Slovenia – Genoa

Milk truck

On the other side of the border post to Italy I tried to get a ride with VE for Venice but eventually I asked a Slovene driver who stopped to check the tyres and I joined him on his milk truck, all the way to Brescia or over 300km. There was nothing special (new) to see on the way, it’s just all very flat, so we just talked mostly about truck-related themes, which doesn’t mean it was boring.

The driver was just a few years older than me, he is actually 4 (most difficult) exams – short of his university degree, but he took a kind of break. He drives Slovene milk to a town in the surroundings of Milan every other day, without any exceptions on Sundays or holidays – simply because cows give milk every day and we want fresh milk on the shelves every day. He actually prefers this to being on the way for 10 days and then having a longer break, as he can sleep at home every other day and have a decent shower etc. He’s also not really a lonely truck driver as there are 7 milk trucks going at roughly the same time and usually there’s someone driving close enough that they can chat with each other.

Some other stuff:

• his colleague was recently fined over 3600€ in Poland because the tachographs weren’t in order

• since a few days later transiting trucks in Slovenia aren’t allowed to use state roads parallel to motorways; in general it’s good but the problem is that the (Slovene) truck owners are paying over 1000€ a year for “road use” but many of them are using just motorways, which is paid separately anyway

• there was a traffic jam on the motorway when we were passing Venice, so we were driving only 60 kph but I was told we actually saved one hour compared to normal circumstances (even though it was Friday afternoon), as normally they aren’t even driving all the time but just moving and stopping, as if they were in the middle of a busy city

He was very nice and took a bit different route to bring me to a more convenient service area for me, and it was very comfortable to just ask once and get a long ride but the trucks are so slow and they also have to stop every few hours, so that later I tried to avoid trucks and rather asked car drivers.

Brescia – Genoa

It went very smoothly, I never waited longer than 15 minutes – and even then it was because the first car I sat in just couldn’t start and I had to find another one :-) I was a bit surprised by all the tunnels before Genoa as in the picture in my head the Apennine Mountains were only in the middle of the peninsula but actually they reach all the way along Ligurian coast and to the Alps. The first signs I arrived to southern Europe appeared when we arrived to Genoa at 10pm: the roads were blocked and we were crawling through the city for the next hour and a half. In Ljubljana there’s hardly anyone on the streets at this hour, maybe some crowds on special occasions, but we certainly don’t make traffic jams at midnight!

I slept for two nights at a priest in the suburbs of Genoa. He has a big dorm so it was very comfortable, and I got the impression that he’s a bit lonely, so maybe that’s why he joined the Hospitality Club. Not that I could get a good impression after just a few short conversations. His parish is quite far from the centre BUT the metro terminus is a mere 5 min away from his house, so it was actually a very convenient location.

Just a few Italian drivers so far were enough that I learnt some very useful words for Italian roads: traffico intenso, incidente, and then words like cazzo, putana troia, porca putana etc, which are best avoided if you’re not sure when to use them :-)