Vespa World Days 2009 Zell am See, Austria

This weekend from 12-14 June the Austrian town of Zell am See hosted the Vespa World Days – a true superlative event for all Vespa fans. 
The event was sold out weeks in advance with more than 3,000 scooterists officially registered. A large number of scooterists who didn’t officially register or participate in Saturday night’s Vespa ball further added to that number. The little town of Zell am See, idyllically located near Salzburg right at the Großglockner Hochalpenstraße (high alpine road), was literally flooded with Vespisti. Honking horns and roaring engines could be heard everywhere while Italian scooters came from every alleyway. The whole weekend proved to be a mixture of festival atmosphere, Italian weeks and street fair. The town of Zell am See as well as many of its cafes and shops put up some nice Vespa-style decoration. The sunny summer weather surely helped a lot in making this event a complete success. Too bad that some program points had to be rescheduled because lots of visitors thus missed agenda highlights such as the stunt show of the Munich Vespa Friends. Nevertheless, the awesome rally more than made up for this. The rally started at the local airport and led all the way around the lake, never losing sight of the lake and right in front of a terrific mountain scenery.

SIP Scootershop showed up with a small team and a brand-new team van. Our booth was crowded with people throughout the weekend. We handed out free catalogues and stickers and could already report “sold-out“ status by Saturday afternoon. Every now and then some terrific scooters arrived at our booth, e.g. the new customs from the Leibnitzer guys. So there was always some eye-candy to go along with the interesting chats that developed.

More than 15 team members as well as friends and customers appropriately took this occassion to ride their scooters all the way from the SIP headquarters to the Vespa World Days. We started on Friday morning and passed by nice spots like the Pfaffenwinkel, Bad Toelz, the Achensee and the Gerlospass on our way to Zell. Our way home led through Kitzbuehel, the Wilder Kaiser and the Schliersee until we finally reached Landsberg again on Sunday evening. Mandatory technical difficulties such as a broken clutch actuating arm, a loose exhaust, a carburetor relocated by heavy vibrations, a torn throttle cable, a clutch that didn’t disengage anymore or a leaky oil seal couldn’t stop us on our way to Zell am See and back.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sipscootershop/sets/72157619680651137/

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Enjoy!