TopGear

We have now spent 3 days in Modena just outside of Bologna to principally visit some high end car factories but to also squeeze in some foodie tours. This was our principal reason for taking the trip but somehow the trip morphed more into a Balkan vacation. The name for this footprint is Top Gear named after the BBC television show of the same name. Jeremy Clarkson and his too sidekicks would go on automotive related adventures which is similar to what we have been up to this week. In the 2010s, kids and I when we were on vacation really enjoyed watching this series. It was quite silly and brainrot but it appealed to us.

We started out on Monday morning at a parmasene cheese factory called4 Madonne Caseificio dell'Emilia. We had booked a tour and learned all about the manufacturing of large 50kg wheels of Parmesan cheese ranging in age from 1 to 10 years. Any older and it doesn't add anything to the taste of the cheese. We learned how after a few days in a mold the wheels of cheese are immersed in a salty brine imparting the saltiness to the cheese and also creating the thick out rind. We then entered their refrigerated warehouse where there were 33000 less than 12 month old wheels of cheese. Very impressive. After a year the wheels are moved off site for further aging. We finished the tour with some tasting of some pretty wonderful cheeses.

Several months ago when planning the trip, I had secured one of the rare openings for a tour at the Pagani. Pagani is the maker of very very expensive and very limited number of high end vehicles. 3:30 pm on Monday May 25. There were no other openings. The whole holiday was planned around this. Unfortunately the cheese factory tour was only available for 9 :30 and was over by 10:30 which gave us 5 hours to kill.Andrew noticed that Ducati, a manufacturer of high motor bikes had a museum in Bologna 50 minutes away so we drove on very windy roads to Bologna. Andrew enjoyed the visit but I am not really into motorcycles so the significance was lost to some extent on me. We had our lunch in a pleasant cemetery beside our car park. It was shaded, there was a park bench and bathrooms. I don't think the cemetery was dedicated to motorcyclists who had killed themselves on Ducati bikes but it could have been. It was quite warm probably 33 C. Anyhow we then proceeded on to the Pagani museum arriving at 2:30 but they were generous enough to let us go on the 2:30 tour. We learned how Horacio Pagani had started his own automobile company in the 80s and 90s after stints with Ferrari. His main niche was carbon fiber titanium reinforced ultralight streamlined bodies for which he bought AMG engines from Mercedes Benz. He was one of the first luxury automobile companies to start using carbon fibre The vehicles sell for millions of dollars and they make maybe 72 a year all custom jobs. The factory was designed to resemble an Italian piazza with no assembly line but 4-5 cars being built in place. It was very interesting to get a view of the manufacturing process and probably the neatest of all three high end car company tours that we did. Topgear had awarded Pagani car of the year in 2015 and the award was a bronze mask of Jeremy Clarkson's face which Andrew and I found rather amusing.

Tuesday was Ferrari day. Although Ferrari got started in Moderna, they had moved their manufacturing and test track a 30 minute drive south of Moderna to Maranello. We had a bus tour booked of the manufacturing facilities but it was rather lame as we just drove around the outside of the various buildings with the guide describing what went on inside. I felt a little disappointed after the Pagani tour the previous day. Ferrari is really into formula 1. The museum at the factory was given over to Formula 1 cars and racers. Andrew was a member of the Formula 1 U of A club so really enjoyed the museum. It has been very hot all week here in Italy with afternoon highs of 35 degree. Unseasonably hot. We decided to chill out for the afternoon back at our apartment. I got my haircut at a barbershop and we walked over to the second Ferrari museum at 5 pm. It was on the original site of the Ferrari business and had incorporated the historic original building with a modern addition. I think I enjoyed this museum better as they were highlighting the Ferraris owned by famous musicians such as Madonna, John Lennon, Eric Clapton. I think they had acquired the original vehicles owned by these individuals. They had a nice audiotour explaining the stories behind the various vehicles.

