muori! - stands at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Guide "Italian Journey". And the slogan I want to make my own today. I want to see Mount Vesuvius, see the Neapolitan.
I get up early - as always - refresh me at breakfast next to the Swiss beach volleyball women's team (Oha!) and can not wait to push my race in front of the door. Why are stay that way? Last night had it smelled so strong that the rain had held a real hammering on the roof of my room - had to sleep impossible.
I'm glad it starts again - Gaeta is somehow not my case.
I kept looking uneasily behind the buffet on the road - luckily, the storm is over, the pavement shines but still moist. I sit there, as always, enjoy the excellent coffee and'm kinda confident that I can get now dry. I will deceive me.
The Swiss blondes acknowledge my added sporty appearance with an appreciative smile as they head for the beach and I ready to go straight to the hostel my road bike do. One last goodbye, one last hint - even I step on the pedals and accelerated purely R3 to the south. On and on - the South!
The road is always better to be first out me close to the water along the bay. Before me harmless doer gray clouds pile up ever more powerful steam in Bergen. An omen? However, so long as the sun still manages to warm me, I'm not worried. Less than three kilometers from Gaeta I'm sweating already. Well, it can not be so bad ...
As always, I Ride on the highway, which at this time is still pleasantly empty. In fact, I have a feeling that the traffic has expanded south of Rome markedly. Can it be that all in northern Italy, was 4 wheels has sought the capital and is otherwise left in peace? Royal it rides on the wide road without having to constantly be out of date. So it could stay, I think.
I'm making good progress, 32, 34 km / h are on the Garmin display and I feel today that I have good legs.
I look back, however, gen Gaeta, I realize that I will need this today really seems to me from behind a storm to move behind her. Almost imperceptibly, it colors the horizon already threatening dark blue. One more reason to speed!
Links pile next to me, the mountains, a great sight to see the high clouds and fog banks break on the slopes. Klein comes to the right here, small and slow. Now and then a car rushing at me, but actually the opposite direction - to Rome - traveled much denser. I want it to be right.
first shallow climbs added to join. More and more, the road rises up and down, unfortunately, the road boundary often rises so high that I see beside me, only aluminum-limits and not the beautiful scenery.
one kilometer before me, I run it is the unmistakable silhouette of a cyclist. And - as always - though I 4.5 kg luggage on the Polkas back by the wind must me the sweat runs down already flowing, the open chest - I gotta have him! So I put another 1, 2 km / h on top and crank. Well, I think to myself, I have always reached the same the 30 kilometer mark, I will take a break anyway. I slowly work my way up to him. Meter by meter, I get closer, proud geschwillter chest with burning calves, I save myself with some recent, powerful kicks in his slipstream. Two or three minutes I remain there, seen me his bike - an older model Pinarello - then I set to overtake. He greets
nice and smiles: "Ciao," he says.
I nod. To hurt a lot the lungs.
I pull past him and removed me with a 35 average.
When I turn around, some time later that he cranks directly behind me in the slipstream.
"Damn," I think "I can not!" You ride it once before! Come on, do not suck - draw sometimes! But Mr. Pinarello does not think. He makes himself comfortable in my wake. Long as I do not think that everything from ... long as I do not think the ... long think ...
punctually at km 30 saves me a gas station with a large cafe. I wave bending down, he waves and calls back, further boosting alone. And I did. 'm Saved. In a large, ice-cold bottle Water and two meters thick with Parma ham panini sandwiches I enjoy it, feel easy to pull the hot blood through my calves - and just as I sit sweeps, a shudder through the country economy.
a taste?
The worst is a few miles and about an hour later. Just so I can save the roof of a gas station - in front of me the sky is torn down and makes everything patter, which can accumulate so in clouds. The storm of last night was a Planschgeburtstag it. I can see that, shortly after I returned from the break, break: The dark clouds of Gaeta
I have long since obsolete. Drag me of time, I catch up, only to obscure the sun, then the rest of the sky - a little later, thick, wet, black clouds billow in the sky. And then we go ...
I am off to the well-known SS 7, when I catch the first show. It is initially not unpleasant: the large raindrops are soft and cool velvet my sweaty skin, and that I'm back injected into the rear sight, if the centrifugal force of the rain above a certain speed can cum so that I gallons of the road surface water back clean runs, I can not get over. comes after a few minutes but it so powerfully reduced that even the lead foot-only Tifosi still with 50 km / h, I can even see anything out of sheer Gisch and the whole road is flooded by torrential like a 1 cm layer of water. It's dark, it suddenly becomes colder and every meter, which I - albeit cautiously - go, is to endanger life.
