Looking around

The Onsen in the storm

chloebruce — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

It has rained all day today. Being the UK that shouldn’t be even worthy of mention, but it is the relieving cleanse of heavy rain after an uneasy prolonged heatwave, so with relief I say, it has rained all day today. Whenever it rains now, I mean really rains, I think of my trip to Asia. It may rain often in the UK but it rarely rains well. It rains lightly forever, half committed to drowning us all in a lazy, self-obsessed, melancholy way. In Asia when it rains, it rains with dedication. It rains because it needs to rain, and if we drown, so be it. That was my experience of rain in Kuala Lumpur. A torrent of rain fell on the sauna like streets in almost literal buckets. The dry dusty tarmac turned into a gushing river in mere minutes. I walked 10 paces from the metro station to the Hindu temple at the end of the street where my hostel was and I have never been so wet in my life. It fell from the eaves of the buildings like a waterfall. It hammered the corrugated plastic roof of the walkway like bullets. And then 30 minutes later, the streets were dusty again, as if the rain had been a complete hallucination. But today’s rain was nothing like that, nor any rain that I have witnessed since. The grey sky and the serene Sunday mood reminded me of the rain in Japan. Elodie always says that the rain here is a pale imitation of the rain in Japan, and it is the only real time that she longs for Japan I think. It also makes me long for Japan, and long for one specific day in Japan. I mean, honestly, I wasn’t exactly there for many days- a grand total of 5 in April 2017- but I remember this day like I remember few days in my life.

It was the end of my trip to Asia. I had been to KL, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh and Hong Kong. I left Anna many days ago and had been alone to stew in my sadness for a while. I was excited to be in Japan but mostly to have company again. However, Elodie and I, close friends as we were, had never been alone together before and when I first arrived I was a bit unsure how this would go, whether I would feel as lonely as I had been. Such a statement now is laughable it is so ridiculous. There is no one in the world who knows me like Elodie knows me, and there is no one in the world I feel so completely able to be my true internal self around as Elodie, and honestly I believe it stems from that day in the rain in Kyoto.

Elodie’s family were also visiting her at the same time as me, so even with my trepidations I knew I would be surrounded by people I could talk to, whether I was lonely or not. It was also the first time I had met her family, but that did not worry me. I care very little for what my own family thinks of me, let alone everyone else’s, and either my lack of pretention warms them to me, or everyone is extremely polite and deceitful, because my friend’s families seem to like me, without much effort on my part. She has two younger sisters, the perpetually unmoved and vaguely fed up Pippa, who seems always a little unimpressed with everyone, as if she sees through all the bullshit to your inner soul, and the curious and carefree, totally alive older one, who I both see myself in and wish I was more like at the same time. Her parents are exactly as she had described them. All of them didn’t seem to mind a bit that I had invaded their reunion with their daughter who had been away for 9 months, and for that I will always be very grateful. We met outside a vegan restaurant on the other side of Kyoto. They were late because the girls had stopped at a vintage shop to buy a retro jacket and an unknown Japanese instrument that looked a bit like a psalter. The vegan restaurant was for my benefit, as finding food without meat was pretty difficult everywhere in Asia, but here was impossible. After dinner we went to the Kyoto castle to watch a light show celebrating the end of the spring festival and the blooming of the sakura. It was beautiful but extremely crowded. Everyone loves a good picture of the sakura. Amy people watched an awkward couple of teenagers behind us that were obviously on a date, cringing and silently trying to encourage them to actually talk.

