Over the past couple of weeks Olivia and I have had the pleasure of travelling around northern Italy. I’ll write about the holiday itself another time.  For now I’d like to take the opportunity to briefly write about driving in Italy.

We started out doing a round trip from Venice to Udine and back – which we did by train. After we got back to Venice and spent three days there – we picked up our hire car – a Ford Focus.

Over the two weeks we had the car we (I) drove approx 2200km – the map of where we covered is below.

It was a bit tricky.. ah, who am I kidding? It was terrifying at first.  Previously I’d had little experience of driving a left-hand drive car. So driving what for me was the passenger side, changing gears with my right hand, and of course driving on the “wrong” side of the road was quite scary at first. Having said that, over the course of covering 2200km you do learn a thing or two and a couple of days in I was more or less OK.  Thankfully my one moment of true stupidity  – entering a roundabout and trying to go against the flow of the traffic – happened in Seveso – an quiet-ish outer suburb of Milan – I got honked, a couple of drivers stopped and gestrured at me wildly – but in the end all was good…  Aside from that I’d say my performance as a driver in a strange country was nothing short of admirable.

The most trying aspect of driving in Italy was putting up with the Italian drivers. Please allow me to make a sweeping generalisation when I say that they are truly on another planet and deserving of their reputation as total nutters.

What was it that bothered me in particular? I suppose the total lack of regard  for all others on the road would be the main thing..  These people don’t indicate.. a frightening thing when you’re on a freeway (legally) doing 130 km/hr.. and boy do they like to speed..

Imagine a three-lane  freeway, you generally have the “slow” lane, the “middle” lane for the faster drivers, then the “nutso” lane for overtaking and general mayhem.. It was in this nutso lane that I had my most harrowing experiences..  There are so many trucks on the road that you need to constantly move between the middle and fast lanes just in order to keep moving.  I could not believe how closely the Italian drivers tail each other at high speeds. If you’re in the fast (nutso) lane – you want to be getting the hell out of there as soon as possible lest you get in the way of the truly nutso drivers, those in their BMW/Mercedes Benz/Audis that hoon along at min 150km/hr and poor you if you’re doing a measly 130km/hr doing all the necessary trick overtaking. These people seem to delight in ignoring the numerous “maintain a safe  distance from the car in front” signs that are all over the place. It’s truly scary in that you have this Merc zoom up your rear from nowhere, then they plant themselves no more than a metre behind you – getting closer – and wait for you to get out the way – which of course requires you to speed up to overtake the car in the middle lane – bringing you to a speed which is mighty uncomfortable – and because of the trucks in the middle lane you simply don’t have the option to slow down.. This has been a very inelegant description – but I hope you get the picture.. This scenario simply doesn’t allow for anything to go wrong – if you so much as tap your brakes – disaster..  Makes for very stressful driving conditions. It left us thinking – with people tailing each other so intensely – there must be SOOO many accidents on the Italian highways..

Then, on the second last day of our trip, we were 25km into our 400km drive from Gubbio back to Venice.  We were driving along the freeway, and noticed that the traffic ahead had come to an abrupt stop. There was a man in a fluorescent orange uniform flagging traffic to slow down..

We stopped.. and stayed stopped for an hour and a half.. It was strange being completely stopped on a freeway… people getting out and having a wander.. Check out these photos..

When the traffic finally started to move we passed the scene of the accident after about a kilometre. It looks like a car had been trailing a truck and for whatever reason had gone underneath it.. It was not a pretty sight.  It was quite … yuck. Made me feel a little better for driving a little slower and keeping my distance from the cars in front. This is definitely not an “I told you so” moment – but COME ON PEOPLE!!!!!

I breathed a deep sigh of relief when we (and the car) arrived at Venice airport to return the car – all of us in one piece..   Driving through Italy gave us a great chance to see lots more of the country than had we travelled by train.. but there’s a certain degree of agro that comes along with it.

…oh, and regardless of whether you’re in Italy or not – only a fool would try to reverse park back up a steep downwards slope… so I learned…