Day 9 (James): Taggia — Genoa (Genova) — Innsbruck (Austria)
Today we woke up in a beautiful villa in Taggia on the north-east coast of Italy. David, our host and owner of the Ville, made us a breakfast buffet.
I got talking to David (who spoke very good English) about everything from his childhood growing up on a farm to his wine vineyard just north of the villa. He noticed that I was interested in Italy (I’d wanted to visit since I was a child) and mentioned the good and bad places to visit. We spoke about the difference between languages and I was learned that Italian doesn’t just contain masculine and feminine nouns like the French, but also have a third article too which is Latin (or neutral). He said how the English language was good for this as we do not have these prefixes but that we speak with such slang that sometimes it is hard to keep up as they are taught “Oxford English” at school.
We said our farewells and began a long journey north towards Austria. I wanted to visit Genoa (Genova) on the way and so Mol volunteered to do this leg of the journey before our 6hr drive towards Innsbruck.
We had decided to take the toll roads for the first time on the journey as we needed to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time. We had done well avoiding them up until now. The toll was in spectacular condition and probably had the best views as it was quite high up and wining in and out of the mountains. The journey to Genoa allowed us to see the alps for the first time. We should have been able to see them for a few days due to our location but hadn’t been able to due to the gloomy weather. We had the alps on one side of the road and the Mediterranean sea the other.
Typically, as soon as we approached Genoa it completely pelted it down with rain. We’re used to this now and don’t expect anything less from our winter road trip through Europe.
Scooters are the preferred method of transportation here which is completely understandable considering the size of the narrow Italian streets. They also don’t care so much for road rules on scooters and most of them were very quiet as they whizzed around the corners. Eyes on the back of your head was much needed here.
After exploring a bit of Genoa, we decided to find somewhere for a light lunch before heading back to the car and beginning the long trek to Austria. It’s funny how in just over a week, my first instinct when being greeted by shopkeepers/waiters/servers is to reply in French rather than Italian which made for some humorous encounters. At one point I panicked and responded to a “buongiorno, come posso aiutarti?” (good morning, how can I help?) with a “grazie tanto” (thank you so much)… what are you saying James?!?
Walking around Genoa there was a stark difference between the French and Italians, I feel more at home here (and I don’t think it’s just because of my large nose (though here this was nothing to brag about). I think it has something to do with the fact that everybody is so laid back and nobody seems to be in a rush to get anywhere — even the businessmen (in their ultra skin-tight suits) were taking their time walking from office to office, cigarettes ablaze. It seems every man and his dog smokes in Europe.
We walked back to the car and began our 6 hour car journey to Austria. We took the tolls for the rest of the journey which lead us north, around Milan, and then north again towards the Austrian border. It was surreal just how quickly the temperature dropped during the journey from the south coast of France to northern Italy (from 22C to 0.5 within a few hundred miles).
We also saw our first fellow GB driver since Dunkirk on this road and he was probably driving worse than the Europeans and that is saying something! He followed us, purposely matching our speed for nearly 60 miles… we felt like he was somewhat of a guardian leading us out of Italy and into the Austrian Alps.
We eventually drove over the border and were now in Austria (Österreich). They speak German here which is where Mol will be living and working for the next 6 months (the whole reason for this trip) and the German language is not one I am good at. I told Mol that since I was leading the way with the romantic languages — French and Italian (naturally), that she will take the lead with the German… this is definitely not a romantic language. Checked in and cosied up ready for the final drive into Germany tomorrow.
