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Oh yea of little faith!

Trieste/Vicenza - 03/09/2010

Monfalcano is not Trieste. But Monfalcano is Italy. Our next hire car resided in Trieste which was but a short train ride from the aforementioned location we blearily found ourselves in as the sun came up. Good news after a long night of balkanology, even greater fortune was that the train was complementary, as are all modes of transport when you choose not to buy a ticket. We sat listlessly outside Trieste Train Station watching the town and its denizens slowly come to life as light seeped over the horizon. Eventually, in a side street aromatised with the spicy tang of urine, we were given our automobile and barring police intervention we would be in Vicenza and our final destination within the two hour.
The Autogrill must be an utterly, unfathomably foreign place to the tourist, they must reel at the baffle and the bustle. We citizens of the world, we single, bilingual, peripatetic beings negotiated the disorder with what 'posh twats' call aplomb. And so, expressed we returned to the autoslumber.....sorry Autostrada. <Insert driving>.
The journey was at its end and we had our first recurrent abode since Istanbul and what seemed like both yesterday and an aeon ago. Relief and surprise probably came in equal measure when we arrived in the Vicenzan suburb of Sovizzo but the warm welcome was gratifying. Alas, alack, our time on the road was not ended though as some batty old Aunt and a Whoopi Goldberg impersonator needed an escort from Bergamo. I tried manfully to break the tedium of the drive by extracting conversation from such diverse subjects as clouds and tarmac but cannot conclude it was entirely successful. The Carabinieri must have been dozing as we made it back to Vicenza with our semi-precious cargo unfettered. A quiet gathering of 30 or so in the excellent local pizzeria ensured a clear head for the impending wedding. For all those that didn't drink every glass of wine and every shot of grappa available to them before being stopped by the bride to be. The big day toward which we had strove and...er...drove was nearly upon us and so, after a short bout of the kind of neighbourly behaviour that Birmingham had so missed, we retired.

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Location: Sovizzo Province of Vicenza, Italy

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