Day 14 - Udine, Italy, Feldkirch, Austria - 3815 miles

A pleasant surprise after waking was by far the best breakfast of the trip so far which was included in the room rate and seemed to include anything any European might expect for breakfast including bacon and egg. So we filled our boots and lingered over breakfast for longer than we ought to have. In discussing our route to Feldkirch we both decided to opt for the quickest route thinking we would avoid tolls in Austria because I had bought a vignette that was still valid. The initial stretch of the road became progressively more beautiful as the alps approached. With the sat nav set to the fastest route the road took us on a big loop southwards before heading north again. We started to see signs for Verona and the obvious stopping place. We couldn't afford the time to actually drive into Verona but it was plainly obvious that it would have been the better stopping place and taken a couple of hours off today's drive. We stopped at a motorway services on the edge of the town to sing our song for Italy.'English Boys Are Melancholy' was chosen by Kit because of the line celebrating the beauty of Italian girls on scooters with the wind in their hair. The line dates from a trip to Genoa many years before and lives in my memory as one of the most beautiful sights of my life. Who needs a crash helmet when you look good?

After Verona we headed for the famous Brenner Pass. I had no idea that it was famous for its traffic jam. Somehow my pre-trip research had missed this detail but we lost an hour at the border. At some point after Verona we had been stung by a toll which I found highly irritating but little did we know there was much more to come. After we crossed the border into Austria we were almost immediately stung by another and very expensive toll. I protested that I had already paid for a vignette only to be told the road we were on was excluded from the vignette system. I felt like I'd been robbed by both the Italians and especially by the Austrians. I thought that would be the end of it but there were two further tolls to pay and the road from Udine to Feldkirch ended up costing me more than the cost of a tank of petrol. The road passed through some beautiful scenery but also a series of traffic jams and progress was slow. In addition there was a monotonous series of tunnels and the scenery started to disappear from view. It was early evening by the time we arrived in Feldkirch but arrival felt like a relief.

Our hotel was a youth hostel but nearly empty and we were given a dorm all to ourselves. The ancient building was half timbered and the site of a previous leper colony. Even though we were tired after the most arduous drive of the trip we were also quite eager to stretch our legs and mindful that there were only a couple of hours of daylight left.


Feldkirch lies at the very end of Austria just across the border from Liechtenstein and became a stopping place along the road simply because Vaduz, the Leichtenstein capital, is horrendously expensive. Nevertheless, it is a lovely town and we enjoyed our walk around. Feldkirch dates back to medieval times and retains some unspoilt ancient buildings. We arrived in the main shopping area as the shops were closing and I was disappointed to find a CD shop I could only look through the window of.


To my delight we also discovered a brew pub that as well as having great beer served some great traditional food and Kit and I rounded of the day with one of the best meals of the trip. The pub was in a modern building with great big glass windows and a separate restaurant area. I love fresh asparagus and the pub was celebrating the beginning of it being in season with various specials. Kit started with asparagus soup and I had an asparagus salad. Both dishes were delicious. Kit had schnitzel for his main course and I had a really tasty liver dish called 'liver like your grandma used to make' or something to that effect.
We made our way back to the hostel and spent a little while catching up with Facebook and I posted some of the blog but we had to pay to use a PC. We liked Feldkirch a lot but today's driving was an ordeal. Maybe the Gods of the road will be kinder to us tomorrow.

Day 13 - Ljubljana, Slovenia, Udine, Italy - 3409 miles

Not surprisingly breakfast was poor, maybe even the worst of the trip so far. It was boring and dreary with watery juice and poor quality coffee. We had no wish to linger and headed out into the car park to sing our song for Slovenia before hitting the road for Italy. The car park was dour but we noticed a single tree in blossom and videoed the song beneath it. What the video doesn't translate about the surroundings is the smell of piss. The tree obviously being a favourite stopping off point for those unable to make the toilet.



Digging For Happy is about my estrangement from my father and one of my saddest songs and while most people have heard me singing the slow version it does exist in a faster more angry version which Kit had a go at before we set off. His reference at the end of the video to a Polish guy refers to an abusive homophobic post on our video in Gdansk on Youtube that I've since deleted. Some idiot thinks we are a gay couple and that is a reason to abuse us. I hate prejudice in all its forms but to abuse love whatever its form has to be the narrowest thought of all.



