Day #6
Diary Entry........
I reached the sign for Budapest and suddenly decided I didn’t want to go. I was fed up with how disappointed I was compared to when I knew it 20 years ago. Then you would be invited to someone’s home to stay as a guest, or go to the opera for about 20p. Now it was full of cars, hooting. ‘Yes’, I used to think, ‘you’ve joined the human race, we all know you’ve got a car alright’. Being newly out of communism seemed to mean that they couldn’t drive very well so you had to skip out of the way. I liked the R1 for that, it skipped.
So I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t riding around the world in super fast time, just fast. I found a Gasthoff in a tiny village a hundred yards inside Austria. The chef gave me extra fish, the owner made the bike safe and I had a warm but hard bed. The shower was warm and I slept well. But in the morning it went all crazy. I stood up in my room and couldn’t make a decision which way to go. It was worrying. It took five minutes, less than a week into the journey, until it all settled down again.
By following the route of my Enfield journey around the world in 1992 I felt comfortable. I remember then, that the gearbox fell off in the middle of nowhere near the south of Venice. I tried to convince the RAC to come and collect me. I wasn’t a member but perhaps once I’d been in for 24 hours I’d qualify for Home Recovery? They were well wised up to that simple ruse. As I hung around the railway station, the stationmaster of the local branch said I was too scruffy and went out and bought me some new clothes. I thought of this as I pottered down the motorway.
The route down from Vienna to Graz and then Klagenfurt was toll-free autobahn but as soon as crossed into Italy I had to pay, so took the local roads to Udine and then the tangenziale around Venice. The roads were stuffed with heaty little Italians right up each other’s bumper. They rev up a foot from your arse with their spoilers and souped up engines until you move over and a mile up the road and you pass them up the road, a line of turkeys!
Last night I camped behind a fence near the SS309 to Ravenna. I dined in a restaurant called Ristorante Anna & Otello. I went in with a 10-euro limit and ordered a mixed salad and Gnocchi (pasta filled with potatoes). The chef then sent me a plate of beautifully fried whitebait followed by a blob of fantastic tasting risotto. It transpired that the chef had a Ducati and when I made out to pay, he nor the waiters wouldn’t accept it and they all lined up by my table to say hello. We went outside and I showed them the bike. They asked me if I wanted any more food or drink before I left, and I said no. I waved goodbye and rode off and put up my tent.