The next day we had planned to go to Arashiyama, a town just outside Kyoto, to go to an Onsen. We had promised we would go to an Onsen when I visited and Elodie picked out the best one she could find. An Onsen for those of you who don’t know is the strange red emoji of the circle with three lines of heat coming off of it, or a hot spring public bath. Like a spa, but in Asia that level of luxury is called communal personal hygiene, not an extra special, and expensive, day out with the girls. We had roped her mum into coming with us, and convinced her dad and sisters to wander around Ararshiyama as they waited. The name Arashiyama means ‘Storm Mountain’. I practice the Japanese martial art of Jiu Jitsu (really) and we have a move called Yama Arashi, which means the same but the opposite I suppose, ‘Mountain storm’ which is a move for defending against a samurai sword, where you get in front of them, facing the same way, grab their wrists, put your shoulder under their shoulder and kick their leg from underneath them so they fall dramatically to the floor and you don’t impale yourself on a katana. I think they just wanted a cool sounding name for what is a pretty cool throw- I mean there is a katana involved (even if so far I’ve only been attacked by wooden ones) and everyone knows katanas are pretty damn cool, just like mountains and storms- whatever order they happen to be in. This information is not at all necessary to the story but it’s a fun fact, and I think the fact that they kind of almost named a martial arts move after this place reflects the general atmosphere of it. It is a touristy, in the pretence of being traditional, town at the foot of wide river and a sudden tree covered small mountain. It is imposing, powerful but serene and controlled, and ultimately, artful. It is also an accurate name in another sense. It rained all day. Not like Malaysian rain, more like a very heavy British downpour- like the best day of rain we would get, is just a normal day of rain in Japan. It was humid in Asia and yesterday Japan had been above 30 degrees, so suffice to say Melissa, Elodie’s mother, and I had not packed for the rain. Luckily Elodie had umbrellas, but only two. I, enjoying the cleansing caress of the rain, sacrificed my body, my canvas shoes and my denim jacket to the rain. In my mind this was going to be a day of bodily cleansing anyway, so the rain only added more gravitas and pseudo spiritual drama to the occasion. Melissa was slightly less happy about the rain, and Elodie was content to get soaking wet in the name of the destination.

The Onsen was 20 minutes across town. We would get wet there was no doubt but Elodie was determined and I was excited to continue my heartbroken white girl story with a ritualistic, mystic rebaptism. The walk was not difficult though it did seem much longer than 30 minutes. Perhaps it was that our every step relied on google maps, going down the twisty-turny narrow backstreets, the hard rain or the fact that Melissa had to stop a few times because her shoes plus the water were cutting into her feet, that made it seem so long. Watching Elodie interact with her mother, was like an outer body experience, as if I was watching me and my own mother. Funny how what infuriates us in our family is hardly a thing to bat an eye at in someone else’s. Eventually though, we arrived. The building was big and wooden and looked very grand and traditional. But the door was closed, and Elodie frowned. She went to the door and read a sign, “closed every 3^rd Monday of the month” I can’t remember her exact reaction but it was probably something like “OH FOR GOD’S SAKE” but probably more like a “WHAT!”, I think only I still say oh for gods sake. Either way she was that classic British mix of angry, disappointed, outraged and somehow cynically unsurprised.

We didn’t know what to do except go back to the tourist town at the mountain and hope her dad and sisters had not moved very far, since they had no wifi or data or signal to be contactable. Luckily we walked even faster, so fast I really do not remember the return journey at all; we basically ran. Luckily again they had not even left the souvenir shop we had deposited them in 30 minutes ago. So we regrouped and tried to decided what to do. We wandered around the shop, I bought a badge that said “Time is not real, we all die” or something like that, it still lives on my backpack. We decided to look around for a bit, having travelled on the bus to get here. We braved the rain and went to what Arashiyama is famous for, the bamboo forest. It was less of a forest, more of a bamboo zoo. The bamboo was behind fences that lined a tarmac path full of mostly Japanese tourists. Still it was pretty cool, and I very much enjoyed the House of Flying Daggers vibe. After that we went for lunch. In Japan they have this weird custom of having plastic replicas of the dishes they serve in the window rather than just a menu. It kind of makes you feel like you’re a doll in a doll house, not helped by the fact that their buildings are small and made of wood and their movements seem overly polite and rigid, like they have a limited range of movement in their joints. But maybe I am remembering things a bit too caricatured. This story is all from memory. I didn’t keep a diary at this time, too distracted by my companions and too jaded from my own self pitying, forlorn tone and preoccupation with my own shame, desperation and rejection. I had Udon soup, that being basically the only thing I could eat. After that we left Storm Mountain, having had enough of the storm and not enough of the mountain. I don’t know if it was at this point or if it was decided earlier as soon as we couldn’t get into the other Onsen, but for the benefit of dramatic narrative I’ll say, on the bus home, Elodie remembered that there was another small local Onsen close by to her place. She was pretty done with the idea of going to the Onsen at all but I, uncharacteristically, told her not to be so downhearted so easy. I wasn’t invested in that specific Onsen, any Onsen would do. Furthermore, I have travelled enough to know that planning with the expectation of success is a fool’s game, and readjusting to disappointment is the only route to satisfaction. Even furthermore, I wasn’t giving up on my damn grand narrative so easily. That whole episode with the Onsen in Arashiyama is one of the rare occasions that I had not had even the vague inclination to give into despair. On a trip so preluded by despair I was surprised. Was I growing? Was I learning? Was I just not really that bothered by a walk in the rain? Who can say.

