We have to drive across Italy today. We have to. We need to get from Sestriere, on the French border, to Venice, where we have a hotel reservation for tonight. This is about the longest distance across Italy that one can go. It’s 500 kilometers—300 miles. Mapquest gives is 5 hours and 2 minutes.
Calvin Trillin writes about Americans driving across the country as if they were being chased, always trying to cover more miles, not stopping. Maybe they need to do that, because it’s 3,000 miles across. I’ve personally done it, we stopped some, and it took two weeks.
But a certain factions of Italians, for all the slow life, loves to cover ground too, even if they don’t have as much to cover. Or maybe because of it. You can actually get to your destination quickly if you step on it. In America you can’t, you can get there from here, but not today. Italians give their travel times da casello a casello, from toll booth to toll booth, so they don’t get penalized unfairly for the slow driving stretch getting to the autostrada.
I recall my uncle recounting once that someone passed him when he was driving 220 kilometers per hour. That’s 130 miles per hour. It wasn’t his own speed that amazed him. He was amazed that someone was driving faster than that.
But for every drive going breathtakingly fast, there’s another one in a little old car chugging along. Not everyone drives fast.
When I told people I was going to Venice, every one of them asked if I was taking the train.
“No, I’m driving.” It’s 300 miles, for god’s sake, same as from my house to Boston or from my house to Pittsburgh, both of which drives I’ve done by myself—in bad weather.
We wake up very early in Sestriere because we have gone to bed early. Because there’s no TV where we are staying. We go to breakfast at Galup one last time, and head down.
I call my aunt around 9 o’clock from an autogrill near Piacenza.
She asks, “Are you ready to leave?”
“Actually, we’re in Piacenza.”
“Already?”
“Yes.” We’re American. This is how we drive across the country: as if we’re being chased.
