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19 May - The first drive towards Italy (we end up in Austria)
Italy 2004 - part I
Elisabeth & Teije2006-08-25 18:56:01
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We are going to Italy!
Why Italy, people ask? Although Italy is a very popular holiday destination it is not so obvious for us, since we have not much affinity with this country. But it is the only big West-European country that we haven't visited yet and people tell us that it is a nice country. So, that is what we are going to find out ourselves, this time.
We are a bit early with our summer holiday, this year. It is also one of the shortest summer holidays ever for us, only a bit more than 3 weeks. The cause of this is that our employers don't want to give us more days off... can you imagine? And there are two reasons for going so early: Teije has a temporary job and cannot take his holiday later in the season and somewhere in July we become grandparents: Therese, Elisabeth's eldest daughter, expects her first child and naturally we cannot leave then!
At 10 we leave home and soon we are flying on the German Autobahn. We cross the border at Nieuweschans (only 45 km. from our home) and then drive via Osnabrück to Kassel and from there the long road southward. After 600 km. we need a break and we have the opportunity to make our first holiday pictures. The weather is fine, better than in Holland, so we are glad we have left our country far behind.
It is funny to watch the kilometers go by: we see the landscape changing, with now and then villages in the distance, but for some reason our perspective is totally different when making a long drive like this. We think in hundreds of kilometers instead of short distances and reality seems to be farther away. When we have to follow a two-lane road for some time and drive through the villages, our speed slows down and reality is near again.
The same happens when we leave the highways after 900 kilometers and find ourselves on the slowgoing two-lane roads in the south of Germany. It is like 'going out of warp' (Star Trek) and land up once more in the normal
...
See photographs from:
Austria Gallery
,
Italy Gallery