So once we were back in Kyoto we dropped the girls and the boy at their hotel and walked around the corner to the small Onsen in a back alley. It was, to me, even better aesthetically than the last one. It was in a small courtyard, but generally smack bang in a residential area. The doorway was covered by a white draped cloth with Japanese symbols written in hand painted script. It was already evening so the lamps were lit either side of the door and it glowed invitingly on the dark street. You could almost see the steam rising out the door, drawing you in with the promise of a warm bath and rest for our damp bodies and our tired feet. That doorway had nothing which suggested that it was from the 21^st century; for a second we were timeless, we were far out of the world, as one often feels in Kyoto in its monuments and secluded corners, if you ignore the modernity and tourists you can glean in your peripheral vision. We entered, the protagonists in a studio Ghibli, half expecting to be greeted by giant frogs in kimonos or at least a spirit goddess or something. Instead it was a woman at a desk who gave us each a small rectangular yellow towel, not big enough to wrap around anything, in exchange for the money we gave her. You could also buy soap and things but didn’t, I think we had brought our own. So we ventured into the doorway for women on the right hand side of a wooden partition, and we got undressed. Keep in mind I met Elodie’s mother yesterday, and despite being best friends with Elodie had not seen her in 9 months, and had never even seen her in her underwear. I used to be so English about nudity. It was a thing for children and Europeans only. But Kate and American Anna had been so open about nudity in first year and on our travels in Italy that I had grown to realise my attitudes were pathetically childish rather than civilised. Also, having to get dressed into a gi (fancy white pyjamas that fools who think they’re samurai wear to throw their friends on the floor without ripping their gym shirts) three or four times a week just takes way too long if your trying to manoeuvre in a toilet cubicle or slip a sports bra over the top of another bra, so girls with as many body issues as you, though you know from your sly glances you’re pretending not to have that they have no reason to have because damn if the boys next door could see the bodies underneath those cotton potato sacks they’d find it difficult to get so close without their minds wandering, don’t see your boobs. Elodie was moving towards rejecting our ridiculous hang ups about nudity too, and in fact we had been excited about the Onsen for almost this reason- it was a symbolic of our sisterhood and our rejection of internalised shame about our female bodies, because we actually do think and discuss and care about such abstract rebellion- but for her mum this was an uncomfortable and nervous occasion. Still she bravely, yet hesitatingly, got head to toe naked in front of her 20 year old daughter and her friend she met yesterday. The changing room was full of other white women, tourists by the amount of body tattoos (myself included) getting naked, though not being English it wasn’t such an enlightening moment. In more strict, traditional Onsens tattoos are forbidden, or at least you are forced to cover them up with a plaster or something. Tattoos were symbolic of membership in the Yakuza, and since they wished to keep peace in the public baths they normally preferred not to let the Yakuza in. Since this Onsen was full mainly of tourists their policy was considerably more laxed- to my disappointment honestly.

The main room of the Onsen, beyond the locker room, was also gender segregated though not all Onsens are. It was a small tiled room, not much different from what you would find in any spa or swimming centre. There was a sauna at the back with a freezing cold dip pool outside the door, a bigger pool on the left side of the room, with a section marked ‘medicine bath’ and another marked ‘electric bath’ and the right hand side was just rows of small dressing tables, with a mirror and a bucket thing to sit on as a seat, where you were supposed to actually bathe yourself with water before and after relaxing in the pools.

We followed the two or three actual Japanese women and poured cups of water over ourselves. Immediately Elodie and I were fascinated by the naked adult women. We looked at each of them, securely, confidently, nonchalantly, washing themselves. Every body was individually beautiful; no one looked bad, or ugly, though some had bigger nipples, droopier or larger breasts, hairy bodies or wider hips and skinnier waists, there was not one woman I was not impressed by, and lightly envious of, in some way. I thought, if I were sexually attracted to women, there was not one that I would not whole heartedly appreciate. As it was, there was not a single murmur of sexuality in the air. This wasn’t a shower scene in a movie, there was no male gaze polluting the air with selfish desire or stylised erotic expression, gesture or tone. This was 6 or 7 human women bathing. Never in my life have I felt so safe, so secure and so satisfied with my body. Me and Elodie simultaneously dreamed of the Amazonian paradise that could be if only there was no men; no men to judge our bodies, to rank us and set us against each other, to penetrate deeper with their insidious eyes than they or we could ever dream they could with any other body part, stripping us beyond the skin and yet seeing nothing but skin at the same time, to fuck us and break our hearts. Of course, Elodie’s mum, not the ardent feminists we are, did not agree outwardly with our dreaming, though I think undoubtedly, she was happy the atmosphere was so relaxed whether or not that was because it was sans homme. Admittedly, it was the lack of sexual desire and gaze we felt momentarily liberated from, not necessarily the absence of penises. We talked of our bodily anxieties, the things about ourselves that we had despised and been ashamed to show others until this moment, and as much as we detoxified our bodies we detoxified our self-esteem.