Our final car factory was the Laborrgheni factory. Laborrgheni had originally started as a tractor manufacturer but after having an argument with Enzo Ferrari in the 60s, Laborrgheni decided that he could make a better car than Ferrari and so came about Laborrgheni. The plant was located about 1/2 the way between Modena and Bologna about 30 minutes from where we were staying in a town called Bolognese. My worry for the day was car breaking. Tourist cars at these automobile factories seem to be targeted by thieves and there are various anecdotes on line of people having their cars broken into and signs in the car parks near the museums about car theft. At the other museums we had taken the cover off the hatchback trunk so potential thieves could see that there was no luggage in the trunk. Unfortunately as we were staying in Bologna we would have to have luggage with us. It seemed that the break ins were occurring in the car parks close to the factories so our workaround was to park the car in a car park in town used by the locals about a 15 minute walk away. We covered the trunk with the cover and took all of our valuables including passports with us and all was well.

I wasn't sure what to expect for the Laborrgheni factory tour after the previous did at Ferrari. The Laborrgheni tour was very good as it took us right onto the floor of the assembly plant and we could walk along the assembly line looking at all 33 stations of assembly. The cars are moved on electronic carts from station to station. The crew at each station have 28 minutes to complete their tasks. Bringing the drive train up beneath the chassis takes the longest time to hook up and this takes 2 stations. The workers are all between 20 and 40. Older workers move on to other jobs. They have lifts to help move heavier components but only one robot which applies glue in a perfect bead to the front windscreen. I have never seen a car assembly line so it was pretty neat to see such a state of the art assembly line. Laborrgheni prides itself on handcrafted vehicles and not using robots which are all part of their image. I can't think that robots would be more reliable making a vehicle. It also struck me that significant components of the vehicle were being assembled elsewhere probably by parts suppliers and we're merely being put as whole components into the Laborrgheni vehicles. Perhaps the parts manufacturers are using robots. The tour was excellent and afterwards we toured the museum looking at beautiful Laborrgheni vehicles. my favourite being a range Rover off road vehicle. Andrew has a model of a Aventador at home and he was able to find the true life version. We were done at 11 and it was another scorcher of a day. Our last tour was back on Moderna at 2:30 so we had time to kill. We wandered into town and had a cold drink and chilled at an outdoor cafe before moving on to an air conditioned pizzeria.

After our leisurely lunch we drove back to Modena for our final tour which was of the Acetaia Giusti museum. Acetaia Giusti is the largest manufacturer of balsamic vinegar in the world. It was tough to follow up on the Laborrgheni museum but this was still a pretty neat tour to learn how Balsamic vinegar is made from grapes through a multi-year process of dehydrating and rehydrating the vinegar over 12 to 25 years for the traditional balsamic vinegar. The Costco balsamic vinegar that we are used to is made in a less intensive process of aging and dehydration with addition of grape vinegar. They had a name for it, perhaps PGI. We finished with a tasting of variously aged and types of balsamic vinegar which were very interesting.

Having finished our last tour, we drove to Bologna to drop our stuff off at our b and b 15 minute walk from the airport and then the car off at the airport. Andrew drove and did a good job as the traffic was very busy. The thermometer on the car was reading 36.5 for much of the trip but the highway clogged with traffic was probably warmer than off the highway. We did manage to enter a toll booth that didn't issue tickets so Andrew had to backup in a very busy area surrounded by transport trucks. I was happy to drop the vehicle off unscathed at the airport. We ate out at a restaurant and called it an early night and we were happy for our in room air conditioner. This morning we were away by 7:10 and walked back to the airport to catch our flight to Amsterdam from there we will have a direct flight back to Edmonton. Hurray for direct flights.

This will be my last post for the trip. All the planning for the trip paid off. If I were to have done things over I probably would have spent maybe one less day in each of Dubrovnik, Split and Rovinj and maybe had a few more days in Italy. That said it was nice to have some extra days to rest up as the travel days could sometimes be quite tiring. If one goes too quickly one just gets tired out and nothing is interesting. I think that I enjoyed Slovenia and Sarajevo the most in the Balkans. The best tours were the Parmesan cheese factory, the Skocjan caves, Pagani and Laborrgheni in no specific order.Read more