Italy - cycling, food, motorcycle hero worship

The Italian part of My Big Fat Vacation was centered on riding bicycles in the Italian countryside, and then eating terrific food at the cycling hotel in the company of the people you spent the day riding with. That said, here's a picture that has nothing to do with that but is from Italy:

Here's a view of the beach in front of our hotel, looking north towards Venice (no, it's not visible...I just wanted to get a reference to a famous Italian city in there).  The water was nice, the beach endless...and I was only down here this one time, too busy eating riding and resting.

The Belvedere hotel has marketed itself very thoroughly and successfully in the greater Vancouver area, and as a result the majority of guests in the hotel were Canadians from the lower mainland. It's basically an all-inclusive, with the advantages and drawbacks that implies. I imagine summer camps were like this, for kids who went to the same ones for several years - people get to know each other and the staff from prior years. You were out in the Italian countryside all day, but not really involved with Italy at all. The people at the hotel and the ride guides and the food were all fantastic, and I'd recommend this place to anyone who wants to ride a bike in Italy.  They do it all.

This was my bike, a Wilier carbon frame with all-Campagnolo components, a much nicer bike than my own.  It was worth whatever I paid to rent it just because I got to tell my brother I rode an all-Campy bike. 

Every evening the idea was that you'd pick a ride for the next day that suited your level of fitness, fatigue, and ambition. You'd get up the next morning, eat a huge breakfast, pick up a sandwich and a banana, and take your bike from the locker to the assigned meeting area outside the hotel. You'd go for whatever ride you'd elected, arrive back at the hotel early to mid-afternoon, and commence eating, drinking, and variously goofing off until it was time to pick the next day's ride and go to bed. This seems like a good way to live.   

The "eat and drink with the people you rode all day with" part of the program.  I made this deliberately ill-focused for the sake of anonymity. All right, that last part's a lie.

This is a sample menu from a random day that explains the poor focus in that last picture, as well as why some of the people in it are looking down, focused on their plates.  The food was just great, and it was like this every day, every meal.

As faithful readers can attest, I am a keen observer of my surroundings, so after a couple of days of this I began to become vaguely aware that there are a lot of castles and fortresses and ancient walled towns in Italy. In fact it seemed like we saw a different one each ride. I don't know how they managed it, but somehow the Italians have managed to locate all these places on the tops of hills so that cyclists have to work for the reward of seeing them. I didn't even know cycling was a thing in the Middle Ages.

One of the first Castles of the Day.  Note how tiny that car is, yet how it just fits into that gate.  Maybe that`s why there are so many tiny cars in Europe, to get through all these tiny gates.  Even donkeys and horses must be small there.

Here's what that opening looks like from the inside. I can't believe people drive in here.

...but here is the Main Drag leading in from that little tiny doorway, and there are a bunch of cars...

 A couple of noticeable things about Italian roads and drivers:
- drivers were really, really good about dealing with cyclists on all those narrow switchback roads.  You would think all Italians rode bikes and know what it`s like.
- when you see a bit of road marked off as under repair, you often notice that the markers, cones, etc, appear to have been there for a few seasons. In Germany, when you saw cones and markers you also saw guys in vests with shovels and equipment actually making repairs.

There`s a town we rode through that had a gigantic poster in the middle of it celebrating home town hero Grand Prix motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi. I hope Valentino is a good guy, because it seems clear there`s any number of people in this area who would die for him in a heartbeat. Little flags in his colours with his number 46 on them are everywhere. He should retire and go into politics immediately, I think.

This is the private estate, complete with private race track, of Gran Prix motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi. The road from where this pic was taken is way up a lot of hills.  I think we went by here three different days. That`s the Adriatic there in the background on the right.

This is Valentino`s number on a flagpole by the road...taken from the wrong side.  Again, the wrong side and poor focus are my protest over runaway hero worship.  Not.

Urbino, home of Raphael, the highlight of the Italian week, well worth the long climb to get to.

We came from the viewpoint on that last picture down this VERY steep and busy street into the heart of Urbino.  This is the biggest street in town. It`s in places like this that some of the drawbacks of having your feet clipped onto pedals tend to become apparent.

