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Day 68

Posted by on June 13, 2019

Start:  Borghetto

Finish:  Rovereto

Distance:  19

Total:  1032

Today was a very straight forward 19 mile walk down Hwy 12 through more vineyard country. It was in the 60s early this morning but heated up to mid-80s by the end of my walk. 

The day got started when I woke up at 6:00, after planning to sleep in until at least 7:00. Breakfast at the hotel started at 7:00 so I headed downstairs right when they opened. As you recall, I took the train from my ending point yesterday in Borghetto to Rovereto to spend the night. So this morning I needed to backtrack to Borghetto by train to start today’s walk.  Yesterday I found out the train leaves Rovereto once every hour, at :47 minutes past.  I originally planned to take a taxi to the train station, but decided since I was ahead of schedule this morning, I would just walk. When I was ready to leave the hotel, I put my route in Google Maps and it had me arriving at the station two minutes before the train was scheduled to leave. Since I didn’t have a ticket yet, I decided after I’d gotten about 10 minutes down the street that I might not make it on time. So I saw a gas station ahead and I walked up to a random car as it was driving out of the station going in the direction of the train station.  I motioned to the gentleman driver to roll down his window and in a strong Texas accent I played my “stupid American” card and said “train station???” and pointed down the street in the direction I already knew was to the train station. The guy said yes in strong Italian. Then I boldly followed with “can you take me there???”  He really didn’t understand so I went into my charades routine motioning to myself, his car, the train station, etc, until he gestured for me to get in. So off I went with a random nice guy to the train station, got there in plenty of time, and caught the 7:47 train to Borghetto. 

Since the walking today was pretty uneventful, except for the amazing mountain scenery all around, I’ll tell you about another adventure that happened that livened up the day. First, I pack very light because I don’t like carrying unnecessary weight in my backpack. I have two pair of Northface convertible pants that I can zip the legs off and they’re then shorts. Suffice to say, I’m not wearing the legs on now. Anyway, almost every night, I do laundry in my hotel room so as not to get behind and have to do twice as much laundry the next night. So while washing out a pair of my almost brand new Northface shorts last night, I noticed there was a very large hole in the back where the seam runs horizontally along the bottom of the wasteband. The hole was about 4-5 inches long, and I gave it a little tug and it got even longer. So here’s where all you comedians are probably saying “Bahahahaha!  He split his britches!”  Well, technically I guess I did, but the opening was not in a location that would qualify as a true classic “splitting of the britches.”  

So to address this problem, I decided to take the shorts in my backpack and look for a shop along my route where I could get the problem resolved. After searching on Google, it just so happened there was a sewing shop called Dossi Marta in a very small town I would walk through around lunchtime. I put the address from Google into my phone and when I got to the town, it was very small; like one block wide and three blocks long; population maybe 100. I found the address, but it looked more like a  house than a sewing shop. I knocked, rang the doorbell, but no luck. A lady came walking along pushing her baby in a stroller. I asked her about Dossi Marta. She didn’t speak English, but understood enough to say she knew nothing about a sewing shop, and had no idea what Dossi Marta was.  So I thanked her for her time and headed on down the road to my final destination of Rovereto. 

Once I got to the edge of town, I searched Google again for a sewing shop. I got no results but decided to take a longer route through the heart of the business district hoping I’d find a shop by happenstance. As I was about to give up, I saw a Paul Mitchell hair salon and thought to myself there’s a place where you find young people who speak English. Maybe someone in there knows where there’s a sewing shop.  So I walked in and sure enough, a young girl who worked there looked on the computer and found just what I needed; the Confezioni Paganini; i have no idea what that means in Italian but off I went a mile out of the way looking for it. 

After several zigzags and u-turns, I found Confezioni Paganini to be a very nice little mom and pop alteration shop. I walked in and met Michela; seamstress extraordinaire. I told her my story, pulled the shorts out of my pack, and in broken English, she said “you split your pants.”  WHAT!!!  Are you kidding; that’s almost like “split your britches.”  I laughed, though I don’t think she got it. Anyway, 30 minutes later, and 15 Euros poorer, I was out of there with my repaired shorts.  

So it was just another uneventful day on the road here in beautiful Northern Italy. My day was great; I hope yours was the same. Arrivederci.

More wine country between Borghetto and Rovereto.

This honeysuckle is everywhere and smelling it just makes my day.

Clear mountain springs are plentiful in Northern Italy; this one in downtown Rovereto.

Meet Michela; the hero who fixed my split britches.

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