2012-09-20 45 11

Location

On the side of a mountain road in Albaredo, Trento.

Participants

Plans

School started and I didn't really have any time for geohashing in the past days- but since I really need some sort of getaway (and was partly inspired by today's xkcd comic too!), once I saw tomorrow's hash in the Padova graticule (which is a Virgin Graticule, by the way! w00t!) was fairly reachable I decided to organize an expedition.

As always I will travel by bus- take an intercity bus to Rovereto as soon as school is over, have lunch there, and then take another bus to Albaredo. Same thing on the way back. The hash is really close to the bus stop (well... Albaredo itself probably counts no more than 100 inhabitants), so the only real problem might be catching the bus to Rovereto... I will either have to run from school to the bus stop (which is a good km and a half) or pray for traffic lights to slow the bus down in its path to my bus stop. Probably both. Looking forward to a great afternoon of geohashing, of course!

Expedition

Today was a perfect day for geohashing. After my run to the bus stop, which I successfully reached on time (the coach would have been 5 minutes late anyways), everything went just perfectly. Although it rained all day yesterday, today there were just a few clouds in the sky and the land had already dried. The air was chilly and the sky was blue. One could easily write a poem about a similar day.

I arrived in Rovereto a few minutes late and very very hungry, and I decided to explore the main road, looking for a place that sold fast, filling, cheap and possibly good food. I was maybe asking too much- but it was a hard task. Everyone knows how good Italian food is, and how the Italians scorn fast food chains to eat their good stuff, however there is a downside to that. Compared to other countries I've been in, finding something quick to eat is a lot more difficult here. No Subways, no KFCs, no Pizza Huts, no Wendies, no Starbuckses. Just McDonald's and a few Burger Kings in major cities. Most pizza places were crowded with students who just got out of school, but in the end I found some ice cream which proved to be insanely good.

At 1.30 pm I caught the bus to Albaredo, which was just 15 minutes away. The bus driver was this chilled guy which was listening to new age music. Most drivers don't listen to anything, or maybe to soccer games commentaries. Well... it was different, but to be honest I couldn't endure that much. I was quite glad to get off the bus, I must say.

The expedition from the bus stop wasn't anything difficult, a mere 100 metres down a small country road leading to some houses. The place was very beautiful though. A small group of houses surrounded by beautiful mountains, with a somewhat lazy atmosphere- no one was around at the time except for a couple cats... not even cars. Everything was just so silent, and so beautiful.

However, small mountain places have their flaws too. For example, buses pass only every 5 hours- so I couldn't really afford to spend any more time gazing at the view and miss the bus back to Rovereto. I got back home safely and happily.

tl;dr: everything went perfectly, it's hard to find fast food places in Italy and some bus drivers like new age music.