Baby you can drive my car

So, driving in Italy...

You're never lost, except when you are. You have heard the saying "All roads lead to Rome" right? Well, actually, here in Italy, all roads lead to everywhere. In a nutshell, there are no straight roads here. Ordinality was not big on the planners of this country (or most that I've seen here in Europe) so basically any given road will twist and wind and eventually intersect with another road, which will in turn twist and wind you to your destination. This is a beautiful thing in the end, but it can be really frustrating because invariably you encounter a set of road signs pointing towards your destination that are miles before you expected to make your turn, or worse, seem to be pointing in the opposite direction from what you were expecting.

A kilometer is a kilometer, except when it isn't. A few examples: Lisa posted a few days back about the emergency food run to Bra. Here is what it looked like: As we approached the the town we saw the billboard: Domenica sempre aberto (a rare thing here in Italy). A little bit further up the hill, we see a sign for the market "2 min" ahead. Cool we think. We get to the top of the hill, pick up a street sign saying the market is "2km" ahead. Okay, whatever. We follow the sign a few kilometers, turn a few times in the opposite direction and hit another "2km" ahead sign. At this point, cursing begins... This happened again on our way to Canela, which was perpetually 6km ahead but this time we were ready for it and got a big laugh.

The road signs are great, except when they aren't. Once you've picked up a trail to your destination, it tends to be really easy to arrive. But fairly consistently, the signs to your destination simply disappear. The one consistent thing you can rely on is that when you need to make a move, the road sign will be there. But more often than not, the signs simply disappear. There seems to be an assumption that you will know that the "main road" simply continues. This turns out to be a really bad assumption, particularly at night...

What's behind you doesn't matter, except when it does. There was a movie made in the 70's called Cannonball! which amongst it's many racist stereotypes threw in a ditty about Italian driving: The Ferrari driver's first move is to break off his rear view mirror and toss it out of the car exclaiming, "whatsa behand ju donta matta" (like I said, really bad stereotypes...). Anyway, the only real flaw in this theory is that what is behind you, usually, is another car. And it is about two meters from your rear bumper. This is especially true when the car you are driving has a huge banner across the rear window announcing that you are in fact a tourist: EUROPCAR.

Everyone drives really fast, except when they don't. There are two speeds in Italy: >100Km/hr or 30. It matters not what the posted speed limit is. The >100km/hr crowd consists largely of BMWs (in France it was invariably a Mercedes Benz). This can only be expected. The parade of cars passing us on the left has been impressive; lot's of Fiat's and Alfa's and a few Ferrari's, including a beautiful 70's era Dino. More amusing are the folks going 30. Typically you will have two people in this car. What you see is two people, virtually facing each other in the front seat (evidently what's ahead of you does not matter either!) and a four, wildly gesticulating hands (turns out this one is not a stereotype, but simple reality).

The speed limit doesn't matter, except when it does. And the ONLY time it does in when the radar supported cameras are on. Yes, they actually do that here in Italy. They do warn you though. We first encountered this in France but could not decipher it, but in Italy where, because of the aforementioned driving corollary, they must slam on their brakes to avoid getting trapped we were able to see the photo enforcement boxes.

Driving here requires faith... and a good navigator (one of Lisa's many strengths!).