We bathed in each pool, even the strange ‘electric’ one which had a small electric current running through it that you could somehow feel under your skin in an exciting and unsettling way. There was also another pool outside, small, a few steps off the ground and sheltered by a wooden veranda in a tiny courtyard. It was still raining quite heavily but in the pool you were safe. The light from inside seeped gently through the paper doors and windows of the building. It was strange being out of the rain but still submerged in water. It was almost unearthly, as if we had parted the rain clouds around our heads as we bathed like Diana and her nymphs. You were technically outside but it wasn’t cold. The water was warm and the air was still slightly humid. The rain fell on the little water feature that was opposite the pool. A statuette of a Japanese goddess was pouring a jug of water into a pond. The soft but strong sound of the rain hitting the ground blocked out any outside worldly noises. It soothed the soul as music does the beast.

We sat quietly, talking intermittently about women and bodies. I just wanted to sit in that pool, listening to the rain for the rest of my life. I felt like when we left this Onsen 100 human years would have past. Really it was only about an hour. We reluctantly put on our clothes, our mortal female identity and our anxieties (hopefully minus a few) and returned to the present human world. We collected the others from the hotel. They had passed the time in peace as well, Amy was trying to figure out how to play a tune on her new instrument, Pippa sat quietly with a raised eyebrow. We headed out for dinner to a local Chinese restaurant. We ate a hearty feast set out on one of those circular tables with the smaller spinny circle in the middle. The Chinese woman remembered Elodie from her first visit almost a year before, and she smiled enthusiastically when I ventured to try out my long lost mandarin to say goodbye. We were back in the real world, but for me something was a little different, not much, but a little bit purer. We said goodbye to Elodie’s family, they were leaving early to catch their flight home in the morning, so it was a farewell I was again intruding on, but no one seemed to care. I would miss them all though I had only known them a few hours really. I would also be leaving Elodie and Kyoto tomorrow to catch the superfast train to Tokyo. The whole day seemed to sense our impending separation and eventual return to the west, and sought to slow us down with the rain.

Instead of going back to Elodie’s shared house, we did one more thing we had promised we would do in Japan together- we went to sing private karaoke. We stashed a bottle of sakura sake in our bag that we had impulsively bought from a very attractive guy at a food stall at the castle the night before, who sadly seemed absolutely unmoved by our presence and sold it to us without subtracting or adding a single drop of charm. We sang the most cheesy and therapeutic songs we could find (we are talking ‘I’ll make a man out of you’, ‘I will always love you’ and ‘I will survive’ songs of desperate determination) and got merry on the sake.

I think it had finally stopped raining at this point, and we walked down the still and silent streets of Kyoto, cleansed internally and externally. And now whenever it rains I think of that day, and the peace and comfort I felt to the very bone and even deeper. And I long to be in the that Onsen in Japan, watching the rain hit the water feature, and feeling nestled in the arms of the public bath, like the jug in the arms of that stone goddess, hidden and safe in a secret world at the centre of the city.

Photos: Some things good enough for a photo

chloebruce — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:33:00 GMT

I don't actually own a camera, all these were taken on my phone. Google images has better snaps

Surviving Naples, Part 3: The Art of Eating Alone

chloebruce — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 20:09:00 GMT

So it was finally day 30. The last full day before we headed home. The trip had seemed to last an age, but also, now it seemed to be over too soon. I was so relieved to finally be getting away from my friend. The tense silences, the loneliness, the passive aggression had started to wear heavily on my soul. I don’t know if it was her or the humidity but I found breathing a suddenly strenuous exercise. The thought of getting away from her, not just for a few hours but forever was like the hope of paradise. I wanted so badly just to go home and hug my mother, to sit on my own sofa and have a real cup of tea. Travelling is all well and good, and truly I love it, I couldn’t live without it, but the only feeling better than finally getting away from home, is the feeling of finally going back to it.

