Pit stop: Monaco

After what we supposed that would be a really resting night in Airole, this peaceful village in Monte Carlo, we had a visit of a strange creature in the middle of the night...someone jumped from bed to bed screaming like King Kong! When we open our eyes we found out that it was João with crazy nightmare! Just sleep João....

Well after this, we headed to one of the main targets!Hell yeah, Monaco!!!
If you think that in this small place where you can find everything money can buy, luxurious things like yachts, casinos and expensive cars are the main atrractions, just fast on your seat belts because Maluchs are about to enter Monaco circuit...

After almost 3 hours in Monaco traffiic, we left with Rui and Zezinho's car looking like it would brake at any moment. Climbing Monaco was hard and without relanti it was even harder. This car was doing so much noise in the 1st and 2nd gear that we really feared that our trip was about to finish earlier... but... we just continue!


The next stop would be Montpelier. After Monaco we just drove all day and night without any problems in the cars... we just made this stop to rest. We tried to find a beach where we could sleep but it was really hard... We "camped" in a small park and we woke up some four hours after with the sun frying our heads and of course the typical mosquitoes biting our backs!

Grazie mille Vincenzo

After sleep really good at Vincenzo's place we woke up,we took a bath and then we had the pleasure of drink a real coffe prepared by Vincenzo's mother after so much time in Poland (sorry about that to all the polish but really, you don't know what is a coffe).
Joao, Taipas ans Vincenzo went to look for a new oil cap while the rest stayed at home with the computers, of course. Finally they werre succes and they found one oil cap wich a mechanic had somewhere. The cap was completely new and the prize was 12000 liras!! Yes the cap was so old that the prize was in the ancient liras, but had to pay 7€.
When we came back Vincenzo's mother's, the great Vincenzo's mother, cooked for us a really tasty spaghetti, spaghetti de la mamma!!!!After such good meal Vicenzo offered himself to be our guide trough Verona. What a great city! and Vincenzo was very profesional in his explanation. We end the tour taking Spritz, a drink that the people from Verona use to drink before the dinner.

We came back to Vincenzo's house, we said good bye to him and his mother and at about 8p.m. we left in Milan direction.

We decide to take a bath in lago di Garda, the biggest lake of Italy wich was in our way to Milan and there we decide not to sleep in a hostel in Milan, we will sleep somewhere in the middle of Italy after Milan.

After some hours of trip we arrived to Milan. Just amazing, no words, watch the pictures.

100 Km after Milan completely exhausted we entered in a comercial area and next to one kind of IKEA we decided to camp in a green area. We didn't know in that moment but that night was going to be a life or death fight for us against the mosquitoes.

After we wake up we just continue driving to Monaco... in the way we crossed between some little villages and we stoped in Genova to enjoy the fantastic Mediterranean beaches! It was so warm in this day that we repeat it many times along the coast!

After some hours and already night we just stop in a litle village called Airole where one more time Vincenzo family welcomed us! His aunt gave us a really cozy house to sleep and thank to it we rested with quality one more time and we prepared our body's to drive some more hundreds klm! :)

3 countries, 3 broken cars...and ciao Verona

What's happening followers ?

First of all sorry for writing so late but since we left Munich we could only access to the internet today! So here you have a little resume of what happened since Munich until we arrive to Verona.

If we said on our last message that too many things happened.. you'll be surprised with this one. Firstly, we were supposed to leave Munich at 7 am, but as the last days have been so tiring our bed felt awesomely good and we are too weak to deny the pleasures in life, so we only left the city at 11 am, but not after taking some cooooool pictures:

After a while driving on the German highway (where our car feels even smaller due to the amount of big, fast trucks/cars rolling like crazy) we decided to stop to feed the beasts (a.k.a. refuel), and that's where all the problems started.