My friend Michael says Hello from Urbino.

All our bikes lined up for coffee break outside the university in Urbino. That one you like best, the one you think is coolest, the red one third from the right, that one is mine.

It floors me that people, kids really, get to go to university in a place like this.

This was in the middle of another castle town on top of a particularly nasty climb...a little special fountain just for cyclists.

Intrepid hill-climb specialist Michael Jones saddling up after his turn at the fountain.

A typical view of countryside, with the Adriatic way to the east, and the switchbacks we`d just laboured up in the foreground.  Nowhere is more beautiful than British Columbia, but this was beautiful.

This is a vineyard, where we went and picked grapes and drank wine and ate lunch, and then rode home.  The wisdom of that last part is questionable, but not the pleasure.

A memorial to a big battle in WWII.

Picking grapes, prior to crushing them with our feet.  Really.

This is a cafe in San Marino, a tiny independent republic on the top of a mountain.  The cafe is carved right out of the rock.  I think this is the lone image I captured of the Republic of San Marino.

This is some small village central plaza. That round brick thing is a well, with a locked iron lid on it.

Ever wonder where pomegranates come from?  They come from trees growing randomly beside Italian country roads.

I don't think I have a lot more to add here, pithy observations to make.  This was a great holiday, suitable for cyclists of all ages and audacity, wonderful scenery and cool places.  I barely mentioned San Merino, a tiny little hilltop republic, (here's a Euro coin with their name on it):

said nothing about what it's like to zoom through a roundabout in a group of 20 cyclists, (the rule is if the leader of the group makes it into the roundabout, the rest of the group is treated by other motorists as one vehicle, so if your leader gets it right the rest of you just follow...every roundabout is like a little mini-parade), or how ridiculously expensive sunscreen, of all things, seems to be, or how helpful and accommodating every single person working at the Belvedere is, or what "haig" in your espresso tastes like...but I'd recommend it all to anyone, anytime.

Berlin and Potsdam...outsider view

...or, How Long Ago Was the War, Again?!

For me, Berlin was pretty complicated and confusing. I really liked it there, found it to be a pretty, modern, progressive, well-organized, and welcoming place. The confusing part for me was trying to figure out how much attention to pay, and in which circumstances, to all that history.

Doesn't anybody else notice how completely in your face the effects of WWII and and the consequent Cold War are? Do they just not see it anymore, or do you only see it if you're an outsider or someone old enough to have lived through some part of it? Reunification was 25 years ago, after all.

Pretty much every major building or statue more than 75 years old has bullet and shell and  bomb shrapnel marks on it.

One of the columns of the Brandenburg Gate...I guess colour matching was not a priority with the East German repair guys.

Kind of hard to see, again, but look closely at the columns...that's not supposed to be some kind of "spotty" stone.

See that Maltese cross, on top of the Brandenburg Gate?  It has its own story, put up there, taken down, put up again...just depending on who was ruling the country at which time.

The Wall is gone,

(but they put in a line of cobblestones along the line the Wall used to stand on...East Germany to your left, West Germany to your right, Brandenburg Gate in the background just left of center)

but there are a lot more really ugly less-than-70-year-old buildings in what used to be East Berlin than in West....and a lot fewer historical buildings, like churches, in general, too. There are still lots of former East Berliners who look askance at the money being poured into what used to be their side of the Wall, much like residents of the downtown East side of Vancouver regard the gentrification of their neighbourhood.

There are very quiet little brass plaques in front of lots of apartment buildings that say that so-and-so, born on such-and-such, was arrested or removed or deported from this location on this date and died in another location on this other date. The other location was very frequently recognizable as a concentration camp and the date of death was very frequently before 1945.

There is of course the (to me) incomprehensible Holocaust Memorial,

Maybe I just need to be TOLD what to think, but I didn't get it, the Holocaust Memorial.  I can hardly imagine the debates that were had and money that must have been spent to arrive at this.

and a museum built on the foundations of the former Gestapo HQ building called The Topography of Terror.