On my last day I could have gone to Sorrento, or Pompeii but I felt me and Naples had some unfinished business. I felt like it had a good side which I hadn’t seen yet. It had already slowly grown on me. I was no longer terrified of it. The constant staring from people sitting on the pavement no longer bothered me. The ugliness took on a strange grimy beauty. On the train back from Herculaneum I had admired the graffiti that lined everything. Some of it was truly very good. Most of it was political. I wanted to head to the museum of archaeology but it was closed. Not knowing what to do now I just sort of wandered around that part of the city.

I saw a cute little bookshop near Piazza Cavour and decided to go in. I brought a book of Neapolitana poetry. Hoping to see if looking at the words could help me decipher the mess of noises I heard people speaking. It didn’t, written down it’s even weirder. The man in the shop frowned at me when I bought it. A gift? He asked. No, for me, I replied. He was surprised but shrugged and sold it to me anyway. I still have it. I still cannot understand the majority of what it says. Most of the day I just spent walking around. Getting more and more comfortable in the city without actually seeing anything of much merit, just normal people living their normal lives. Things that seemed insane to me were starting to feel normal. Like the traffic. Driving in Italy is generally quite atrocious but in Naples you’re a pedestrian at your own risk. They don’t really have traffic lights to cross the road, just zebra crossings or scesci. You have to just step out and pray. The cars won’t stop, they’ll just slow down, hoping to just miss you as they speed past. But Naples is great practice for other places that live just as dangerously, like Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City, and years later when I visited these places I was very grateful of the practice. It never stops being terrifying, but you figure out how to read the traffic, and work with it rather than trying to part it like Moses.

I sat down for a long time at piazza Dante in a café. There were two men behind me having a sort of business meeting about the finances of the café. When I first got to Naples I was so terrified, so desperate to leave. Now I was so sad to be going. If someone asks me what I saw or did in Naples the truth is, I did nothing really. And although I saw a lot, it was nothing I could recommend, nothing worthy of a travel blog, but maybe worth a story, a story of people and day to day living in the world.

My last act in Naples, and Italy in general really was to go for real Neapolitan pizza. I had a slice of original pizza earlier, which is actually like thick sweet bread with tomato and cheese on top, but now was the time to go to a proper pizzeria, as recommended by google. There are obviously quite a few world class pizzeria’s in Naples but I chose to go to Da Pallone, because it was only a ten minute walk away on the via Nazionale. If only I had walked this way instead of in the opposite direction the other day, this part of town actually looked nice and classy! The pizzeria was cute and homely. It was pretty full but not too busy. There were two long tables at the front of the restaurant for solo diners, but they were mostly men. A business man, a young guy probably a student, etc. But for some reason my request for a table for one was somehow quite strange.

I had come across this before in Italy. A young woman dining alone just isn’t normal. The waiters look at you and repeat your question “per uno?” like they can’t possibly have heard you correctly. At first this made me uncomfortable and when eating alone I would devour my food as quickly as possible and then leave quietly out of embarrassment but over the years I have become accustomed to the solo life. The key is to do it with confidence. You are not a lonely cat lady who can’t get a date, you’re a smart, sophisticated woman who thinks she deserves a nice dinner and she’s not going to wait until some idiotic man offers her one. You’re an adventuress not a loner. Take a book, or write in a journal, look preoccupied and nonchalant. Staring at your phone makes you look like you’ve been stood up and are frantically trying to get in touch with someone. Smoking is excellent for these situations, not that I would recommend the risk of cancer just to look slightly less alone (I’ve recently quit). Smoking not only gives you something to do but, despite what everyone says nowadays, you definitely look cooler. Or you at least look like the kind of person who does not give a shit about your health warnings, your risk of second hand smoke or your dining conventions. Maybe not the kind of person you would wish to approach in a restaurant, but certainly one you wouldn’t pity. If you’re a confident person then none of this will matter to you anyway, and good on you for naturally not caring, if you’re not don’t worry confidence is easily learnt, or if all else fails, pride and sarcastic arrogance are good masks. In Italy, even this attitude does not leave you immune from commentary. Old men will share their despair that such a lovely girl is eating alone, and you’ll have to smile through like it’s a compliment, instead of a sexist opinion of female worth only being connected to whether or not a man buys her dinner. Waiters might take a dislike to you, especially if a place is busy and they have to turn away two paying customers for one. Especially if you order the cheapest thing on the menu, but how is it my fault that the vegetarian options are always the cheapest?

