Servus and Buon giorno

Good morning from Mittenwald after a few hours of sleep. We have to say, the beds in the camper are fantastic ;-) 

Half past 8 is departure this time, at the last gas station before Austria we get the vignettes from a funny male gas station attendant and a not so funny female gas station attendant, to then refuel at the last gas station before Italy after not so many kilometers in Austria. 

Going down the Brenner Pass, it was actually so steep that we had to take a break because it suddenly smelled funny and smoke surrounded us, so we had to take a forced break to cool the brakes and eventually continue driving slowly!

And as long as everything is still written in German, we don't really feel like we're in Italy.

Bolzano was actually our stopover destination, but absolutely not doable because it feels like the entire city of Bolzano is stuck in traffic. So we turned around right in the middle of the traffic.... super easy with the camper ;-) ....and continued to today's rest area, without knowing if our nerves can calm down there again, because we don't even know if there is space for 2 campers.

We are driving towards Merano and further up into the vineyards, through narrow streets where we wonder how we will get back down tomorrow with oncoming traffic, to the Schneeburghof parking area, where several campers are already parked. And it's only just before 2 p.m.

We quickly waited out the rain, took the chairlift down to Merano (with a pounding heart) and did a bit of sightseeing. The ice cream tastes fantastic and the coffee at 6 p.m. is still drinkable. After all, it's vacation, sleeping in wasn't even mentioned.