Chapter 109: Italy - No Functioni
Milan - Aosta
It’s illegal to hitchhike in Italy. At least it’s illegal to hitchhike on the Autostrada. I consulted Reddit and Hitchwiki and found that it is still possible if you lie a little low. You can’t stand in a petrol station, thumb to the traffic, smile on your face. You’ll get fined, maybe a lift with the Polizia if you’re lucky, but by all accounts the Polizia aren’t much fun. You have to ask people and ask them subtly.
Still, I was confident I could manage it and I’d booked the flight that gave me enough time to try. So from the Autogrill Pero Nord just south of Milan Malpensa airport I aimed for Aosta in the Alps. I was meeting my younger brother there who had set off two days before from Switzerland, on foot to Rome. I was joining him for a week, beginning in Aosta. Hiking for a change, without the hitch.
I’ve never broken into a petrol station before. They’re clearly serious about hitchhiking being illegal. There was a long deserted path that ran behind it through a swampy patch of land on the outskirts of Milan. I waded through spiders’ webs and thick thorns, scrabbling up the embankment to the chainlink fence. I followed it, pressed by the brambles tight to the wire until I found an opening, cut by wirecutters and peeled open like a blown drum. The wire caught my T-shirt as I twisted through and the ivy left dust on my sweat-wet T-shirt.
The back of the station was empty but for a lorry. You could hear the road flying just a few yards away. I slipped down the bank onto the tarmac and felt the hit of the midday heat. You could see it shimmering on the road. The sky was a chalky white. The shop was ice cold. Bags of biscuits and small inflatables for the pool, loaves of bread and packs of pancetta, sweets and crisps. There was no suncream though which made me worry. I didn’t have any on.
‘Make friends with the staff’ had been the advice of one Reddit user. I tried, but they didn’t return my smile and shoved the card reader across the counter then snatched it back aggressively.
The coke bottle hissed and clicked as I opened it. I was standing outside the door by a man in a green T-shirt with green shoes. He was eating a sandwich that crumbed on the stand-up table we shared. I waited for the right time to say something.
“Are… you…” I mimicked holding a wheel. He looked at me blankly. “Santhia?” I asked again and held out my thumb, bobbing it up and down. Still nothing. He pointed to the cars and carried on crumbling his sandwich.
Ten minutes later I tried another man. He had stretch of dark stubble on his chin and deep crevices creeping away from his eyes. He didn’t understand me nor my over-anunciated ‘hitchhiking’. I put it into Google Translate.
“Ahhh autostop!” He looked grave and shrugged, “No functioni.”
The next, a Colombian man was no help either. I didn’t bother asking the man in heavy leathers as he clicked past in Cuban heels, his thumbs tucked in his beltline. He stood at the table and poked his pipe with his bike key. He looked relaxed despite the heat. Then he returned to his bike, kicked it into a purr, and drove away, leaving a trail of dry pipe smoke in the hot air. Neither did I stop the woman with a crutch in her armpit, deathly pale with a huge white plaster across her chest.
It was a four-hour drive to Aosta and by now it was past three o’clock.
At last, a man with an open nature - I could tell as soon as I saw him even from a distance. Some people are just like that. I smiled as he passed. “You good?” He replied. When he came out of the shop we chatted. He spoke fluent English and he had a long beard and a black cap. His name was David.
“Aosta?! That’s a long way man. And what’s your brother doing walking to Rome in the summer? He’s crazy to do it in this heat.” I couldn’t help thinking the same. It was hot enough standing still.
David drove for his job. It took him all over Italy and into Switzerland, Austria and France. He’d once picked up two Austrian girls on his way south. He was going the right way and dropped them in Brest. “But people thought I was crazy to do that. First thing they said was ‘Did they suck your dick?’ then they said ‘Are you crazy?’ People don’t trust people in Italy. It’s sad.”
“People say the same to me in Britain - well, not the first bit. But still, I manage to get lifts ok,” I replied.
“People may seem nice,” he went on, “but then quick as that they’re in your pockets. Anyway, how did you get into the petrol station?”
“I broke in.”
David was driving to Langhe in South Piedmont, south of Torino. He wasn’t going the right way. “I’m sorry I can’t take you man. I really am.”
Shortly after the Polizia arrived. Not for me. There was some dispute over by the petrol pumps between a white Rangerover and a mini. The policemen swaggered out of their cars, skin-tight trousers with a burgundy stripe. They had wide leather boots and looked like some kind of dandyish highwaymen.
It was now four o’clock. I found on my phone a coach to Aosta. It was leaving in 50 minutes and Google said it would take 47 to get there. I gave myself three minutes to make a decision, then I abandoned my post and squeezed back through the fence. I ran onto the motorway bridge and across the road I’d failed to ride. In the bushes on the other side, a chubby kid with floppy hair bought drugs from a kid on a bike. He was examining the silver plastic packet as if he knew what he was doing.
I reached the train in good time but broke out in such a sweat that the passengers next to me all moved away. They looked back at me as if I had some disease. In truth, it did look like it. I’m not sure so much sweat has ever poured out of me.
15 minutes later, the coach was rolling. 10 minutes after that I saw the roof of the petrol station whip past. Four hours later I was in Aosta.