PSEX didn't want to turn on, and the team readily put on their mechanic caps and started working on the problem (with t-shirts off to work on the tan at the same time, of course). As the starter motor seemed to be working nice, we thought that the problem might be in the spark plugs so we changed it and....... nothing: the beast just didn't want to come to life. After a couple of hours doing everything to try to fix the problem the gods of maluch sent us their angel: a polish truck driver (however this angel charges beer for solving problems). Boris (the name we invented for the polish angel) looked at car, sat inside and PUFF.. the car came to life ! This was one of the things in life that we couldn't find any explanation. Anyway, thank you Boris !

The 3 machines hit the road once again and on the next stop to refuel PSEX persisted with his own will to not turn on and we got back to the same problem, except this time we didn't have our polish truck driving angel. For about 1 or 2 hours the team was working on the car without any success and then we realized that there was some air flowing from the fuel pump to the engine. Taipas was so thirsty that he offered himself to suck out the air and drink some of the fresh 95 gasoline: "I prefer 98"- he said. After the air was sucked out, PSEX felt quite good and decided to come to life again !

Next we headed to the alps with the heavy PSEX struggling to climb up the mountains, some moments with a top speed at full throttle at 45 km/h. We don't think that these pictures capture the magnitude of this magic place. However you can get an idea of what we saw:

In these dangerous mountains what is the most dangerous thing that can happen ? Yeah that's right, it's the brakes failling: It happened to Rui's and Zezinho's car while approaching the petrol station. Rui hit the brake and the pedal went straight down without causing any effect. We were lucky to be running at low speed so nothing happened. After letting the cars rest for a while and cooling down the brakes we hit the road again.

You think this is too much ? Sorry, hold your pee for a while cause this is not the end yet.

After running for over 100 Km's since the last stop, we stopped on a petrol station and white smoke was comming out of Kalinka's (Joaos's and Taipas) engine. The problem ? The oil cap was missing, and there was oil everywhere but where it was supposed to be.. Luckily the engine was not wrecked. A coca-cola can replaced the missing part and we got into the cars, turned on our engines but unluckly the police arrived in that exact moment. The automatic money machine was broken and one of the cops suspected that we did it... after half an hour he just realized that we were not criminals and let us go.

After a while we decided to stop in order to check Kalinka's behaviour with it's Coca-Cola replacement part and guess what ? Instead of solving the problem, the can made it worse (PEPSI.. sponsor us !!!) We refilled Kalinka with oil and hit the road again, for another 10 minutes we were stopped by the police again. After some cheap talk they let us go and we finally headed to Verona to meet our friend Vicenzo who offered to host the entire crew. :)

For sure this was the worst day but we did it :D

Everything can happen...

Hi, our beloved followers!

The last day and a half was very, very long... Lots of great moments, some difficult ones, lots of emotions. There's so much to say, that we don't even know where to start...
Well, for the beginning maybe. In the morning (ok, 1 p.m. is not exactly morning...), after all the engine check-ups and smashing all the bags into the back seat, we made our consecration lap around Berlin. And we can tell you! Berlin loved us!

Berlin Parliament and Brandenburg Door

After some hundreds of kilometers and having some lunch, the first event occured. The PSEX (André and Joel's car) didn't want to come to life. After lots of pushing, it finally came back! Our joy was unbelievable! Now we all know what to do when such thing happens (and it really does...).

In the highway we were stopped by the German police but fortunately they only wanted to warn us that the minimum speed in "Autobahn" was 60klm!! They underestimated our "bombas"!

Being hundreds of kilometres on autobahns, with the aggressive July sun on our heads, we decided to make some deviation and take some bath in a lake nearby. It was great to refresh ourselves and the Maluchs!

After pushing a little bit more the PSEX, we finally arrived to Nuremberg. It was 23:00... In this city everything happened. We checked one hostel... We checked two hostels... We checked two hostels and one hotel. Nothing...

