Giorgio Bettinelli Vespa Collection

Giorgio Bettinelli (Crema, 15 May 1955 - Jinghong, 16 September 2008) was an Italian singer-songwriter and writer. He began as a musician taking part in the group Piazza delle Erbe, formed in Crema around 1973, which he also played at the third Festival of Avant-garde Music and New Trends held in Naples in 1974; in 1977 they released their only studio album, Saltaranocchio, a concept album dedicated to the Hop-Frog story by Edgar Allan Poe, born as a soundtrack for a theatrical performance by the Teatro Zero group of Crema. From 1976 he took part in the musical group and cabaret of the Pandemonium. With the group he has the opportunity to collaborate with Gabriella Ferri, Rino Gaetano (singing in Gianna's choir), Gino Bramieri (who wants them as regular guests on his television program G.B. Show) and Luigi Proietti. Always with the Pandemonium he participates in the Sanremo Festival 1979 with Tu fai schizo sempo, a song that is very successful. As a songwriter he published some 45s for the Italian RCA, one of which, Barista, was very successful, broadcast by many private radio stations in those years. The story is that of a man, left by his woman, who drowns sorrow in alcohol and spends time talking to the bartender. Later he moved to Easy Records, a label owned by Claudio Mattone, collaborating with Tony Cicco and with maestro Gianni Mazza. Politically engaged with the Student Movement during high school, he began traveling at the age of fourteen, when he hitchhiked from Crema to Copenhagen. The following year, still hitchhiking, he arrived in Tunisia. At 17, his first experience in Asia, his favorite continent, on a bus. A graduate in literature from the University of Rome, he is famous for the books with which he described his five long journeys made on a Vespa. His passion for the Vespa was born in Indonesia, where he had been established for some time, when, to repay money lent to a local friend, he received one with which he crossed the island of Sumatra from south to north. On that occasion he decided to undertake the journey from Italy to Vietnam. The first of the journeys that the famous made in 1992 from Mentana, where he was resident, in the province of Rome, to Saigon, where he will arrive seven months later - March 1993 - covering 24,000 kilometers. Describes this journey in the Vespa book. From Rome to Saigon, published in 1997 and a great sales success, reaching its tenth reprint in 2002. The second part from Anchorage to get to Tierra del Fuego and lasts from 1994 to 1995 along a path of 36,000 kilometers. Starting from this trip he received full logistical and economic support from Piaggio, for which he wrote his experiences in the company magazine. The third joins Melbourne to Cape Town, for a total of 52,000 km traveled in exactly one year, between September 1995 and September 1996. In 1997, In Vespa was released beyond the horizon, a photographic compendium of the first three trips published by Rusconi Libri . The fourth, called Worldwide Odyssey, is a veritable world tour, lasting more than three years, from October 1997 to May 2001 with departure from Tierra del Fuego and arrival in Tasmania. It covers 144,000 km passing through Alaska, Siberia, entering Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar, and coasting it all the way to Djibouti passing once again to Cape Town, and then skirting all of South Asia from Yemen to Indonesia , until the arrival in the last continent, Australia, and to the final destination, Tasmania. During this last trip Giorgio Bettinelli was kidnapped by a group of guerrillas in the Congo [unclear], only to be released after a short time, robbed of everything but with his life saved. Describes the second, third and fourth journey in the book Brum Brum. 254,000 kilometers on Vespas, published by Feltrinelli in 2002. The same publishing house published Rhapsody In Black in 2005. In Vespa from Angola to Yemen, in which Bettinelli treats the part of the fourth journey spent in central and southern Africa. The last journey takes place in the only great country he had not traveled until then: China, where he had meanwhile moved and married. The journey involved him in 2006 and is told in his latest book La china in Vespa. Giorgio Bettinelli died in Jinghong, China, September 16, 2008, at the age of 53 due to a sudden illness. There he lived for four years, on the banks of the Mekong, with his wife Ya Pei. He was preparing another book, this time on Tibet.