Venezia

A8 Eastbound
Photo: imagigami

D. O. A. U l m *
Chicago to Frankfurt overnight and I landed quite short on shuteye but long enough on a pre-paid Hertz renta-voucher to qualify for an upgrade to Mercedes-Benz from my confirmed Ford Escort. Except I mentioned Italy, and those luxury cars don't go to Italy. So much for luxury.

     Now, situated behind the wheel of a brand new Ford Mondeo, a tidy enough station wagon in Robin Hood green, I found my way out the airport maze, which was daunting. At once I fled south via the Autobahn at as many kilometers per hour as I could muster, which were many toward my destination.
     On the road east, toward the Alps and the San Bernardino pass to Switzerland, it was just west of Ulm in the southeastern-most corner of the Germanic Democrat Republic where traffic on the Autobahn came to a complete stop.

     After about twenty minutes, when all the folks were standing around on the pavement and yakking on cell phones or taking pictures, we heard the European hoo-ha siren behind us and the Polizei drove by, edging their flashing green-stripe cruiser between the two rows of flummoxed passenger cars and lorries which spread out before us and which widened, as the cops progressed through us, like a zipper gradually uncleaving, or like butter responding to a hot knife.

     Twenty minutes later there was another rustling behind [Can you really hear the Angel of Death a'comin'?] and a hush-hush Mercedes Thanatacabriolet, a truly ominous and somber silver-gray hearse, retraced the Polizei's track toward what was clearly the cause of our delay.

     By the end of an hour traffic got itself moving eastbound at a crawl, and five klicks further along the road, when we were up to speed, that was where an unfortunate red station wagon had wrapped itself around some trees off to the right. A car spinning-out into the forest, and one more is dead on arrival.

     So much for 160 km/hour and a lapse of inattention. So much for calling an ambulance.

*Ulm; birthplace of Albert Einstein
L u g a n o


Lago Lugano looking east from Montagnola. San Salvador rises on the right. Photo: imagigami	A pedestrian mall connnects Lugano's busy railroad station with the lakeside downtown. Photo: imagigami

Will of the wisp fog, storybook fog enunciating each twisty nook and cranny of the raggedy Swiss Alps behind Lindau.

This is the most dramatic view down in the southern corner of the German Republic. Near Ulm some hilly topography rose from the river valley floors, but it wasn't until north of Bregenz that the high mountains jutted up, craggy and spectacular from the lake's shore which was too flat to see. It was dusk.

Ascending to San Bernardino was the death of a thousand droplets, a foul weather water-torture that crept over the decimated pass to Svizzera. Highway construction, big time at San Bernadino, made this easy pass difficult and bleak.

Each of those will ‘o the wisp fog shards, each one of them a thousand tortures and a million droplets to vex my tired nighttime eyes.

What I hoped would be a six hour drive took almost nine that Monday crossing Germany.

But I rolled into Ticino, past the spot-lighted castles that adorn the Bellinzona skyline and at Agno I was close and quite relieved to have recalled the western back way in, skirting Lugano proper.

Rising up to Montagnola, the hill site of my destination, the Collina D'Oro, reputedly the most expensive real estate in Svizzera, and the home of TASIS, The American School in Switzerland.

DOA: Laramie

I don't recall if the news arrived in Switzerland that Tuesday morning, but maybe it did. Apropos Matthew Shepard, all one hundred and five pounds of him, hung out to dry in Wyoming, young Matthew graduated, this past June, from TASIS, and his story was that of a family member cut down by hate.

Of all the possible destinations one might select for a vacation, I was happenstancical enough to select TASIS and Matt Shepard became my traveling partner.

RIP, Matt
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V e n e z i a

Aerial view of Venice

V a p o r e t t o

The Vaporetto is to Venice what the Cable Car is for San Francisco. Each, standing alone, qualifies as an amusement park ride, and both devices are operated by a crew of two.

Other than the presence of hills in San Francisco and the lack of pavement in Venice, these civic modes of transport might as well be identical.

To ride the Vaporetto costs more, but fares are seldom collected, and given their sizeable numbers, I'd expect 'tourists who pay' fund the entire system. If locals ride to work at Versace or Peggy's Villa for free, so be it, or to the Ferrovia.

Piazza San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore,
with the mainland coast of Italy in the background.
The Campanile was rebuilt by 1912 after the previous tower collapsed in 1902.