Carabinieri - First Encounter
Trip Start
Apr 17, 2002
1
2
31
Trip End
May 21, 2002
Brennero,
Trentino-Alto Adige,
Italy
Thursday, April 18, 2002
You might think that once you have bought the vignette you may be entitled to travel on Austrian freeways without further hassle. Not so! The Austrian system is a double whammy where they then charge you when you enter a given freeway (at least the one we took). We had to cross Austria on the freeway that goes via Innsbruck all the way to Brenner on the Italian border and it cost another Euro 7.
By the time we reached Innsbruck, it was very late so we stopped on a freeway's rest area and had our first night in the campervan. The comfort level proved to be acceptable which eased somewhat our worries about having to spend some 30 nights in the car.
We took to the roads of the Italian Tyrol enjoying beautiful views of the Alps and German, clean and tidy towns. While the temperatures were already quite mild there was still plenty of snow around.
As soon as it all started looking like a perfect, relaxed holiday trip we were overtaken by a Carbinieri car and asked to pull over. The officer asked for the documents but visibly mellowed when he realised from the presented driver's licence that we were Australian.
As it turned out I had obscured the rear registration plates with a red-and-white warning board that the DRM guy had told us to display when driving in Italy. The advice was wrong as the officer explained to us in broken English that it only applied if something stuck more than 1 meter out of the car. In our case there was just an unused bike rack.
We spared a warm thought for the DRM personnel and in return the Carabinieri spared us a fine that I suppose would have been rather hefty.
