Strassenfest-blitz Report

Hi, Folks!
Here it comes the report from the Strassenfest! Like every year, the
Youthcamping Reggiani have organised their blitz to Muehlacker for the
Strassenfest: we are always the latest to arrive, the earliest to leave,
those who have the most fun!

Dramatis Personae:
Roberto
Carletto
Paolo
Chicco
Edo

Our trip has been adventurous even before we start: we should leave from my
place soon after a quick lunch on friday, but they ring me at 10.30 that we
are going to leave at 11 in the morning and eat something along the way, to
spare some time. Brilliant: I leave my parents with more than 1/2 kilos of
olive
sauce for pasta. Anyway, at 11 everyhing is ready and we hit the road.
We have a quick snack before leaving Italy, and cross the Swiss border
smoothly and quickly: there is no traffic, the weather is very good, our
rented car works perfectly. Only we have a bit of a problem onhte back
seat: Chicco is driving, and Carlo must sit in the front seat not to get
car-sick (OK, I've exaggerated: he must sit in the front to get LESS
car-sick...), so Edo, Paolo and I are in the back, as packed as sardines in
a tin. If our car had side-airbags, they would explode to the outside!!
Anyway, we are having fun and everything is OK. Everything is TOO Ok for a
trip of the Youthcamping Reggiani, as we'll see later!
We are chatting, joking and playing, but radio stations are very very bad.
We decide to play a tape, but the only tape we have is a Dire Straits tape,
and we'll listen to it till we know it by heart... but we also have MY
tape: Chicco had told me I could play up to 5 minutes of Metal during the
trip, because he tought I could find no song of that length, but I have
found a
song which is 4.57!! Paolo says "Ok, let's change the music, let's listen
to Robbi's tape!". After the second chord he says "Stop it!", but it's too
late, and Carlo, who is driving, plays it out loud!!
Yes, Carlo is driving. He is a friend of ours, and we trust him! We all are
chatting together, playng stupind jokes, and our Carlo is taking us to
Germany! We start playing with our mobile telphones: Paolo, Chico, Edo and
I
are phoning each other, and our Carlo is driving. We discover that a Swiss
lady has the same phone number as Chico's mobile, and still Calo is driving
us to Germany. He asks "Shall I go straight on here?" "Sure! Go on!". Of
course we were not even listenig to him. Carlo asks "Shall I drive to
Interlaken?" "Yes, sure". Still, we are ot even listening to him, and
interlaken has nothing to do with our route! We ae mesmerised by the beuaty
of the Swiss landscape and the Swiss lakes. Lakes? there should be no lakes
on our way!! Much, much later on, Chicco understands we are off our track!
we should go through Basel, but we are on the way to Luzern! We have a look
at the map, but we just can't find out
were we are! We see lakes where there should nothing, and the map says
there are lakes where there is nothing! We even see a sign to the Gotthard!
I mean, the landscape is beautiful, but it is the WRONG landscape! We even
get off the highway, on mountain roads! Carlo maintains he did so to show
us the beautiful lake of
that region. We know he's fuckin' lyin'! He just has taken the wrong way
somewhere, possibly when we were calling each other on the phone! Well, now
we have a new conversation topic: all the weekend, we'll insult him or make
fun of him!
We eventually get the right way. Edo says "I have a feeling we have already
been here", we all answer he must be wrong. He's right!
We look at the map and understand that Carlo has taken us on a
200-kilometre ring
Gotthard-Basel-Bern-Luzern-Basel. The matter is: he got wrong less then 50
Km from Basel, we did not notice we went along Bern, and we lost two hours
and one half after leaving from Reggio with no lunch to spare one hour!
We eventually get at Jutta's almost at eleven. There we meet Jolle, his
girlfriend, Albierto and his brother. Jutta takes us and Albierto to have
dinner, while the others go to a pub in hte Black forest... where no-one
will be waiting for them!
Our dinner is very good, and Alex comes to us! Carlo entertains Jutta and
Alex by telling about our tour of Switzerland. While we go to our car, we
see Alex's, and it's just great, full of colours and drawings!
Back at Jutta's, we watch a few hundreds of pics, both Jutta's and
Chico's, and then eventually go to bed.