I think the road - of course, is far and wide to see a tree, shelter or roof overhang - in order stülpen the rain tarp over my backpack. Too late, for he is already soaked.
So I fight my way a few minutes through the monsoon, with the highest need to reach the rest stop, bend in the middle of moving traffic in the rain storm over the four-lane waterway breakneck off and go completely wet, shivering and cold, the gas station.
"shit", I can only shout when I'm running out of my Sidi road shoes for about 1 liter of water. Inside, I enjoy almost an hour over a mocha at a time, while outside a tornado in the rain is raging.
Then suddenly rosy again.
Italy is shown from one minute to the other in the most beautiful blue - the rain clouds are just moved on quickly as they had caught up with me and I can finally dry in shallow, warm wind in the sun. Completely wet but I will not let go. I reserve for Castel Volturno as the place in memory where I've survived the storm.
I step in - high spirits, having survived the worst - and me miles closer to my milestone km Naples. From the large highway I turn off, however: The water here is on the road and every turn is a risk - not to mention that I have the pot holes that exist in Italy en masse, can not in good time.
My Cervélo certainly sounds after derailleur and chain perceived by 2,000 liters dirtiest rain Waser have been hunted, like an old King Tiger on the return trip. Madness!
Somewhere Pozzuoli before overtaking me a scooter-rider. Only in this way, just for fun, to see if I get him. I get it. Great feeling. Congratulations. When I drop back but me and pull in his slipstream will have overtaken me, he just does not. Then the little Italians stuck in my shadow, is a grinning and rattling through the Pampa hot.
Well, so I had not imagined me!
Somehow I manage to then also, to turn wrong and find myself on a small road that winds through dense everywhere serpentine mixed up at some slope. Everything seems to me right in English, and I ask klönende locals I would be best to Naples.
One of the men I mean, to reproduce it. As a team car's reunification, he leads me with steady 35 km / h by two winding villages, a few times under highways on stilts and all sorts of winding streets through it, until it stops and says: "Straight ahead"
20 minutes, he has taken time for me to bring her here. I call that but let's willingness to help! "Mille Grazie," I thank purely kick.
What follows is anything but a triumphant, uplifting way into the promised city - it seems rather a nightmare trip to be a war zone. The straight road is little traffic - what is pleasant - but right and left again find only ruins, dirt, and loitering. It seems I was staggered by a few thousand miles to Chechnya, the Red Army has just pulled: dirt, decaying and grungy everywhere. And it gets worse with every yard!
I'm afraid only two things to shoot, in which masses of mostly black people in groups at the roadside in the middle of talking trash, smoking and staring at me. Is it the poor suburbs of Naples? Italian favelas?
No tourist buses more. No cars. Only the straight road, canal, ruins and rubbish.
Mr. Goethe had seen everything and then describes it this way: At last we reached the plains of Capua, Capua itself soon after, where we had lunch. Afternoon did a nice, flat area in front of us. The road is wide by between green fields of wheat, the wheat is like a carpet and probably high margin. Poplars are planted in rows in the fields, highly branched out hinangezogen and wine. So it goes in to Naples.
Na, which was lucky, I think me and do three crosses, when I finally Pozzuoli, the worst place of the tour at all, may be behind me and an increase in start hinaufzukämpfen, who end up as the mountain of Naples (next to the Vesuvius, of course) turns out.
There is very few miles straight up. I'm sweaty, ready, my feet - still sticking in wet shoes - have grown in this new environment biotopic fungal and mold species, but anything is better than this creepy ghost town of just now!
receives top you tell me a little viewing platform that I use at once for a breather. Surrounded by the proverbial Neapolitan garbage I make myself comfortable on the arm of a bank and look with pride in the bay below me: Made it! On the other side, behind the mountain that is Naples. And there, somehow, somewhere, a ship for me.
The descent down to the metropolis is rasent quickly. There is no hard shoulder it, even when he is of such poor quality that it is dangerous to drive on the crumbling, pitted asphalt edge, but to assert the middle of the speeding cars on normal roads. curve with about 60 things I so in the increasingly hectic traffic of Naples the winding down - the hands firmly on the handlebars and the brake lever response capacity in the fingers.
