Part 9. The Alps into Italy

Thursday 20^th May 2010

So Manja had pulled out this map of Switzerland the night before last and shown me the route east through Lausanne and down across the Alps by the Col pass. She said it was a much better visual treat than going through Geneva, and as far as she was concerned, riding through the Mont-blanc tunnel was over-rated anyway; what was I going to see in a tunnel after-all. No, she said, I had to definitely take the Lausanne, Montreux road, it was the only right thing to do.

So I was up before the alarm; and showered, coffee’d, packed, loaded and gone before 8am. By 9am I was skirting the winter Olympic town of Lausanne with it’s lakeside harbour and vast array of expensive- looking cruisers. The day was warming up nicely as I followed the lake around; passing ancient waterfalls that tumbled from the step vineyards lacing the hills beside me. The sky had turned a deep, rich blue, and the snow on the Alps glistened in the sunlight as I rode on steadily past Lausanne, towards the town of Montreux.

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound-dog, was the first thought I had when I pulled onto the pedestrian boardwalk at Montreux and saw the large bronze statue of a rock-star with his fist punched high in the air. I had no idea what Elvis had to do with this place, so I rode the bike through an anxious throng of pedestrians to go and find out. After I’d stood there looking at it for ten minutes or so, I still had no idea what Elvis had to do with this town, as the statue was actually that of Freddie Mercury, the front-man from Queen. Montreux had been where he’d lived for much of his fame-filled years, and the nearby lakeside recording studio had been where Queen had recorded much of their music. The plaque said that the band had acquired the studio in 1978, and that Freddie’s strong links with the town had continued until his death in 1991. In addition, that he appreciated the kindness and discretion of the townspeople that had provided a haven for him, and a setting for his final work. I thought it was a fine looking statue, placed right on the shore looking out at the water and the clearing Alps beyond. Perhaps the voice in my head singing, ‘find me someone to love’ was that of Freddie Mercury himself, but as I continued further into Switzerland, and deeper into a sense of solitude and oneness with the world, I got the distinct feeling that it was actually my own voice all along.

The road began to twist now, and the hills became steeper, ever-upward steeper as I rose closer toward the snow-capped mountains before me. I had entered the Alps proper now, and could see them clear as day rising in great sentinel majesty either side of me as I closed on the alpine town of Martigny; and sought out a desperately needed coffee break.

As I sat at the Café de Alps sipping a tiny strong coffee, a lady who’d noticed the traveller in me, came over and quite proudly announced that this was the route that Hannibal had taken with his Elephants; and Napolean Bonaparte too apparently, but without the elephants. It’s the shortest pass through the mountains from Italy into Switzerand, she also told me; and surely the most beautiful.

Martigny itself was a quaint little town. Narrow streets, kind of medieval in appearance, but also modern with supermarkets and a large office of the Zurich Insurance company. I saw a sign pointing towards an amphitheatre. Roman? I wondered. That could be interestment isn’t it!

When the Romans entered Martigny in about year zero, a celtic type people had already been settled in the area for centuries. After being slaughtered in their thousands however, they were more than happy to stand peacefully aside and allow the roman’s’ another new and exciting place to play with. The Toga’d hoard built villa’s here, and spa’s and a large fort too. They also built an amphitheatre, which I stood in the middle of, listening philosophically to the sound of one hand clapping.

Swish, swish it went. That was pointless I thought, so I tried again, using both hands instead. The echo was phenomenal, it reverberated off the encompassing walls like hi-def surround sound with the volume on eleven. I tried to imagine what must have taken place there. Were Gladiators set at each other where I now stood, did Russell Crowe turn his back on Joaquin Phoenix in this very arena? Maybe Christians were savaged by Lions here, their blind, staring eyes left rotting in the sun, or pecked-out by the murder of Larks that ‘craa-ked’ in the trees nearby. The information board said that several hundred roman coins had been recovered here during the archaeological excavation many years back. I walked around the inside wall, running my hand across the age-old stones, and stepping from time to time into the small, cold cells where prisoners or maybe Lions or perhaps Toblerones may once have been held. One of the inner walls was crumbling quite badly, and a sign stated clearly ‘DO NOT TOUCH’…oh dear. A stone probably laid there two thousand years ago suddenly rolled out of the wall and landed straight in my pocket of all places; I figured it must be a pagan sign, so I left it there and re-entered the main arena. As I continued my circumnavigation of this great historical place, I looked up to the royal box where some Senator or perhaps Emperor of note may once have sat. Thumbs up or thumbs down I wondered, as I held my head towards the ground, awaiting the roar of a blood-lusted crowd intent on the letting of the common thieves life. Then something else took my attention, something had just caught the light, just the faintest glimmer of silver flicked from the sandy soil at my feet; surely not; no way. I kicked the dirt away with my foot and bent down the retrieve a genuine roman coin from the ground. How many years had it sat there un-noticed, how many feet had passed this way before mine? It was stuck solid though, countless generations had trodden it firmly into the ground. I pulled out my Swiss army knife, and selected the ‘Retrieve roman coin from the ground blade’; and then started digging. Was it a Dinari I wondered, or maybe just a Sheckle perhaps? I really didn’t care, it really didn’t matter. After several minutes, the prize was in my hand. I held it up to the light, wet my thumb and wiped a millennium or two of dirt from it’s face and strained my eyes to read the words that hadn’t been seen for who knew how long. ‘Stolle lager’ the words said. As my heart sank, the crowd roared Booooo, the thumbs went down, and the rolling stone continued to gather no moss; the road still beckoned me on.