On cue the waiter asked me again if one was correct and he and his colleagues repeated “sola” amongst themselves four times as they tried to decide where to seat me. Eventually they put me on the front table, but not the same one where 3 single male diners were already seated. But I just wanted some pizza so I didn’t really care. Real pizza, authentic pizza, as I often pretentiously inform my friends when they question my choice of toppings, comes in two flavours: Margherita or Mariana- which is a Margherita with garlic. Toppings are a bastardization of true pizza, and in my opinion pretty unnecessary if the pizza is good enough. I ordered a Margherita and was greeted by possibly the largest pizza I had ever seen. The concern at me, a small girl, dining alone started to make a little sense beyond plain sexism. It was so delicious I ate way more than my poor stomach wanted me to, and even then I couldn’t finish it. I tried so hard but one more mouth full and the whole pizza would have ended up back on the table. Maybe I should take this moment to say, by all means, go to this restaurant. I’m no reviewer, and my story is told merely for entertainment, and pseudo-philosophical musings, not judgement or criticism.

As the waiter, a different one, younger and chubbier than the middle aged man who seated me, took away my plate he looked at me again and shook his head as if grieved “sola, sola.” All I could do was awkwardly smile and reply si, sola. My friends always ask me how I can travel on my own. Aren’t I lonely? As if loneliness, even for a second, was too unbearable for words. And if 'alone' automatically meant lonely. They shake their heads; alone, alone. One should never be afraid to be alone. I had been more miserable in the company of my friend than I had been alone on this trip. Yes, being with people is more enjoyable sometimes perhaps, but it’s also more stressful. And besides, company can be found in the strangest of places. Even on the streets of Naples, watching a gang fight, you can find a friend. Most people care about you, they might not even know you but they care, they care enough to give you a friendly smile, to give you directions, to share a bowl of risotto they’d made, to invite you to tag along with them on a day trip, to tell you their life story on a balcony in Venice. You’re only alone if you want to be. When I got up to leave, fully satisfied with my last night in Italy I didn’t feel sola, I felt libera.

Surviving Naples, Part 2: Eruptions

chloebruce — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 19:56:00 GMT

I wish I could say this was a bad first impression of Naples, but it was a pretty accurate one. Everywhere looked like that neighbourhood. Dirty, dingy, terrifying. The only part of Naples that is clean is the metro- the central stops are decorated with art installations, it’s really worth a look if you’re into urban art. We became aware of this when we went out for dinner that night and took a metro to Dante. The city is pretty run down. At the time I think there was a sanitation department strike, which explained the huge piles of garbage everywhere. The locals, much more terrifying than the chatty street sellers, sit on the pavement, watching you intently like vultures. It’s unnerving at first, but I think it’s their intense version of people watching. Mopeds zoom past, mobs of them, driven by teenagers definitely not old enough to have a license or big burly men with women on the back holding cigarettes. We walked, looking for somewhere to eat. My friend has this idea that the perfect restaurant happens upon you. She’s always looking for authentic and assumed authentic means good. But all the pizzerias we passed were closed. It was a Sunday and I doubt Neapolitans eat out on Sunday evenings, and there were no tourists here. On the side of the road I saw a cross, an actual headstone, “Luigi (it had a picture of a young man with dark hair and a sweet smile), 16 anni, la vittima inocenza di violenza criminale nella…” I didn’t read on. At this I told my friend we should stop walking, we’d just been going for at least 30 minutes, because we were not going to find any nice restaurants here.

She didn’t take this well. Our friendship, which had been dangling on a knife edge for the last month had finally collapsed. She unleashed a fury of words at me and told me to find out where we were then. I asked a man passing by where the metro was, he sighed, it was a walk from here. He gave me the directions and I thanked him. My friend trudged ahead angrily, despite not understanding the directions he had given us. I tried to talk to her but she told me to go fuck myself, I was surprised how little it bothered me, in fact I was kind of relieved that we didn’t have to pretend to be friends anymore. I heard a clacking noise and looked down to see my the soul of my sandal had started to detatch. It slapped against the pavement as I walked. I overtook her to try and guide us in the right direction but I turned a corner into a side street, as the man had told me- the third street on the right-, I turned back to check she was there and she wasn’t. I was surrounded by a hoard of teenagers on mopeds just sitting or zooming around in circles for fun. I ran back to the main road and saw her stomping off ahead. I shouted to her, loud enough that she definitely heard me, as all the teenagers stopped to watch me. I give up and decide to just head to the metro. I looked at the teenagers for solidarity, they didn't seem so terrifying anymore.

