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On the way: Sardinia
Adventure Sardinia
On the way to Sardinia
There are unforgettable curves, backdrops like in the Dolomites and impenetrable maquis. The asphalt is easy to grip, the slopes are bumpy and the water is as clear as in an aquarium. Dirk Schafer (text and photos) experienced something adventurous here.
Dirk Schafer
08/13/2009
You are a deadly reminder! ”The face is as close to me as usually only the visor of my helmet. Too close. I smell the breath, the aftershave. The eyes are dark brown, piercing. A Sardinian as we imagine him to be. I understand what he is saying. And even if not, his facial expressions are unambiguous. But what does he want from me now?
The policewoman at the entrance to Laconi had let Andi, my travel companion, and me drive on. A funeral procession was on the way on Dorfstrasse, she had said. But no problem if we lead slowly. The church came to meet us. We turned off the engines, took off our helmets. There were about twenty men ahead of the procession, dressed as if for their own wedding. Each of them wore a wreath adorned with yellow ribbons in both hands. Behind the pallbearers. The sweat ran from their foreheads into their eyes. The following parish took up the entire width of the street. And then one of these wreath bearers came up to me. A giant.
“You are a dead man!” He hisses once more through his narrow lips. Is he mistaking me for someone? Or does he have problems with the German language, which he may have acquired as a worker in Bavaria or Swabia? Or was I too impressed by the fantastic stories about indomitable, wild Sardinian rebels who, long after the declaration of autonomy in 1946, had instigated minor rebellions and even organized kidnappings on various occasions. Or just cheat me off the many cliches about Sardinia?
The beginning of a serpentine stretch tears me from my useless thoughts. Down into the second, take a sharp edge and then hit the gas again. Right turn in the first, zack, zack in the third and the longer left curve taken with the grin on the nose and the tip of the boot on the asphalt.
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We’re pushing the pace. A low pressure area with thick rain clouds is approaching behind us. The front, which promised a thunderstorm, had darkened our rear-view mirrors all morning. And now that we are on our way with Pfeffer from Fonni in the interior to Fordongianus in the west, but can hardly gain any distance because of the labyrinthine series of bends, she catches up with us. A couple of fat balls of water explode on the visor. Where is a shelter, a roof, a tree? As far as the eye can see nothing but open fields that change colors in the twilight of the approaching thunderstorm like a decrepit tube television. A short pause, during which the drops are blown off the visor, and then follows an appearance that will not be forgotten in a hurry. White pebbles hail on the road, on the fields, on us. Hands, shoulders, thighs, everything that is directly exposed to the hail hurts like being pelted with stones. Within minutes the road is as slippery as Pril in a Teflon pan. There! At the horizon! One village, one city! I read “Ortueri” as I rush past. I don’t care what the place is called. But he has a lovely bus stop with a metal roof. It’s Palm Sunday. Everywhere in Ortueri there is hay on the streets. Lived tradition on an island where, as they say, you are Catholic even before you are born. The streets are flooded by the thunderstorm. The hay drifts through the village in lively streams and clogs the manhole covers. It’s similar with traffic. Here, however, a bulbous mobile home on the market square causes the infarction. Whereby marketplace sounds a bit exaggerated. Three parasols, involuntarily degraded to hail protection, are enough to fill the space. And part of the main street too. The automobile camper fights for every millimeter with oncoming traffic. Presumably it is only one of those many millimeters that is missing in the end to loosen the camper stopper from the village street.
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Impressive landscapes
This is the right moment to experience, almost enjoy, the Italian way of life: With their proverbial stoic calm, the Alfa and Fiat chauffeurs do their part to make the chaos indissoluble. Drive back? It’s out of the question! Almost wonderful if the new hailstorm on Palm Sunday in Ortueri, which is now showering us with its lumps of ice for the second time, would not seem as inappropriate as the mafia in a democratic Italy.
The Sardinian west is the country’s treasure trove and the Costa Verde is one of its pearls. Especially now that the sun is boring its way through the clouds, the landscape is fascinating in a very special way. Boxers glide along the perfect coastal road in long curves. Every twenty kilometers this perfection is interrupted by one of the numerous tiny places.