And it was all about the alps, for there was nothing but mountains and smooth winding roads that went on forever and then some. The grass was so green, and the sky so blue; even the white fluffy clouds that bobbled overhead Simpson-esque were so white that they were actually blue. Mile after mile after mile of striking mountains ranged all around me like I had entered some mythical realm where Unicorns grazed, and big, dopey, one-toothed giants carrying gigantic clubs on their shoulders answered to names like Uunt and Yaar. This was the land of Heidi’s and the Von-Trapp family singers; and the hills were very much alive with the sound of music. I stopped again and again to captured digital celluloid of this remarkable land, and everytime I did, I was front-row patron to the heavenly sounds of Cow-bells that played from the necks of grazing cattle and filled the crisp, clean air with a symphonic note that couldn’t have been more appropriate if it tried. Waterfalls spilled from the side of the road into tunnels that fed out the other side onto ravenous fall-aways that sprinted down hill towards little blue lakes and tiny hamlets of swiss-looking houses and people dressed like an age gone by. Tall pine trees dotted the lush green fields like elegant green soldiers guarding the land they so deeply loved, and all the while the graceful grey road wound around and around and upward but never down. I expected to feel the cold here, given I was riding towards the snow-line ever upward, but the warmth from the sun was incredible, and I ended up taking off my jacket and riding in tee-shirt and jeans. Had I been more Peter Fonda-ish, I would have removed my helmet too, and let the sun and the light and the scent and very feel of the land put the zap right into my head; but I wasn’t that game. Archetypal swiss wooden homes with huge stacks of firewood dotted the route from here to there, with big, bold red flags sporting sharp bright white crosses at their centre; the people who lived here were proud to be Swiss, and I don’t blame them at all. God lives in these mountains, I thought, and I could feel his breath and hear his voice calling out to me, “take another photo Tim, take another photo, show the people back home what I’ve created’. But I couldn’t keep stopping like that, it became insane. I no sooner took one shot and climbed back aboard the bike, then I was pulling in again a mile up the road to do it all again. In the 11 hours it took me to travel through the Alps, I managed to cover less than a hundred and fifty miles. I told God I couldn’t stop yet again, not unless he promised he’d get me a ride BMW GS. There was silence between us for quite a while after that, but then he came back with “God don’t really do deals isn’t it, but if that’s what you really want, then so it shall be”. I jumped off the bike, took a few more pics and then I rode on.

The Col pass sits at about 3000 meters, and at this time of year is closed due to snow. It’s the same pass that Hannibal is believed to have taken; I however came through the St. Bernard tunnel instead, a seven mile ride through the heart of the Alps, protected by little more than a tube of concrete.

Yet as I entered the tunnel, -and as is my usual want in life that I am seldom prepared for the things that come my way- I was stopped very suddenly by a man in uniform standing at a gate house and side-arming a gun, I smiled all crooked and dumb at him and said. “Je suis desolet, je ne parle pas francais”. I’m sorry I don’t speak French. So he said in Swiss sounding English “Passport”? I’d done it yet again, I’d buried my passport under a hundred-weight of luggage in probably the most inaccessible bag I could have possibly found. After tearing the bike apart and many minutes of frantic searching, I came out with a triumphant “here it is”, and he just waved me through without even looking at it, I was gutted, but I was also now in Italy. I came out of the tunnel and was met by the sight of the Italian Alps; just as beautiful as their Swiss cousins, but lower and on the downward side of things. The route towards Turin took me down through tiny towns with fast-flowing rivers of melt-water, and coffee shops to die for. I stepped up on the pegs, spread my arms out wide and flew down through the Alps into the land of Pizza and foccacia.

Friday 21^st May 2010

I had camped for the night beside the river at Verres, near the foot of the Italian Alps amongst what I assumed must have been hobby-gardens; small allotments of vegetables and vines divided by trees and gardening tools and assorted gardeners things and bits. I’d thought best not to actually go into anybody’s allotment as I figured this would probably have amounted to trespassing on someone else’s property, and chose instead to pitch my tent just outside the last of them on a patch of what appeared to be no-mans land. When the sun broke that next morning, the sheer cliff-walls abutting the river’s far bank exploded in blinding light, while my side of the river remained eerily in darkness, still shrouded by the alpen walls behind me to the east. I did the usual breakfast of Tuna, coffee, fag, Tuc biscuits and cheese, then broke camp and headed for Turin, about 40 miles further south where I was all set to visit the cloth of Jesus…the Shroud of Turin.