The road to Udine was something of a dreary slog and began in a dull drizzle but after we crossed the border into Italy the sun returned and the day gradually became warmer. We stopped along the road this time for an ice cream rather than the usual chocolate and stumbled across the largest collection of international car stickers I've ever seen. This meant we could buy car stickers for most of the countries we have visited so far and add them to the guitar case, which now looks spectacularly beautiful.It may have been a beautiful day but it was the second in a row with something of a negative vibe to it. I had originally fancied going to Verona but we changed today's destination to Udine at the suggestion of a musician contact of mine. He told a DJ contact of his about our trip and we were invited to Udine to sing our song for Italy live on local radio. All through this trip we have expected a phone call from Italy to make arrangements but none arrived and the longer this situation has gone on the more obvious it has been that no call is going to arrive. I hate broken promises but I especially hate people who break promises to my children. So we arrived in Udine not particularly wanting to be here and wondering if we would have had a better time in Verona.

Hotels in Udine were expensive and I went for the cheapest option which was a Holiday Inn situated on the edge of the city. The accommodation was what you would expect for an international brand but a welcome change after the last two and we had a lovely view of the distant alps. Once in our room Kit realised he no longer had the battery charger for his camera. This means when the camera runs out of charge we will no longer be able to make any videos. We dumped our luggage and drove into Udine to look for a battery charger. I parked the car on the edge of town. I'd expected difficulty parking but it was easy and cheap.
I really have no idea why we wasted time looking for a battery charger but we did. It was a stupid, hopeless waste of time and the day became hot and sweaty as we wandered around aimlessly. We were given a few suggestions of places to go but there was never the slightest possibility that any electrical hardware store or photgraphy specialist in Udine was going to stock a battery charger for a camera bought in England. Gradually this realisation dawned on us and we gave up. At the very point of giving up we were standing outside a pizza bar and had the most delicious and inexpensive lunch. This revived my brain power and we headed back to the hotel next to which was located a hypermarket where we bought a new camera. Some might view this as a further waste of time but without Kit's camera we would have to stop making videos and neither of wanted to.

When we finally headed back into Udine to have a proper look around evening was approaching and because we had expected to meet people we had nothing planned. We again walked around in a fairly aimless manner but this time we were much more relaxed and began to enjoy Udine. I've never been to an Italian city I didn't like and Udine was lovely with a relaxed array of piazzas, attractive buildings and statues.




It was a lovely warm evening although every Italian was wearing a jacket or coat and Kit and I were the exceptions in our t-shirts. We hadn't eaten much today but had worked up quite an appetite and inevitabley our thought turned to food. We had a good look around Piazza San Giacomo which has an array of bars and cafes but to be perfectly frank everything was horrendously expensive. I have a strong aversion to paying silly money for food and have never eaten anything in an Italian restaurant that I couldn't cook as well myself so began to suggest we head back to the hypermarket and eat at our hotel although we both felt we deserved a treat after having more or less wasted the day.

On our way back to the car we passed a decent looking restaurant and decided to take a chance. It was a disappointment. As we considered the menu the waiter hassled us in an effort to make us choose the most expensive items on the menu but we in the end, much to his disappointment, we decided on what we considered were mid-price options. We both started with poor insipid soups and plumped for pasta second courses. I had a really poor seafood pasta that contained pickled rather than fresh seafood and was so obviously a pale imitation of the dish I had in the Italian restaurant in Poland for half the price. Kit decided to have one of Italy's signature dishes in Italy and went for his second Carbonara of the trip resulting in a similar experience to mine.

We headed back to the hotel after a disappointing day and opted for an early night. Tomorrow is the second longest drive of the trip. We decided not to sing a song for the city who didn't bother to call us back and instead opted to sing our song for Italy on the road tomorrow.

Day 12 - Zagreb, Croatia to Ljubljana, Slovenia - 3273

We woke after a poor night's sleep in our pokey, stuffy room, probably the worst of the holiday and couldn't wait to get underway. Zagreb was one of our favourite places on the journey but unfortunately the same couldn't be said for the hotel. Checking out was a more pleasant task than our arrival and the two desk clerks were polite and friendly. Kit had gone to the car first and I met him on my way out. He was, of course, waving a parking ticket which he furiously presented to the hotel staff. He doesn't get annoyed very often so watching him was a novelty of sorts. The staff didn't raise any protest and we got the distinct impression they dealt with this sort of thing all the time.

Our first task before departing was buying a Croatian breakfast of Burek, which is a famous pastry generally filled with cheese, meat or apple. We were told that Burek is Croatia's national breakfast dish so it was the obvious choice. We bought far too much of the delicious looking pastries and some were freshly baked and still warm. We didn't have our dictionary with us and had no idea what we had bought. Unfortunately, all the Burek were filled with sheep's cheese and Kit wasn't at all impressed. We ate in the car on our way and departed Zagreb in the rain which persisted for most of the journey.