At Materdei I waited for her, because the ticket machine only accepted change and I knew she didn’t have any. I waited fifteen minutes until she finally arrived. The sole of my shoe was hanging on by a thread. I tried to keep talking to her, being as civil as I could but she ignored me. When we got back to the centre by the train station I asked if she wanted to get dinner at any of the twenty restaurants on the square but she said no, she’d rather starve. I didn’t feel hungry anymore either so I followed her back to the hotel. I sat in the hallway for a long time, trying to reach the wifi without having to go downstairs and then I just went to smoke. There was a big window at the end of hall that led on to a small roof. It was disgustingly dirty. There was evidence that it was used by someone as a smoking spot though, probably the people who worked here. There were drains and bits of rubbish up there. It overlooked on the back of some apartments, in the square formation that they build houses in Italy. The patio doors of the apartments were open because of the heat. I could hear the TV in the house opposite, blaring some local soap opera. I could hear the sound of cars, horns, sirens, every now and then from the traffic. Some muffled shouting and a few loud bangs here and there. Just a continuous murmur of noise. I sat for a while and smoked several cigarettes. But I wasn’t sad. I was maybe a little tired, a little hungry, but not sad, not afraid, not anything. I stumped out my last cigarette and went to bed.

The next morning I was free to do whatever I wanted without having to wait for my friend. It was actually quite liberating. I wanted to get out of the city. I thought about where to go. I had wanted to visit Capri and Amalfi but we wasted a day getting lost and being angry. I also wanted to go to Pompeii but a friend of mine recommended Herculaneum instead. It was closer and smaller and easier to navigate that Pompeii. I went to the train station and bought a ticket to Sorrento, because I still hadn’t made up my mind where I wanted to go and the circumversuvian line stopped at each place. The platform was full of tourists even at 10am. I was eating an extremely chocolately pastry for breakfast and the chocolate exploded everywhere, so badly I had to ask a Canadian couple next to me if I had chocolate all over my face. Then the tiny ancient little train pulled into the station and everyone on the platform crammed themselves in like sardines. The train door was hanging by its hinges and banged around as the train chuntered on. You couldn’t move, you could barely breath in the heat. There was a map of the line. 6 stops to Ercolano, 16 to Pompeii. I couldn’t do this for 16 stops. The train went around the city, stopping at each tiny graffiti covered station. I pushed through the sweaty bodies and got off at Ercolano. A fair few people got off too but not too many. Ercolano was a fully functioning town and whilst I wouldn’t call it thriving it was at least living. I walked down the main road toward the site, stopping lazily for a coffee and a cigarette on the way. The entrance to the roman town is marked by an arch at the end of the main road directly from the train station. At the ticket office there were only a few people in front of me. 3 boys, about 20 or so stood a little way in front. I had seen them get off the train and they made me laugh then but now seeing them up close trying to buy tickets was hilarious. They were all carrying a handful of scholarly books. One was wearing a pair of white linen shorts, a pink shirt buttoned almost to the top and a wide brimmed boating hat with a ribbon, as if he’d just stepped out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Another, also in a fedora and a brown linen jacket. The last, back as straight as a ruler, was dressed head to toe in a green/brown tweed suit, with a blue handkerchief poking out of his breast pocket and a pair of brown brogues. A tweed suit. In the 35 degree heat of southern Italy. I couldn’t not say something. I bought my ticket walked straight up to them and said “Seriously, these outfits? You couldn’t look more English if you tried!” Linen shorts giggled nervously. Tweed suit, looked aghast, stood up even straighter and politely informed me, in Queens English, that he would have me know, he was actually Scottish. I laughed out loud. I’ve lived in Edinburgh long enough to be aware of this kind of Scot. They studied Classics at St Andrews, of course. He jokingly checked his pockets for his Tory ‘Better Together’ rosette. I kindly informed him, my bright red top suddenly symbolic, that I could not converse with Tories and wished him a good day. When we entered the small, surprisingly well intact, Roman village we kept bumping into each other. After 20 minutes or so I got the impression that they wanted to speak to me again, but in truly awkward British manner didn’t know how. I would have gone up to them again, if just to tease them some more, if it hadn’t been for the tragedy that was about to befall me.

