Daniele Somenzi's Austria

Austria It's my first trip abroad, on my Garelli 50 cc VIP 4, a 4-speed with the pedal on the left foot and the brake on the right foot. Air-cooled.

With the tent between my legs and the sleeping bag on the rear rack.

I'm 18, I turn 19 on 13 September (a couple of weeks later) and then in November I'll leave for military service in the paratroopers. Precisely for that I had to go to Pisa to have a clearance document issued so I could go abroad.

Giorgio Zanella and Luciano Vezzosi are my travelling companions.

At the Brenner, after a whole day of travelling on our mopeds, we arrive well pleased; a few metres further on there's Austria. Down the descent, we see that the lines in the middle of the carriageway are yellow instead of white, and the roads well tarmacked; another thing that immediately catches the eye is the cleanliness, and the upkeep of the houses of the little villages we pass through.

That night we sleep in a tent in a meadow campsite to the left of the road; first time in my life I sleep in a tent. Inside with me there's Giorgio who with his jokes has me splitting my sides laughing. Every now and then we hear the train passing along the mountain ridge, much higher up than us.

The next day we arrive at Innsbruck, we stop for a few photos and continue to the left, heading for Switzerland; we ride ordinary roads; naturally 50 cc bikes can't go on the motorway. Here we come across very beautiful landscapes with lots of greenery and pastures, certainly not like the Po Valley.

Some ups and downs through the mountains we like a lot.

But then a pass towards the German border begins, which strains our mopeds to the limit; for a couple of km we even had to put it in first gear, thus overheating the cylinder head, with the cooling not forced. We stop a few times to let our engines cool; we wouldn't want to seize up right at the start of the trip. Then slowly, among woods and stunning landscapes, we approach the Austro-German border, where at customs we have no problem.

bye bye