The sat nav was set to avoid toll roads and we crossed the border from Croatia to Slovenia in a little village within sight of an enormous and very busy motorway border crossing. Leaving Croatia and entering Slovenia felt like entering Western Europe again. The blonde-haired and blue-eyed Slovenian border guard looked Germanic and spoke with an Italian twang to his accent. He was so obviously not a Slav and as the day unfolded it became obvious we were back in the west. The Slovenian countryside was mountainous and strikingly beautiful but the Sat Nav kept sneaking us on and off the motorways in between toll points. Initially this was quite entertaining but after a couple of hours of slow progress we decided to buy a vignette so we could complete the journey to Ljubljana in a more straight-forward and speedy fashion. We stopped in a motorway service station to buy the vignette, which cost seven euros, our usual chocolate supply and a car sticker for our guitar case.

We arrived at our hotel to find it was a sports centre with numerous lithe people entering and leaving dressed in an array of garish licra clothing. Kit and I laughed because it was so obviously not our kind of place. There was a gym on the second floor with glass panels for walls so you could see people hard at work on their abs or whatever such people work on while ignoring their brains. We struggled to understand why the place was also a hotel but the poor dears obviously needed a lie down after all that work. The desk clerk who was of the sporty sort took us in with a distasteful, disapproving look on her face and clearly decided to treat us with disdain. She was rude, too quick with her information and gone before we could ask a question. We couldn't be bothered responding and got on with finding our room but Slovenia wasn't endearing itself to us.

Having arrived earlier than we had planned we decided to have a sleep and lo and behold we woke to a sunny afternoon. We took a bus into the city which has a reputation for being one of Europe's prettiest but by the time we arrived the clouds had gathered again and our walk took place in grey, dull light under threatening skies. Maybe it was the weather or maybe we missed our Slavic soul brothers and sisters but Ljubljana didn't exactly get under our skin. The town centre is compact and a pleasant enough walk but we were once again outsiders looking in. The city was also strangely quiet and devoid of population.



We decided to do the obvious tourist activity and took a short funicular railway costing 3 Euros up to the castle which overlooks the city. The view of the city with the alps dressed in threatening cloud was really quite something and at this point we began to warm to Ljubljana although the weather began to turn decidedly cool. We didn't fancy a walk round the castle museum or a look round the souvenir shop so decided to head back down to the city to hunt for a hot drink and a record shop. We sat inside a bar and had excellent coffee and Earl Grey tea served by a much-tattooed and pierced barman. I asked him to recommend a few Slovene bands but judging from the names he gave me the recommendations were of the death metal variety. He told us there was a record shop nearby but also that he thought it would be closed and we realised the day had almost gone. We strolled round to the record shop without much hope of Slovene purchases but found a fabulous, traditional store with only a small death metal section. The shop assistant was most helpful and let us listen to a large pile of CDs most of which were rubbish but I settled on 2 brilliant purchases; the alternative guitar rock of Ana Pupedan and the modern folk of Brina.

As darkness fell there was only the task of eating left. Ljubljana has a host of restaurants and we intended to take a good look at a few before deciding which one to eat in but we tired of that plan and chose the second one we looked at. It was a good choice. Kit had a cream of garlic soup to start and I had a mushroom soup served inside a loaf of bread.



I had stuffed squid served with potato and spinach for my main course and Kit had veal steaks au gratin. I don't think either dish was particularly authentic from an ethnic point of view so feeling slightly guilty about not having chosen authentic local food for our meal we ask the waiter to recommend some local puddings. Kit had stuffed pancakes with a chocolate sauce and I had a traditional Slovene layer cake. The first mouthful of my dish was delicious but it was very rich and progressive bites got harder to enjoy.


After taking the bus back to our hotel we watched the athletes hard at work in their gym for a good minute or so. There has to be something desperate about wanting to exercise in full view of the outside world. Despite the sight being far from pretty we had a nightmare-free sleep. We decided to save our song for Ljubljana until tomorrow morning. Maybe the weather will be kinder.

Day 11 - Novi Sad, Serbia to Zagreb, Croatia - 3179 miles

We departed Novi Sad reluctantly with a slow breakfast and our feet dragging all the way to the car. Sonja and Nebojša met us at the hotel and led us out of the city. We stopped for petrol and topped up with Serbian chocolate to sustain us. I still had quite a lot of dinar to spend and regretted not buying myself a t-shirt yesterday. We bought a bottle of Serbian wine and a car sticker for our guitar case but there is only so much you can buy in a garage. We had the idea of buying a sticker for the guitar case in each country and plaster it with evidence of our travels back in England but it took some pondering of what I could spend my money on to bring the idea back to mind. I have no idea how we will get hold of stickers from the countries we've already visited but that is the intention. After final hugs with our friends we left Novi Sad behind. We had our map of Serbia to show us the rest of the way to the border but the main road reappeared on our sat nav as we left Novi Sad. Our conversation was full of our experience in Novi Sad and the high of our experiences there balanced out our sadness at leaving. We both felt at home in Serbia and Kit told me he felt at peace for the whole time in Novi Sad in the same way he feels when we are in Germany.

