"seeing old friends" ctnd.

Crossing the Alps through Austria (as ever promiscuously selling out its soul to tourism but also still as pretty as ever) reminded me of the old kayaking days in the Lech and Inntal… the hands got almost itchy to hold a paddle again…

I did hit Switzerland only in the enclave of Samnaun with the aim to stock cheap fuel (as in Luxemburg btw.). The memorable lady at the Shell station gave me a bottle of 12 year old Single Malt almost for free as a bonus for the large amount of fuel I took. She surely did understand the meaning of customer care; I’ll be back anytime again! The Alpine divide across the Reschenpass into Italy is not just a geological one! As soon as one gets out of Sued Tirol one sees that the Italian economy must be to a large part in shambles: empty factories, unfinished buildings rotting away, even private houses start looking shabby… not the prettiest sights I have seen in terms of European standards…. But the Charm of Italy lies in something else, food is certainly one of them and history… I was aiming to catch a ferry to Greece in Venice - but despite its attractions it is heresy to visit Venice unromantically all by yourself. So I only had the pretty view from the seaside. However, seeing the thousands of tourists packing on Markus Square did not make me regret my decision this time.

Travelling through central Europe after having been quite some time away does make feel the countries like old friends as well, you have been outside of their lives and you start seeing the little differences and changes, many just superficial, but time has passed…. As so many occasions before I realized how beautiful some of the countryside is here with the Rhein gorges, the Ardennes, the Eifel, the Hohe Pfalz, the Black Forest, and the Allgaeu, not even speaking of the Alps…. However, I also noticed mainly during my shopping sprees through all sorts of malls and shopping centers throughout, a shockingly low intellect and style of the, lets say, general public. Maybe our parents were right in saying that watching too much TV makes you stupid and with the current quality of the TV program, (not that I am an expert I don’t own one) but by what I have seen, boy, the outcome is not surprising. General levels of blind and superficial consumerism and city treadmill behavior are an eye sore… and I naively thought obesity is a North/Central American and maybe Middle Eastern problem….but that’s only observations of someone who has maybe been living abroad in a bubble of expat life for too long.