When we thought everything had already happened, we look at PSEX and we find it a little bit strange... Was that meat? Yes, it was meat. With the high temperature, one sausage simply exploded...There was stinky meat all over the car. Ahaha :)

Finally we decided that Nuremberg didn't like us. So we hit the road again. At 2 a.m.... We got out in the first gas station we saw and we started looking for some place to sleep. We found it! It was a very sweet playground! We didn't twice. Just brought our blankets, jumped the fence and started to sleep under the German stars...

The greatest moment was about to come in some hours! We woke up with some strange noise... Slowly we opened our eyes and we found out was it was. Some curious children were looking at us like if they were in the zoo, while their angry parents were staring furiously. We decided to just leave...

So 7:30, and we were awaken again... We entered the cars, wishing to leave to Munich and finally find some hostel as soon as possible. But... It wasn't still the time. The ralenti of Monkey Leader (Rui and Zé's car) was too low, so we had to try to tune it. Well, we tried and continued trying during the way, but it's still not perfect...

Finally we got to Munich. We found a hostel and, if you don't mind, we are going to sleep. =p See you tomorrow!

D Day...and finally Berlin

Hi everybody,

We arrived Berlin after 300km on the road...We are very tired after this journey, because we didn't sleep anything before the departure...so we decided to rest a little bit in here and hit the road back again today in the morning.

Departure:

This first journey was not easy, driving almost every day under the summer sun :P and to turn things a little bit harder, one of our cars had a flat tire :D but nothing that we couldn't fix quickly.

Tomorrow, we intend to reach Nuremberg...It will be another long journey in German highways :)

Expect more news from us...We will keep in touch!

Trip route

I think that everybody knows that we intend to cross the europe in a stylish way, so we didn't pick the most quick route to come back...no no! We took our craziness a little bit further, and we engineered our own route back home. So take a look

Ver mapa maior

So, Berlin will be our first stop, after 281km. Then we will cross Germany through Nuremberg and Munich. With almost 1000km done and to reach the Mediterranean sea, we need to cross Austria and then part of North Italy, with stop in Verona. Genova will be our next stop, and after 1600km we will gleam the sea again :D
Then it will be a trip near the coast, with stops in Saint-Tropez and Marseille (South of France) and of course, we want to test our machines in Monaco circuit ;D
In Barcelona we will have to say goodbye to our spanish pilot "Taipas" with party in the middle, this lucky bastard will be at home earlier than the others.
Back to the road, and with almost 3000km in the wheels, Albacete is the next stop...more 400km through the mediterranean coast. With Porto in the horizon, we will face more 700km in iberian roads until the final destination...hum...sweet home :)

Almost ready to departure! :)

Hello!! :)

We will start to present ourselves! We are 5 Portuguese and 1 Spanish Erasmus Students in Poznan - Poland finishing one of the best years of our life's!

Well, we thought about to finish it in best way possible... so we asked ourselves: "Why not to buy a car and back home crossing almost all Europe?" Well... we didn’t think twice and we just did it! We bought 3 cars... 3 Fiat 126p Maluch!!!

We are thinking in doing about 3800 klm in one week and maybe some days… it depends about the problems we might have! :P

We decided to create this blog so all our friends, family, Erasmus people and especially the Erasmus Poznan 2009/2010 can follow us in this big adventure! We will cross German, Italy, Spain and finally arrive to Portugal!

We are thinking in departing at 9 of July and this blog will be always updated with photos and videos as far as we can!

Now for those who don't know anything about this historic car, here you have:

The car was produced in Poland under the brand Polski Fiat 126p between 1973 and 2000. Due to a relatively low price it used to be very popular in Poland and was arguably the most popular car in Poland in 1980s. Its very small size gave it the nickname Maluch ("the small one", pronounced "Mah-looh". The nickname became so popular that in 1997 it was accepted by the producer as the official name of the car.

The 3 ones! :)

Rui Lopes, José Marques, Joel Cardoso, André Rocha, João Von Hafe, Carlos Taipas