Photo of a photo from 1945 showing Gestapo HQ in the middle, and a building labeled "Museum" on the right.  Note how damaged the museum building is.

Photo from summer of 1988, East Germany on the right, Wall in the middle, flattened site of Gestapo HQ just to the left, and that Museum building in the background.

That Museum building is to the left, the Wall runs through the middle, and now the foundations of Gestapo HQ host museum exhibits just below the Wall.

Along the Wall, looking back towards that last shot.  That damaged building labeled museum is behind me. The Topography of Terror exhibits are all under the glass stretching away on the right.  This is the sidewalk that ran in front of Gestapo HQ.

Museum building details.  Go back up a few photos and look at what a mess this building was in 1945.  Somebody somewhere still knows how to do work like this.

Another detail of the Museum building next to the Topography of Terror museum.  Note the varying colour of the stone.

It details the rise and fall of National Socialism. I got what was probably the intended message: that it was much more insidious than many might imagine, and that anyone who believes such a thing could never happen in their world should think again. Heaven knows the world has seen plenty of subsequent examples, even among the winners of WWII.

Okay, enough, already. I'm just saying that for me, every time I turned around, I saw some other reminder of the 55 or so very troubled years between about 1934 and 1990. It must get exhausting not thinking about that, yet it must be completely necessary to not think about it and notice it like tourists do. I know this blog is just supposed to be fun, but...

The Reichstag, house of German government.  I think this building stood vacant from at least 1945 to 1990; it may have been vacant since it mysteriously burned in 1933, giving Hitler an excuse to enact all kinds of excellent law and order laws.  In any case, it's in use now.  There is a huge open space behind and to the left of me, I guess in case anyone wants to have a gigantic political rally.

The main reason it was easy to see a lot of things was that the place we stayed at came with bikes for us to use - big heavy black iron horses with 6-speed Shimano hubs. Happily, Berlin is mostly flat. Much more importantly, the whole place is absolutely set up for cyclists, with bike lanes on most streets and sidewalks and often, at the busiest intersections, bike traffic lights. You can go anywhere easily and quickly. Every bike has a little 10-cent bell on it, and as a pedestrian you very quickly become attuned to the single chime everyone uses to tell you politely to get out of the way, dumkopf, you're in the bike lane. I want one of those little bells.

Here's Dale, fearlessly pinning a series of tour buses to the curb with his all-powerful 10-cent bell.  We're approaching the Brandenburg Gate.

We stayed in the neighbourhood of the Kurferstendammerstrasse, Berlin's Robson Street, very BERY high end shopping...

Prices are hard to see, but they're high...REAL high.

yet food was just normally expensive. Also, this was my first discovery that Germans don't appear to have much more zest for vegetables than the average 7 year old. I'm not a vegetable guy and even I sure noticed their absence. The beer was the compensation.

I discovered that this same beer out of the same bottle here at home was not the revelation it was the "100-Bier Haus"

Potsdam was another great surprise, for me at least. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and if you like palaces, this is the place to go. Even here, though...Potsdam is where the famous Gleineke Bridge (aka the Bridge of Spies (and how I wasn't mistaken for Tom Hanks I'll never know....probably because I look so much like George Clooney)) is,

This is it, the Spy Bridge...and the Marble Palace, where they drew the Cold War lines, is just out of sight across the lake to the right.

where East and West exchanged captured spies at the height of the Cold War.  It's also where the Marble Palace is, where the winners of WWII sat down to agree on dividing Germany between them, in the Potsdam Accord.

The Marble Palace.  There's some helpful tourists on the left, posing just to add perspective.  It's like some kind of  Royal Ranch House thing.

Not the most imposing of the Potsdam palaces, but they really changed the world after being in here a few days.

Even the palaces themselves exhibit the impact of Soviet ideology and economics during decades of Soviet proprietorship - lots of damage from neglect as well as damage from looting. Nobody HAS to think about this stuff while enjoying all that imperial excess but I found it hard not to, and I don't even know much history.