Marina de Arbus is one of them. We absolutely have to stop here. The caffeine level in the morning cappuccini has thinned out, and since Terralba our fluid driving style has been constantly hampered by Pavlovian reflexes. At the only cafe on site, the plastic seating sets adorned with ice cream don’t bother. The main thing is to enjoy another masterfully prepared coffee and chat a little with the host. He advises us against continuing south. Shortly before the Rio Piscinas, the road would turn into a dirt road that crosses the river in several fords and then flows into a field of heavy sand before finally reaching the asphalt again. The depiction is as gloomy as the clouds over Ortueri were. But since we couldn’t avoid the hail, we don’t have to avoid the Rio Piscinas without having to. And unlike in Ortueri, you can still turn around.
The sunny year has shrunk the river to the level of a wider brook. Even a golfer can cross the fords with ease. Only the promised sand field can withstand the indications on the cafe in terms of severity. But through the perhaps fifty meters of Sahara feeling, the boxers easily mill their way through. Nobody sees that we are playing in a rather unmanly way.
The Green Coast flows into a landscape at Iglesias that has been worn down by the incessant west wind. If there are still trees here, it is only because they have adapted to the wind and continue to grow downwind instead of upwind. The surrealist Salvador Dali would have enjoyed the bizarre trees. Fortunately, the wind leaves us almost unmolested. Only two gusts hit the front wheels and give a little idea of its possibilities. The rain-laden clouds over the Antiocio Peninsula give us more than just an inkling of its power. A thundercloud contains over a million liters of water and it seems as if it is about to unload all of it over Sant Antiocio. What’s wrong with the sunny island of Sardinia? Is that already climate change? One look at Andi is enough to know that he doesn’t want to experience a second Ortueri either. The bar on the waterfront comes as it should when a torrential rain floods the city’s arteries. “Due Cappucini!”
Two become four, four become six hot drinks. In front of the door of Marcello’s bar, the never-ending day comes true. Nine rounds of billiards later, the prospect of improving the weather has dwindled towards zero. Time for a first beer and a trusting conversation with the bartender. Success is not long in coming. Marcello has a German girlfriend and wants to know from us what you can do to make a German woman happy. The facial expression and gestures leave no doubt that he is hoping for useful tips for the genital area. And I thought he was the Latin lover! Or am I falling victim to my internalized cliches again?
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Aardvark among themselves: on the sparsely populated west coast near the Antioco peninsula, even big ships can enjoy enduro fun.
Many claim that the road from Bosa to Alghero is the most beautiful on the island. Perhaps because these 45 kilometers of the finest asphalt are not interrupted by any city, no village, not even an intersection or even a cafe. Always along the steep coast, the SP 49, dried by the sporadic rays of the sun, drives us northwards. On the right the scruffy, impenetrable bushes of the macchia and on the left the turquoise sea, the water quality of which, by the way – despite all the pollution of the Mediterranean – is still excellent. It is not for nothing that water sports enthusiasts above and below the water love the sea around Sardinia.
But back to the SP 49: Before this road was built, at most a shepherd got lost here. Or shipwrecked people who were unfortunate enough to be washed up in this deserted area of all places. What looks like wilderness to some, looks like a natural paradise to others. But nothing is what it seems, and normal tourists do not know that this supposedly untouched Eden is not as uninhabited as it appears at second glance. In any case, it is said in reports that do not want to remain silent that some of the residents here are as shy of light as cave olms. No wonder: it is said that you wrote a dark chapter in recent European history.
It’s about Aldo Moro, the Prime Minister of Italy kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades. Residents of the area south of Alghero are said to have been trained by the secret services and the American CIA here in the seclusion of Sardinia, as in other places throughout Europe, for anti-communist acts of sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion. They are said to have been responsible for a series of bomb attacks, and there are people who blame them not only for the murder of Aldo Moro, but also for the attack on the Oktoberfest in Munich.
People on the Costa Smeralda don’t want to hear about such stories. One lives on big tires and triples the prices for cappuccino and other things. For example in the port of Porto Cervo, where the private yachts outdo each other in length and ostentation. The famous emerald coast shines today in its jewel glimmer, the sun is finally doing the job again that one can expect from it in Sardinia. It is not easy to say goodbye to this island, which deserves a longer stay. Only on the ship do I remember the giant from Laconi: “Totarr Mahn!” Andi and I order two beers and drink for life.
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