Italy Just beyond the Slovenian-Italian border is the hill Tabor by Repen, with a church and a meteorological observatory – from there one can see on one side to the Alps, but on the other side I could already see the coast. All I had to do was to descend across Opčina to Trieste. However, Trieste’s streets, with heavy traffic of cars and scooters, are not very bike-friendly even on the way down – the only way down to the city is a one-way street which alternates the traffic direction up and down upon a switch of a traffic light, the descent is 24% and thus to make matters worse is the street paved with bricks… But unlike me, local girls on scooters deal with the slope effortlessly. In Trieste,…

Where to go on holiday during a pandemic, while any border can be closed at any time? The proper Czech holidaymaker shall supposedly head for the Adriatic. So how about across the Alps to Trieste? It’s all the way within the Schengen area, and moreover, if anyone asks, I can say that I did not cross any borders – at least if considering the borders as they were during the former Austrian-Hungarian empire.