For Clemens and Judith the vacation was over. For us, it was time for something completely different. We decided to not make the trip to St. Moritz on the way back for a couple of reasons. This would have been a little bit out of the way, and also, neither Chris or myself were in the mood to think about the ski resort business. Instead we decided on a more "sporting" route home. We chose to take the pass to a town called Spluge located in Switzerland.
So, started our trip in Italy, went home via Switzerland...funny, this sounds like the trip down. Although we were back in Stuttgart in 5 hours. Further confirming that we had taken the LOOOOOONNNNNNG way to Italy in the first place.
Clemens had warned that this pass was pretty crazy. That didn't really capture the essence of this pass. We shot some video and will bring it home with us. Basically it was a series of switchbacks and very narrow (one lane) roads through a mountain pass. Think of a 50 mile Mt. Baker highway with much narrower roads and without the guard-rail. Of course for us, it was raining and foggy which added to the hair raising experience.
In a car, this road was pretty sketch, on a motorcycle, it would have been the ride of a lifetime. We got passed a few times by people taking that ride.
The border was at the top of the pass, and you could tell that as soon as we crossed the line, Switzerland put more emphasis on keeping their roads in order. There was a wooden guard rail the whole way down the mountain and the road was in excellent condition.
On the way down, we drove through a ski resort (as the road is closed in the winter). When we got to the bottom and entered the town of Spugel, Chris said "And you think Stevens Pass has road issues". After a stressful drive, that was the funniest thing someone could have possibly said...I'm pissed I didn't think of it first.
Anyway, back to Stuttgart. The posts will probably come a little more slowly now as we are going to be falling into a more casual routine now that we are back in Germany. I'll probably only update every other day or so from here on out.
We hope you are all doing well back home, and we look forward to chatting with you all soon.
Ciao,
Chris & Shane
