Today's chapter brings us through the alps and into the motherland of Alfa Romeo; Italy. We drove from Adenau and the Nürburgring in my car and left our crash helmets, warm clothes and dirty laundry in Gert Sterner's Alfa Romeo 145Q.
Now the Giro Orso Veloce 2012 started for real.
The original plan had been agreed with some of the other participants on the web-forum (see www.veloce.se) and it gave us some important fix-points; sunday there would be a Swiss car-meet in Dolder and otherwise we would just need to turn up monday morning sharp at the Basel auto-train station (which coinsidentally lies just across the border in Germany). Here we would meet everybody for the first time ... and then we would cross the Alps and dive into the warm, calm and pleasant land of the stylish Italians.
Wanting to go over - having to go under ...
But alas, all Alp passes on or near our route were closed because of too much snow - so we were forced to take the 10-mile St. Gotthard tunnel. But we would still make a halt at a nice restaurant on the way and prepare ourselves for next week's culinary excellence. It all went very well - and everybody were happy and excited.
Once installed at the Albergo Stazione just across the bridge at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo in the town of Sarnico, we started the process of getting to know people, and finding out who drove which cars. A group of 36 participating cars with crews is a big challenge to grasp - and some were more talkative than others - so we ended up sharing a beverage or three with Klaus Hahn and his brother Per Hahn.
As you may have read elsewhere on this Blog, I already know Klaus Hahn and we had our own plans for the whole trip. Mostly because Klaus has done the trip before, and knows what to expect - and what to avoid. But also because we wanted to participate as much as posible in the Orso Veloce activities, while still getting our own stuff done.
One of our own goals were to get into the Riva Boat Yeard on the banks of Lago d'Iseo and another was to drive around the lake and have dinner at a restaurant that Klaus remembered from a previous visit. And - I really needed to get my car washed, because it looks so much better when it is clean. That dark blue colour and the glass and chrome trim just makes it stand out in a very expensive looking way - when it is clean.
I paid 20 euro for a complete wash in-and-out ... my car has never been washed as thoroughly.
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