The roads were barely wide enough for a horse cart, and often I looked over the face of a crumblingmountain, forcing myself to think of something other than death.
The result, in a mountain range characterised by soft, crumbling rock which desperately needs strong roots to hold it together, has been an increasing number of landslides, which block roads, railways and even rivers.
They prefer tinkering at the edges to tackling the real problems - a floundering economy, crumbling competitiveness, the eurozone's north-south divide and Europe's debt mountain.