Italy
early in the morning on august 5th, we turned the key of our defender flora and started our adventure «Beyond Africa». the very first route should have brought us directly to lake garda, where it was planned to celebrate the birthday of our friend max and spend some time together with katharina’s sister julia. instead the first stop was the industrial area of tuggen, where we had to bring our defender to the land rover repair shop. before our journey started, flora got a new clutch and a restored gearbox. unfortunately, a small «box» did not hold proper. and because of this the clutch did not work as expected. this led to taking down the two gear boxes and half of the clutch again in order to install a new «box».
after spending the first day of our journey in the garage, the problem was solved: our flora purred again, and we could finally set off and pass «san bernardino» in the evening.
having left the swiss mountains and all the sweat of the past months behind us, the first few days in north italy were devoted to relaxation, recovery and some final administration work for the project. we had always joked about that the first few stops will feel more like «going on vacation» than starting such a big adventure and indeed, it really felt more like a pit stop for having a pizza slice in italy. but the sun, the everyday blue sky, the calm-down mentality of the italians supported us in beginning a new daily life.
we passed the picturesque and hilly landscape of tuscany with its vineyards and pine trees with an overnight stop in lucca and spending our first camping night in the garden of our friends’ angelo and boris home near florence. after this night we had to confess that our mosquito net bought off the rack would never fit into our defender. so, we had a tiny but important problem to solve: mosquito net remodeling to avoid being a mosquito morsel again. actually, the solution of this problem approached us in apulia, where we bought a net curtain at ikea and found the great and kind tailor lea, who sewed a new mosquito net out of it in a wink. since then we are in a proud ownership of a custom-made mosquito net and the nights are much more relaxing.
however, before we enjoyed the time at the adriatic coast, we entered the narrow streets of italy’s beautiful capital rome and dove into a dreamy dust of melting epochs. «la dolce vita» was definitely on our side. the aroma of freshly brewed espresso will always stay in our noses and on the way southwards it got mixed with a scent of wild oleander and sea salt. in mola di bari, our last stop in italy, we rent a tiny flat like from a scene of «romeo and julia» and used the moments there to dive into the habitudes of the locals.
as time passed by and has become more and more blurred, on august 20th we had one of few time fix points of our trip: the first seaway crossing from brindisi to igoumenitsa, which brought us over the mediterranean sea to the next country, to greece.
