looking forward to getting closer to the Austrian and Slovenian borders. On the way to Venezia, during another long wait at the traffic lights of a linear street, we noticed a homeless man begging for money and food while walking among the many cars on the road. We instantly decided to park the van and to meet him. Few minutes later, I was calling the man and tried to explain that we had clothes to give him. He gladly followed me. As I was introducing myself, he told me his name was Nicola and noticed straight away that I was French. Clément was waiting for us nearby the van, so we could provide Nicola with everything he could carry. Later on, he would leave us with two leather coats, a purse, plastic bags (to carry his food) and a bigger smile. He covered us with blessings and we felt a bit lighter when we climbed back into the van to keep going on our way to the East.
After getting desperate of finding forests in this grey ocean of industrial areas, Clément managed to change the itinerary so we could cross over mountains and find a nice place to have lunch. Later on, we were on the roadside, enjoying pasta with pesto rosso sauce with eggs. Then, we kept driving straight to Venezia and decided we would try to park the van inside the city – even thought it was recommended to park it outside and take a shuttle, but we wouldn’t be cool with leaving the van so far from us. The city was magnificent: every parcel of land connected with each other via small bridges, all paved and clean, it felt like a very friendly yet touristic place to live in. We walked everywhere we could, recorded and pictured everything we saw, and decided to sit in a McDonald’s for a coffee but more importantly for Wi-Fi. Indeed, we were planning to feed our Instagram account with recent photos, contact some of our project partners for financial support, do accountings and answer few messages. After hearing from a friend I could have met in Milan, another one I could meet in Venezia or directly in Slovenia, and after being done with the last money transfers, we went for a final walk and bought some nice food at a groceries shop – Qinoa salad, vegetarian lasagnas, potato croquette and tasty tomato made our evening. We were enjoying our dinner on a bridge by the quay, and then moved back to the van. Despite this stressful moment during which we were fearing that the police might have taken the van for illegal parking, it didn’t move of an inch and we happily decided to head North. Water was now missing, so Clément made another good use of the GPS by finding some drinkable water spot on the way, in a park at the heart of a small city. After filling all of our bottles, we finally found a nice spot with a sufficiently large area to park the van for the night. We just brushed our teeth and locked the doors while I’m writing these notes. From here, we can hear the loud commercial music of a funfair not so far away. We don’t have any big concerns about our night tonight. We just can’t be sure yet whether we will go straight to Austria (and up to which city), or maybe meet my friend in Slovenia, nearby the border. For now, we are going to bed.
– Written on Friday 21 April 2017 (Night 3)
Despite the poor musical taste of the Dj playing music near our van tonight, the music almost haven’t disturbed us. However, the policemen knocking on the van in the middle of the night did. Jordan heard them and tried very hard to awaken me. After a while he succeeded, opened the door and told the cops we were just sleeping. They left without making any trouble, hopefully.
After a short outdoor sport session and a quick breakfast, we headed to Slovenia as Jordan’s friend, Polona, told us she was living near the Italian border. On the road, we crossed a beautiful river and decided to stop to take some rushes of it. But under the warm sun of Italy, it quickly ended in us jumping in it, even though it was probably colder than 13°. Less than 10 minutes later, we were crossing he Slovenian border.