I rode into Turin in 29 degrees of sunshine and stripped of my riding jacket. Where the hell was this place though, Turin was quite some size, and I really had no idea where I was going. Traffic was all over the place, multiple lanes carrying buses, trucks, cars and those dammed pesky little scooter things that buzz like irritating mosquito’s in the night. I went up one road, down another, across another two, and then ended up back where I’d started. I saw a load of coaches depositing Japanese, Nikon carrying, pink-shirt wearing tourists at the side of the road, and slowed to see what I could see. I got beeped, and tooted and honked and abused in Italian, so in a state of fish outa water agitation I took the next available turn and got promptly stopped by a Baretta carrying cop. He started on me in Italian, so I replied in French; it made no difference, neither of us knew what the other was saying anyway, especially me. I pointed to the massed formation of Nikons and pink shirts and asked. “Is this where the Shroud of Turin is on display”? which in Italian must mean “I’m looking for the railway station’, as he pointed towards a sign saying ‘Stazzione’ with a picture of a train on it. No, that’s not what I mean! I had no idea where to go from there, so I started trying to charade myself into putting on a veil and looking dead, and kept repeating the name Jesus, but I said it “Yay-soos” as if that might make the vital difference. Somehow something happened, and he said the word ‘Sheet’. Yes, sheet, that’s it; the holy sheet. “Si” He said, and pointed past the Japanese to a bunch of Nuns and Monks and various other devoted souls whose obvious presence I’d somehow missed. I turned the bike around, rode along the right way and found a parking spot.

There are certain things that I do, and certain things that I don’t. I don’t do traffic, I don’t do slow, I don’t do crowds and I definitely don’t do queues. So after fighting through scooter infested traffic for half of Turin, to be met by a crowd of people numbering in the thousands; I was stressed enough already. Then, after negotiating my way through this slowly meandering crowd of mumbling Hail-Mary-ing human flotsam, and getting to the main entranceway into the Holiest of Holy’s, just to be told that the main queue was at the far end of this queue, and it’d probably take me about seven hours to get there; I’d had enough. I about-turned and forced my way back through the black garbed, habited hobbits, shouldered Monks in sackcloth outa the way, and forced a bunch of schoolkids wearing “We Love Jesus’ t-shirts’ onto the grassy “Do not walk on the grass’ manicured lawns.

Back at the bike I rang Simon and told him of my fun and frivolous follies in sunny and shroud less Turin.

“It’s a fake anyway” He said. ‘Some kid drew on his mum’s cheesecloth skirt with crayons at the Glastonbury festival back in the 70’s. And it’s definitely not Jesus, it’s more likely the kids dad off his nut on magic mushrooms”.

I rode into town feeling a bit pee-d off, not that I’d missed out on seeing the shroud, but that I’d accidently waved to another scooter thinking it was a real bike. Before long though I found a market square, so I pulled the bike over and set about having a wander.

Turin is kinda like a big square place, with lotsa little square places arranged around the inside of it. This particular square place was actually round though, and was filled with stalls selling fruit and vegies and clothes and sunglasses and cheap tat that no-one really wants, but someone has to sell. I bought myself a Peach there, I thought it was the least that I could do. After some confusing banter with a couple of likely-lads, I managed to order myself a chicken roll and a tiny, tiny cup of coffee, one sip deep, but twenty coffee’s strong.. “Merci” I said in thanks, then realised my mistake and adjusted it to “bongiorno” which obviously didn’t work either. In the end, I settled for thank you, and found myself a table outside and rang my pal Lyndal; at least she’d understand me.

“Oh my god, you’ve developed a really mongrel accent since leaving here”. She said. She was out having dinner in Melbourne with some friends who were her Dubai fixers, and was quaffing vin rouge and having a merry old time. It’d been her last day of work, and she was now officially on holiday, and flying outa there in just a couple of days. I tried to impress her with my brilliant grasp of the Italian language, but my efforts were met with little more than “God you sound so different, aside from talking gibberish I mean”. Enemies are over-rated anyway!

The main centre square of Turin is actually square, a very big square in fact, and here I found the Palace of someone or other, plus all the kings men and some of his horses too; it was beautiful, but more-so, were the people populating it. Wonderfully dark haired, Romanesque-looking young women paraded themselves in front of gladiatorial looking young men; families walked arm in arm through sprinkling showers of gem-like fountain drops, exploded from the ground like crystals, and cascaded back to earth as if diamonds. Tiny little Nuns in tiny little habits walked holding hands in prayer and smiling ‘Au revoir’ or maybe ‘Gratsia’ at everyone who caught their eye, and even the Policia, in their very formal-looking Blue wedding suit uniforms, smiled and walked easily as if crime there were a four letter word never to be spoken in public. The whole place was ablaze with sunlight and laughter as I made my way out along the many narrow side streets that ran tentacle-like, sinewing their way into parkland, grand terraces and riverside walks…where I found a bar, and ordered a strawberry daquari.

Sat there beside the river, I pulled a chair out and lazed in the afternoon heat, sipping on my umbrella’d drink and feeling the sunlight photosynthesizing my flesh into something more than the whiteness it’d become. A stunningly beautiful young woman and her equally handsome young man pulled up on a bright red scooter and began kissing as only young lovers can. Louise Armstrong sang what a wonderful world, and there was nothing I could possibly add. I sent Lyndal a text message saying simply “I wish you were here”.