The Road Trip: Alps

We left our linguistic comfort zone behind as we crossed into Italy, heading immediately north along the border and then east, passing just over Milan. In the alpine foothills, we stopped to stock up on two super-greasy pizzas and three magnums of red wine (you cannot be too prepared), and then off we went towards the northern border and the dizzy, snowy heights of the Alps.

That night we drank the first magnum at our campsite perched on a cliff over top of a valley town in Northern Italy with a magnificent view of the nearby peaks. Amid the thick, muffled forest, it's certainly easy to imagine how strange noises could spawn fairy tales and how rumours could attain a legendary quality. Even now, many of the mountain passes close for the entire winter. Although tunnels make the alpine villages much more accessible than in years past, the weight of isolation is easy to feel.

The next morning we packed up and set off into the alps. We had aimed for the famous Stelvio pass in the northern reaches of Lombardia, but after a morning of creative route-making through past the stone houses of a tiny alpine town (what happens when the navigator is also the designated nutella sandwich maker) we found that even in mid-May, the pass was closed.

So we picked our way back west through a different pass, had a delicious pizza lunch at a family-run restaurant at 2000 m altitude, and crossed into Switzerland. We gazed, awestruck, at the Swiss section of the alps - the highest and most picturesquely snowy we'd seen, and then promptly crossed the border into Austria.

We stopped for the night in the Austrian town of Kufstein, a mere four km from the German border and the base for some excellent and accessible hiking. Kufstein is adorably kitchy, complete with a smallish white castle on a hilltop in the middle of town and a medieval section with lederhosen for sale and similarly themed murals on the street walls.

We rose early the next morning and took a chairlift high up between a set of peaks that sits nestled in the Kaiser range - specifically Wilderkaiser and Zahmerkaiser, climbed up a peak in the middle and then walked for hours along the valley that links them. During a dizzying descent full of tiny rock stairs, rebar handholds,  and steep cliffs we watched as a chamonix, the alpine mountain goat, charged down the mountain side, darting nimbly among the trees and rocks and deadly drops.

Leaving Kufstein, we spent four days wandering southern Germany. Although we decided it would be too complicated to see Munich with a car to deal with, we spent a sombre morning learning about Nazi atrocities at the Dachau concentration camp memorial, and then after an afternoon of driving, admired the fabulous exterior of King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein castle. We camped near Stuttgart and spent a day in the car museums - Dan made it to both Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, I only managed the first. Which was very informative and well-organized and even interesting, although by the end I was car'd out.

Our final two German days we spent in the Schwarzwald - the Black Forest, named for its black pines. We hiked around a mountaintop and down into the dense forest, and explored the student town of Freiburg, where the medieval centre is in tact (rare in German towns following the bombings in the war) and where I fell deeply in love with currywurst.

Currywurst! Writing in Amsterdam, I'm hesitant to even think about it because the thought makes me hungry. Currywurst is simple - a wurst, or German sausage, sliced up, smothered in bbq sauce and then sprinkled with curry powder. So simple and so delicious.

We drove from the Schwarzwald back into the Alps and back into Switzerland. Rather, through Switzerland. We drove past Interlaken and out to Jungfrau, but in the fog of a rainy day were unable to see past what I would approximate as 2000 m. We had a similar problem with Mont Blanc, once we crossed the French border. Although we could see the fingers of glaciers poking through the mist, that was all.

We were still two nights from Paris, but for our poor little Fiat, we were done the hard part. After a week of alpine adventures, the brakes were now almost done in and smelled awful on descents, but the champ of a car managed to get us safely back to France.

S.