Ok, this past weekend I completed 2,402km/1,492mi roadtrip to the Balkans for BalkanMeat™ with
@loose_unit, a Marc, and a Hank The Beagle.
Start at Casa de Flareside.
Joe & Marc met Thursday afternoon/evening, I showed them around the town I live in, originally we wanted to visit a cocktail bar that is on the hill of the town so we could gawk at France from a high place. Alas, they weren't open thursday evening. No matter, we found a very nice Greek restaurant instead and a dinner there. Sadly the bar around the corner did not allow WegBier, so we had to drink inside.
Anyways, Friday morning around 6AM, we started our drive to the Balkans with the route starting south through Switzerland, then east through Italy and finally, hitting Slovenia around 6 or 7 in the evening.
Off to a good start. Due to the Merc's inaccessable upgrade-ability to retain the original stereo and connect modern devices, Joe got some second-hand store CDs.
View: https://youtu.be/MbM3eWRj9Gw
View: https://youtu.be/t23o11RECZE
Morning stop for bakery things in Switzerland.
The route chosen had us stopping for lunch at Lake Como, sadly the dash camera video is missing, but when we were going through the boarder crossing between Switzerland and Italy, we blasted some opera music with all the windows down. It got the attention of the police who just gave us wide eyes and confused look as we passed through. There was an officer who I thought was going to cross the road, so I stopped but he just waved me on with his cigarette.
Then onwards, driver change to Joe until evening stop in Slovenia to have a dinner with
@IceBone and
@nicjasno.
First fuel stop in Italy after starting at my place in Germany.
Joe's nerves were tested with Italian afternoon commuter traffic, they seem to just zoom up, heavy brake all the time rubber banding, which makes using cruise control difficult. After passing Venice, the highways calmed down and we reached the boarder.
Before penetrating Slovenia, we needed a toll pass, like Austria or Swizterland's Maut/Vignette sticker. I wanted a physical sticker for the keepsake, but the first stop where you could buy them, the shop was closed, so it was bought online instead. Sad times. This stop was apparently still on the Italian side and this was my first experience seeing squat toilets in person. Unless I really had to go, thats a no for me, dog.
Suddenly, singage with letters arranged even more different.
After this, we made it to our stop in Maribor to our AirBnB, the host greeted us in German. Apparently in the 90s it was seen to Slovenia that Germany was the next up and coming country and so a lot of people apparently know German, especially, naturally, the closer you get to the boarder with Austria, interesting surprise by me.
A Dinner was had.
The next morning we had breakfast Kebab, and it was off to Croatia to meet up with a
@47
Once we got to
@47's place, many meats, cake, and burek were had. Sunday, we visited a war memorial from the Yugoslavian war and an appropriate photo of the Fragette with TheCompact, Igor's Renault, and
@argatoga's Fiat were made.
Afterwards, we went back to
@47's place, had some drinks and more meat and cake, Monday morning came and sadly, this marked the return back to reality.
The drive from Croatia to the Austrian boarder through Slovenia was uneventful other than, Croatian highways on Labor Day morning were almost completely empty. We made it to Austria around 7:30 or 8:30 in the morning had a fuel stop off of the highway to avoid actual highway robbery of fuel prices.
Then, we carried on to an Austrian rest stop that had an American 50s diner theme in the restaurant oddly. Not the place I would expect to have such a theme, but anyways.
Some bacon, eggs, and a bread roll. Did find it funny how despite being American diner themed, they had on offer a Schnitzel.
After that, some spectacular views greeted us through Austria.
Then more kms covered, we hit Germany, a load of bad singing between the pop hits on SWR1 and SWR3 were had.
View: https://youtu.be/uQZ78obbs90
And finally, home, total distance covered and average fuel consumption total over that trip. I'd say decent for a 1.8L supercharged heavy wagon. I think that's about 24 US MPG.
More roadtrip needs to be had. There were two things found along the trip. During the first leg in Italy, I noticed the A/C wasn't doing so well, especially through one of the longest tunnels I've ever been through where it got to 30 degrees C inside the tunnel, it seems that the evap coil is freezing up due to low refrigerant. We got some cooling for a time, then very little airflow, and some cool air. We'd switch it off for maybe 15-20 minutes, switch it back on and we'd get airflow and cooling again. The reason for this theory is that, when we stopped the amount of condensate leaking out onto the ground was substantial enough that it would be normal to see in a place like Florida or some other place with a lot of humidity, but where we were, there wasn't so much humidity. Also, 4hrs or so from home, we got a warning that at next stop to check oil. Seems maybe some oil was burned during the spirited driving done in Croatia, or it's been slowing burning and since the annual service/oil change in February (I never checked it as when i bougt the car in November, I checked in December, never saw a loss). It wasn't that low as depending on the elevation/angle of the hill would the car throw the warning. We stopped at The Worlds Worst Burger King (how do you remove so much flavor?) we topped it up and continued on. Didn't see the warning again so, that's good.
I didn't want to jinx it on the trip but, this is still with the radiator I plugged with some stop leak in January, due to my mechanic testing and charging up to 2bar and not finding leaks in after the stop leak was put in, in January. So that's neat I guess. I really want to replace it before the next trip though. I don't like having a chewing gum solution.