In the morning, we say goodbye to Jutta, who's leaving to Italy. Yes, Jutta
is going to leave her house to the five of us! Maybe, it is because she is
going to move, and so it is not a problem even if we make some damage! We
get a phone call, and I rush to answer. I am afraid that the caller will
speak very quick dialect and I will not be able to understand him. Anyway
1) He speaks Hochdeutsch 2)It's our Hagen! He asks me what we are going to
do. We
were planning to go to visit him, but he says not to do so, because he
is coming to visit us himself! When he arrives, he is overwhelmed by the
quantity of pictures, but I give him the right advice: just look at the
indexes!!
Jolle, Evelyn, ALbierto, his brother (another Carlo!) and Flo join us.
We decide to go shopping, but have no money, so we look for a cash
despenser. Well, looks like in Muehlacker no cash despenser accepts
international cards, so I decide to pay our shopping with my credit card.
Hey, we though Germany was a very modern country, and international cards
are not accepted? We do our shopping, but the shop assistant tells me they
only accept cash: we are left with 1 DM each! But... the main Commercial
Centre in Muehlacker
does not accept credit cards? In desperation, we look for other cash
despensers, and the one at Deutsche Bank works! We bring our shopping home,
and after watching an Italian movie (the most logical thing for italians to
do in Germany, of course...) we go to the Strassenfest. We start from the
Altenburger stand, and we get the first black bier of the day. There we
meet Sonja, and we go to the Bassano stand to see Albierto and Eugenio. The
Bassanesi are making funny drawings on the ground with chalk... we can't
but join them! Carlo lays on the street, and we make around him the line
the police usually do around victims of shootings! We do the same for
Hagen! All the children from Bassano want to do the same! If someone just
looked at the drawings, he would think there was a massacre in Muehlacker!
There we see Luna and Luna... Whaat? No, It's Luna and her mother, but they
are very similar! Luna's mother is as nice and lively as Luna! (or is it
Luna who is as nice and lively as her mother?)
We get back to the Jugendhouse, where we meet Babs, Leonie, Julia and
Katia. Carlo and I go to the Bassano Stand where I have to meet Raphaela at
9 p.m. While we are waiting, we meet Joerg and, later, Sonja. While Sonja
and I are queuing to get a crepe, I see a phosphorishing-blond head: It
can't be but Raphy's head, and if her head is there, I suppose the rest is
going to be there as well!! The four of us (there is also Raphy's
boyfriend) go back to the Jugendhouse. Also Jolle, Evelyn, Flo, Vize and
Veit are there! Wait, here is Angel and Heike! Serdar and Ersoy come! Hey,
here is Patricya and Nele! Jean Marc saves my life, by pulling me away from
where I am just before two guys start a fight! Chicco was sitting on the
ground and jumps to a safer place! Flo stops the fighters and the party can
go on.
Carlo updates me on Eugenio's performance in the Jugendhouse: he took 1 Dm
50 in his hand and asked the bar assistant what she could give him for that
money! Nothing there costs less than 5 DM!!
I spend the night thalking with Heike and Evelyn, and while I go with Heike
to the Altenburger Stand to get a black beer, we notice I'm maturing: it's
about 11 p.m. friday night at the Strassenfest and I'm perfectly sober!
Yeah, Robierto is growing up! It took its time, but I'm growing up!! :o))
We go to eat something with Carlo, Paolo and Edo, go back to the
Jugendhouse, and at 00.00 a.m. everything closes! It's always the same at
hte Strassenfest: till 23.59 everything is lively and going, one minute
later everything is closed! So we go home, and Sonja decides to come sleep
at Jutta's with us.
The six of us spend some time joking, laughing and talking rubbish before
going to bed, and then we decide to call it a day, after we started mixing
Italian adverbs with the names of the dwarves of "Snow-white and the seven
dwarves"!
Paolo and I, who are sleeping in the same room, have a heavenly wake-up
call! I see a soft touch on my neck, open my eyes, and see the friendly and
nice smile and the sweet eyes of Sonja, who came to wake us up with a
caress!! Much better than having your bed shaken by Edo on the Camp!! By
the way it must be noticed that both Paolo and I are able to wake up at
8.30, and that I get up at 8.35, sound and sane! Last year we could not get
up before 11, and we stayed in our own world till about 3 p.m.!! Yeah,
Roberto is maturing!!
