Excellent advice all, cheers for this!
That bit with the 10 euro denomination bills was quite insightful! Methinks I should go round my local bank for some small bills in all currencies.
Question: do the motorway tolls give change?
As for the luggage, indeed I will be taking some soft paniers (fitting the 999 hard luggage would be taking it a bit too far!).
I didn't know that you could leave the bike parked at a hotel! Great advice mate!
Anyway, for the security of the luggage I came across something that I think might help a lot. I found a place that sells some oversized bungee nets that are made of steel cable (with a cloth outer shell) and together with a lock they are used for securing luggage.
Methinks that if I use them to secure the panniers, then removing them will be just a little bit harder for the thieving geezers.
I will go have a look today and take some piccies if anyone else is interested.
So, the plan of the trip is as follows: I will be leaving Greece on the 21st of August and getting on a ferry taking me to Venice.
Come 8 am next day I will be riding on Italian ground, heading towards the borders with Austria. I will visit Gratz -where I would like to do some walking around- and then I will be heading for a small village in the Alps to spend the night. (found an excellent little hotel there)
Next day I will start towards Vienna, where again I want to look around, and then I will be crossing the borders to the Czech Republic and heading for Brno, and then moving on to the Polish borders and my final destination, Wroclaw.
On my return trip I will be going over to Prague to visit a fellow Ducatisti (member of the ducati.ms forum), who was kind enough to invite me over and we are planning a small ride around -hopefully it will turn into a mini-meeting! 8) 8)
After that I will continue over the Alps and down towards Italy again for the ferry.