Everything goes well and I will shoot for the fast downhill run to the city - right into a little nicer looking than Pozzuoli concrete bed castle its crumbling facades and no large area of glued billboards distract from turquoise beaches can. Beautiful is not Naples, that's for once.
I fight through some side streets, be careful, because this is often also driven to worst, slippery stone streets, constantly thwarted by greasy tram rails. some point - funny how one of the nose again and again to our destination - to reach the main beach promenade, which is, to my surprise car-free. In fine sunshine I can, taking advantage of the entire roadway, on the shores of the Mediterranean along cycle.
Cozy, as it should be - after the downhill run through the Monsumregen really a well-deserved luxury.
Back then he was slowly pushing into the picture: The Vesuvius. The further I get, the more threatening the acute volcanic cone rises above the Bay of Naples. Powerful the hilltop surrounded by dense clouds Thornt: Hard to imagine how this monster 79 AD the Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed. peaceful So, so sunny it is here. And a few miles south of the death. Preserved as a museum and preserved.
visit Pompeii, unfortunately I will not. Because as I have decided yesterday had after the nifty Air Force Kachelmann promised when the weather forecast 5 days continuous rain and I now get more than a hearty taste, I'm going here today to buy a ticket to Sicily and spontaneously change my itinerary. had planned to ride the boots to Messina and drive to Messina to Catania by train. But now I will probably bypass the (supposedly beautiful) piece route from Naples to Messina by ferry across the Tyrrhenian Sea and then to make the miles from Palerma to Catania.
Given the weather a wise decision.
Given the fact that I wanted to look at the rest day tomorrow, Pompeii and the beautiful Amalfi Coast will miss an equally sad to do so.
And I can only see from afar Master Vesuvio. Amazement and convince me that one day I will later return to me then to look at everything again in peace. However: After I had been denied the Fuji in Japan, this failure is now somehow classified then it logically into my cycling stories. Now I want to but first buy a ticket to Sicily.
I cycle along the relaxed - unfortunately, very run-down - of houses along the harbor and look for the switch. My odyssey begins ... First I stand in front of a closed Switch on which the ferry is signposted "Sicilia". No snake, no people, nothing. Funny. Left and right next to the crate open and have other crates offer ferry tickets to the Cote Azur, Sardinia, Lampedusa and anywhere else - Hundreds of people stand in line - only to Sicily, apparently no one wants.
Or is it because today is Sunday?
I ask someone who wears something that looks halfway towards uniform. "Boat to Sicily?"
"Sempre Sempre," he sends me somewhere else entirely. Obviously I will follow the port road for a while. Andiamo!
I force myself through the narrowest sidewalk in the world - has done a town-planner, but really clean work: the road is a few inches wide. Another series of bollards and the coronation of a nasty road sign me blocking the road. Absurd - that should be the home ADFC see!
I wait for another shower, then I put my bike on a closed-off to leave acting absurd part of the port. Leave, messy, messy. How this strange city. look in cubicle two bored Italians loud television. I greet, put my helmet on the table behind bulletproof glass and ask whether nowadays go a ship to Sicily and, if so, what to the fun kostenm would.
The friendly Tifosi tells me that I could have a cabin for 110 €.
in six hours. And
posted!
My skew is already at the pier - the SNAV "Sicilia". A brave, beautiful, huge box - none of those rust buckets that have caused me many a stomachache in Greece, no, this nifty boat looks new. Siaht from stable. But what I'm doing now for six hours?
Six hours until I take off the wet, stinky clothes can.
six hours before I take off the steaming hot shoes, which determined already proliferate in novel algae and mosses, can.
six hours.
Six hours?
Oha!
me instead - so grungy and exhausted I feel the weathered monsoon - to move into the city to use the little time at least to a small city experience, I sit in a small brasserie that opened next to the Ticketkabuff.
a good decision, because only a few minutes after I sat down, the sky will open its doors again and it pours again a veritable flood of the city.
I sit there - the last free table - and enjoy the best salad of the whole tour, just as a ship port. It flows the passengers from the metal box, many of past us, some of the restaurant.
This is also a three funny-looking party of three. Since no table is free anymore, I offer them to the chairs at me. You agree.