This is the New Palace, a gigantic thing that they've been pouring money into restoring since the early '90s.  Apparently the roof leaked and it was open season on souvenirs for the whole duration of the Communist regime.  Money was tough to find if you wanted to restore or sustain monuments to imperialism, I guess.

This is a detail from I think the Grotto Room of the New Palace...a very large space completely decorated with shells and coral and mother of pearl, an ocean theme.  So now we know that it has always been true that spending a great deal of money doesn't always guarantee beauty.

This is the servants quarters and kitchens for the New Palace.  There's a tunnel from this building to the palace so the food would stay warmer.

These are the guest quarters for the New Palace.  I would have thought there'd be room at the Big House way off camera to the right, given its size, but maybe you got stuck over here if you weren't a big enough shot.

This is a gilded lion spouting water into a pool, at the gates to a summer palace just near the Spy Bridge.  A gilded lion, spouting water.  Oh, and pinning down some kind of gilded orb, probably the world. I wonder why all lion statues seem to have a mandatory "right front paw raised" pose.

I don't know about you, but whenever I'm building a ridiculously opulent fountain, I insist on a minimum of two life-sized gilded lions spouting water.  Minimum.  This guy broke the rule, went with left front paw raised.

This is the Dutch Quarter in Potsdam.  Built about 1680 (I think...my fact-checker is off for Christmas), the idea was to tempt skilled but religiously-persecuted Dutch craftsmen to come and live and work in Germany, decorating opulent palaces.  So this is what the Germans thought would look like home to the Dutch artisans.

This is part of the same summer palace that has the gilded lions.  It's called The Great Curiosity...which suggests nobody really knew what it should be used for, but it would be cool for it be circular, and gilded.

I believe this was called the Orangerie, not sure why.  Possibly because it was intended as a place where you could grow oranges, kind of a super-deluxe greenhouse.  Possibly not.

There was a big fad amongst European royalty for all things Chinese.  This pavilion is intended to be a little piece of the orient right here in Potsdam.  All the figures are intended as asian, in Chinese dress and theoretically representing something to do with life in China.  Nailed it. They look like European opera stars, possibly from the 1950s doing "Madame Butterfly".

I didn't even get the name of this palace, but I bet it's The Windmill Palace or something a lot like it.  No idea what the thinking was here.  Moulin Rouge?

A lot of people I don't know obligingly posing in front of Sans Souci, the famous summer palace.  As palaces go, this place was somewhat unassuming, but it was easy to see the appeal.

I told them all to get lost and took another shot.  I have this feeling those may not be the original doors.

The view from the front doors of Sans Souci.  See?  I can easily imagine a folding chair and a glass of lemonade, sitting out front and taking in this view, a respite from the trials of running an empire.

This is not a palace of any sort, but some kind of house that someone deliberately built to look like a ruin.  There must be a story here.  It's right next door to the Marble Palace.

This trendy storefront on the Kurfurstendammerstrasse reflects the height of leather fashions in Berlin.  This is not cheap rent, so someone is paying a lot of money for those clothes.

Another very expensive leather store.  I wish I was as cool as that guy in the middle.Wait, I am...

An un-fun note: we saw lots of the well known highlights of Berlin and they were great. We also saw Checkpoint Charlie, another well-known landmark, and it was a cheesy tourist-trap disgrace.  Just don't, I say. 

A fun note to end: on the trains they have these symbols telling you what you may not do: a cigarette with a red line through it means no smoking, a side of fries with a red line means no eating junk food, I guess...but check out these symbols from the u-bahn (underground) and the s-bahn (above ground or surface) trains:

Had some trouble with image sizing, but pretty straightforward, right?  "Nothing with alcohol in it on this train".  Not surprising....except when we got on a surface train.

This is the symbol on the surface train.  We had dinner with a couple of German guys, and they explained that my assumption that this symbol means "no beer on the train" was wrong wrong wrong.  This symbol means "When you've finished your beer on the train, don't throw the empty out the window". Well, okay, thanks for the tip. Makes me wonder why there aren't other symbols for other petty crimes one might unthinkingly commit, like "Don't push kids and old people under the train" or "No leaping out the window".