Our route out of Serbia followed the Danube through farmland and we crossed both the river and border at Bačka Palanka. The border crossing was tiny and checking of our documents took little more than 10 minutes. There was a short interview with passport control and a cursory glance at the contents of our boot, which is slowly filling with stray bottles of beer, surplus chocolate and other trinkets from different countries: evidence of ordinary, crazy people crossing Europe as opposed to those who might cross borders for unsavoury reasons. Whatever the case, the border guard's face showed mild horror at the thought of checking further and we drove into Croatia. As we did the sat nav began to function fully again. We drove into Croatia via Ilock, perched on a hill over the Danube but as we did the heaven's opened and we had very little opportunity to apppreciate the beauty of the countryside for the next four hours. Our route hugged the Danube as far as Vukovar and I briefly recalled the travel advice I'd read telling us not to drive in the area. Apparently, there are still mines around from the war but I looked around at the quiet town we passed through, the commercial traffic alongside us and dismissed the rubbish from my thoughts. Anyway, it was too late to turn back now.

We arrived in Zagreb to lovely sunshine and were met by blues and protest singer Ivan Škrabe and his partner Marina Pintarić who had agreed to show us round. Unfortunately we arrived to our worst hotel experience of the holiday so far. Our room was small and pokey and we found ourselves having to step over our cases to move around the room. I'd booked a parking space in advance which was confirmed by email but the hotel had only one space and that already had a car parked in it. The hotel receptionist told us the car belong to a long stay guest and took precedence over us. She told us to park across the pavement behind the parking space but the Mondeo was too big and its backend stuck out dangerously into the road as well as completely blocking the pavement. She then told us to park on the street next to a parking metre and said we didn't have to pay because there were never any traffic wardens on the street. 'Anyway,' she said, 'What's the worst that can happen?' Her flippancy and lack of care was extremely annoying but as I had no Kuna and it was too late in the day to find another hotel, I had no choice. Marina put a ticket on the car as one of the neighbours told her we wouldn't get a fine if we'd paid at least something.

We took a tram into the city centre and arrived in the central Jelačić square, a big wide open space dominated by the statue of Josip Jelačić, who was a Croatian political figure of the 19th century. Among other things he was responsible for the abolition of serfdom in Croatia. During communist times he was labelled as an Austrian collaborator and the statue was removed but now it is back in its original place but with its provocative sword no longer pointing in the direction of Hungary. Immediately the city made an impression on me,. The square has large imposing buildings on two sides behind which the land rises slowly.

After changing the last of our Serbian money into Croatian Kuna we headed into the old town behind the square and led by Ivan and Marina we spent a lovely couple of hours wandering around this lovely part of the city. We first walked past the cathedral and then into the old town. We walked through ther normally bustling market area which was already clearing away and took a look at the pretty Svetog Marka church where Ivan said visiting dignitaries to Croatia are brought for receptions.Maybe it was partly the very pleasant company of our guides but Kit and I enjoyed our tour of Zagreb and the city felt welcoming. There was a lovely relaxed feel to its backstreets and as dusk fell they were bathed in a gentle light from old fashioned street lamps. People walked around in calm, placid conversation with the occasional jogger or skater dodging between them.
We eventually arrived at the magical bench of Antun Gustav Matoš situated on a quiet promenade above the city. Matoš was a Croatian poet who is held in high esteem and his statue, which sits in a relaxed cross-legged pose on a bench, looks over the city through some trees. It was the obvious place for Kit and I to play a song and the magic of the spot teased our best performance of the trip out of us. I think the opportunity to play for our two beautiful guides also contributed to the moment. We were impossibly lucky and blessed to be introduced to two such people. They were a pair with a palpable spirituality and natural verve for life about them. Gradually twilight turned to dusk and dusk turned to night.




We began to discuss food and Kit and I realised we hadn't eaten all day and were ravenously hungry. I think it is to Zagreb's credit that it made us forget about our stomachs. We were taken to a Turkish/Greek style bistro were we had a large tray of grilled meats, kebabs and a suitably small salad garnish. The meal, which was great value for money, was presented to Kit and me as if enormous in size but we polished it off easily. We made our way back to Jelačić square and caught the tram back to our hotel. We said our goodbyes to Ivan and Marina on the tram and I was slightly saddened that we had so little time in their company. I sincerely hope we meet again and I get the chance to maybe play a few tunes with Ivan.Back at the hotel Kit went to open the door to our room and produced the key from our Serbian hotel. Despite the enormous leather key fob he hadn't noticed it in his pocket all day. After a short laugh we hit the sack and were quickly asleep. I was mildly bothered by the prospect of waking to a parking ticket on my car but not enough to be kept awake.