Artemisia, Francesco and Julian are so thrilled that they issue me a Nastro Azzuro and extensively questioned me where I was from because where I wanted to go and if me you gefliele Italy. I reciprocate their interest and turn them from asking.
you are Neapolitan. With body and soul. Schools of their town. Revel in colorful pictures create to me their love in flowery spaghetti-accented feet.
proud And they are the three. Oh yes. Can not understand I can bother me sometimes to the 5 meter high mountains of garbage.
No, no, they are proud. The Lord Privy Councillor of Weimar was also at that time had already noticed: will
that no Neapolitan of his city, that their poets sing of the happiness of the local situation in massive hyperbole is not to blame them, and if even if also a couple of Vesuvius in the neighborhood stood. One may here not at all remember back to Rome, against the local free comes before a situation the capital of the world in the Tiber basically like an old, ill-placed monastery.
Strong words!
my very tasty Salad I enjoy even more than I vorschwärmen the three vol Sicily, tell of orange groves, paint pictures of Etna and me a dream world vorschwärmten that I was very warm feeling. After dinner, after one or two Cappucchini, I say goodbye to me warmly by the three Neapolitans and must be bridged only one hour. Meanwhile
has already made an impressive line at the pier, a shallow, black smoke attracts even the mighty chimney of the ship and I am number one, no, I am against fidget. Stand there, from among the many cars, trucks and vans and wait one or two showers. Impatience.
I can not even more expected - but now it will start soon! Even Mr. Goethe seems to be gone:
Impatiently we spent the morning on the banks soon, now in the cafe, and finally we boarded the ship for lunch and enjoyed the beautiful weather-earth most glorious sight. Not far from the pier was the corvette at anchor. On a clear day sun, a hazy atmosphere rich, so the shaded rock walls of the Sorento most beautiful blue. The lit, lively Naples shone with all colors. It was not until sunset, moving the ship.
Well, finally! As the tail moves
something. Let down the ramp.
men in suits running around.
Then we can on board.
must I cry inwardly when a 150 kilo man pinched my carbon frame by two dozen loops of a coarse rope to the steel frames of the car deck. The frame holds - my heart pumps to 200 The courses do rack, looking for my cabin. And think about all the time why I did not fool insisted on a single cabin. Now I paint out of me, then that will take the same as a fat, sweaty, drunken truck drivers, the bed below me snoring all night and will fart. Idiot and I've saved a few tens of euros.
take note: The ship sets. A gentle push and off you go.
My cabin companion ways off. Sun shower I go. So I'm moving to me. So I Räkel me on the wide lower bed - leaving the small quilt folded.
Even after we are already almost an hour on board, he can not be seen.
And then it dawns on me: The two-cubicle Tifosi, who had so cheerfully pulled my Visa card through the slot. Well, these two had me along the way sly sold an expensive single cabin.
But hey, I think, and look happy out of my porthole: 110 € and "expensive"? Shaking his head, and fart
glad I was in my cab and go eat.
But instead of the otherwise fantastic Italian kitchen waiting for me Normaloconvenience-food, I'm in deep fat fryers-Odeur and only the fresh, cold Nastro Azzurro is a bright spot in this dark night food kitchen. After I'm tired I do it like all my fellow sufferers also let the pitiful remainder are from the dinner and make my way to the railing, as he pulls out there just slowly past us, the mighty Vesuvius.
At the foot of the mountain, a chic diamond necklace sparkles from hot lights. People live there, so close in the vertical, not far from the volcano. Madness. moves slowly rocking the SNAV Sicilia into darkness. Slow is also the Fire Mountain back - now quiet. Today, calm as the sea.
I suck a few lungs full of fresh air before I go to my cabin.
One of the unpleasant jobs every night, now do I have to complete course: My dirty, sweaty clothes should be washed. Today, even more than they have soaked for hours in my hot glue border, moving more and more sweaty body. could already smell the gloves so that it is a ruin the evening.
jersey and pants go.
But the soles of my socks and socks even take me literally from selbige. So, sometimes honest - against the washing action would have stunk even any greasy trucker in the truest sense of the word!
I'm lying in my cabin. Switch off the lights. Bobbing to the beat of the waves and let the day's events: None drove 100 kilometers, but Holla! What an interplay of emotions, what a water fight! water fight.
water ... I still think and sleep finally at some point.
Stage 7 - Gaeta-Naples
Stage length: 97.26 km
gross travel time: 4 h 15 min journey time
net: 3 h 10 min
section: 28.1 km / h