We have breakfast, and are speaking rubbish and laughing as usual, when I
see something astonishing on hte cap of the yogourt I'm eating: it's wild
orange! So we start wondering: where do wild oranges live? in a forest? In
the jungle? How do you hunt them? with a rifle or with bow and arrows?
Chicco is astonished by the look of his yogourt: it looks like salmon pate!
We come to the conclusion that it actually is salmon pate, personally
produced by an friend of ours from Greenland, who bones the salmon with his
own hand, to make the pate he then uses to dress the meat of the wild
orange he has been hunting in his own forest. Of course, Greenland is
called Greenland because it is covered with forests, otherwise it would be
called "Whiteland", wouldn't it?
Sonja, Carlo, Chico and I are sitting in hte livingroom listening to music
and talking, and I astonish them with my "standby mode". I sit in the
armchair, my eyes closed as if I was sleeping, and they actually think I'm
sleeping. But I'm perfectly awake, and take part in the conversation! I
open my eyes, say what I have to say, and then close them again!
Edo wakes up and stands on the doorway to the livingroom: his gaze is lost
in his thoughts, he looks like he had been ran over by a truck, but he is
just a bit sleepy!  :o)
Carlo prepares some tea, and Leonie, Julia, Nele and Patricya arrive. They
witness my stand by mode, and Edo's sleeping mode. Well, you all know his
sleeping mode and the typical sound he utters to warn people that he is
sleeping and that he does not want to be disturbed!
Carlo and I have our tea our way, which is a bit surprising for our German
guests: each of us drinks down his two cups of very strong black tea. It
sounds normal, but the girls are horrified when we take the tea-bags from
the tea pot, put them in our
mouths and suck them dry! Since we are very friendly, we offer them the
other tea-bags, but, God knows why, they don't want them, so Carlo and I
suck three tea-bags each! We love tea, and expecially tea-bags!  :o)
After the girls leave, I cook the lunch. Jutta has electric cookers, which
I've learnt to use in England: I sipmly switch all of them on, so that I
have each cooker on a different temperature, to have teh right temperature
in every moment! I make tomato sauce for "arrabbiata" (hot pasta with chili
peppers) with four chili-peppers and two tea-spoons of black-pepper! I
bring the pot to the table on a marble board not burn the table: it's
bloody heavy, but effective!   :o)
Albierto, Jolle, Carlo 2 and Evelyn come to say hallo to us when we are at
the table, but unluckily they can't join us for lunch. Anyway, they taste
my pasta: Jolle likes it, Evelyn likes it, for Chico it is a bit to chili.
We collect the cutlery, clean the place and watch the Grand Prix.
At 14.45 Carlo, Paolo and I go to the Strrassenfest to great everybody, but
we only meet Hagen and Philipp. We just have the time to make some plans
for our next meeting and I also get my last black beer (any Carlo and I
have three cases of black beer on the car!!)
At 15.30 we hit the road! We get to the border quickly, but we are still
talking about our boned salmon. We say "boned" every second word, and keep
on distroting adverbs according to the names of the seven dwarves! While we
cross the border I weave the empty tankard of the beer I took before
leaving, but both the German and the Swiss police have better things to do
than stop five stupid Italians! This time we make no mistakes, and after
talking about boned salmon, boned beer and boned cars for six hours we get
to the Italian border, to Reggio and to my place! We say bye bye to each
other, and I take Carlo home to Cavriago. Which is not as easy as it seems:
the centre of Cavriago is closed, and I can't go back to Reggio the usual
way. I've been travelling for 8 hours, it's late, I'm tired, and there are
one hundred old peole dancing some crappy music in the town centre at
midnight! I'd like to run them over, but then I simply go back to Carlo's
street, take the way to the Sporting Field where we used to have lunch with
the Czechs, and here I am on the way to Reggio!  :o))
I lay my head on my pillow, switch the light off, and this is it for our
Nth blitz to the Strassenfest!