The ground at Herculaneum is not particularly flat. It’s either uneven cobbles or tiny sharp gravel. It takes a certain concentration not to fall over. But I was distracted, too busy gazing at the ruins of empty rooms, still decorated with mosaics, that I tripped and fell down forcefully. I looked around, no one was there, no one had seen me, thank god. I scrambled to my feet and tried to brush the thick grey dust off my knees, but I had several grazes that were stinging and bleeding. I poured some water on them to wash them clean but that just turned the dust to clay paste. I quickly hobbled back across the metal bridge that leads into the village, since it’s dug into the earth a little and surrounded by a deep gorge full of weeds, towards the toilets. I cleaned myself up and returned triumphant, hoping to meet up with the three stooges again. I walked back down, and passing the ruin of villa with a pretty mosaic floor, I stopped to take a picture. I reached into my pocket for my phone but it wasn’t there. I never put things in my pockets, but being here I felt safe for the first time in several days and as an act of liberation I put my phone carelessly in the pocket of my shorts. I checked my bag instead. I emptied it on the floor. How many times had I ‘lost’ my phone to find it at the bottom of my bag? But this time it definitely wasn’t there. I went back to where I had fallen over, but there was nothing there but a puddle of damp dust where I’d washed my knees. I frantically retraced my steps back to the toilet, my eyes glued to the ground like a bloodhound. I stopped at the bridge and looked down into the weedy gorge. What if it had tumbled down into the tangled mess? It will be on the toilet floor, I reassured myself. But it wasn’t. I went to the gift shop to ask if someone had handed in a phone. They sent me to the office around the corner. “A camera?” they asked. “No, a phone. A phone!” I tried to mime phone. What was I doing? Speak Italian idiot! “Un Cellulare!” I cried. “Ah! Un cellulare! No, non cellulare.” The woman took me back to the shop to ask, and to the kiosk where you buy audio guides but no one had seen a phone. She asked me where I’d last seen it. My Italian vocab didn’t stretch to ‘fall over’ or ‘fell out of my pocket’. I pointed to my knees and I think she got the picture. The woman in the gift shop asked if I had another number they could call if they found it, the number of a friend? I cursed Kate, she should be here with me. “No, sono sola, qua sola” I said. They gave me the offices number and told me to ask for Magdalena at 6pm- I still have the blue post-it note with it written on. So even if they found it, I’d have to come back tomorrow. I thanked them and headed back to the site, unsure what to do.

I had hardly seen anything of Herculaneum yet so I wasn’t about to leave yet, plus what if they found my phone? Or I did? I tried to sigh it away. What use was my phone anyway? Since me and my friend had fallen out it was my only lifeline to stop my loneliness. I chatted to my friend, who reassured me and kept me company from afar, and my mum who always comforts in times of trouble even when she doesn’t know it. But true, my phone was only any good when I had wifi and there are plenty of internet cafes around. I could talk to them somehow. But all my pictures! Gone! Well, it’s not like I actually took that many. I relied on my friend and her camera. I wandered around looking half interested at all the ruins and frescoes and mosaics. That was the kind of thing I would have taken photos of…Then suddenly it occurred to me, how would I contact my dad to tell me when I landed at the airport and where I was? Well I could message him online and figure something out. I trudged with annoyance, only half engaged with the uniquely preserved Roman ruins around me. I looked up at Mount Versuvius, looming so closely on the horizon, the old town almost blending in with the new. Then panic again. My bank details were saved into my phone! But they didn’t have my password so it was still pretty safe. I trend to fend off every worry with practicality but it wouldn’t do, it weighed me down and I sank into despair. I prayed to Maria to let me find it, but gave up half way through knowing it was pointless and feeling guilty for asking for something so stupid. I trudged on but eventually gave up completely and sat down in an old courtyard behind the villa of the guy in charge of the town. There was a statue of him in the centre, half crumbled away, that I decided to sketch, just to distract myself. After two hours I was finished (I’m a slow sketcher). I looked at Mount Versuvius again. This town, being closer was not hit by a suffocating cloud of ash like Pompeii. Herculaneum was completely engulfed by rivers of lava. The town used to be right on the edge, by the sea, but now another kilometre of land or so, made completely of lava, stretched out beyond it. The villas still contained charred bits of wood and other organic material, twisted by the heat of the lava, but immediately fossilised. It was thought originally that the town had been evacuated but in the last few decades they found skeletons near the seashore, which indicated the people had effectively been boiled to death in temperatures of over 500 degrees. Vesuvius still has this ominous, foreboding look, like it’s just waiting to erupt again. I thought about my phone. How could I care about something so trivial? I decided to let it go, it was already nearing 3pm. I’d been here long enough and could no longer avoid the inevitable.

One last trip to the gift shop, the woman shook her head at me without me having to ask. I shrugged and brought some postcards anyway. I made my way back to the entrance. Hopelessly, more out of habit than genuine interest I asked a random man at the information desk if they’d seen a phone, just waiting for the reply of “no, sorry”. “Ah yes! A phone?” he replied cheerfully. My heart leapt. A few agonising minutes later a woman in a tiny room told me Magdalena had it. Sweet Magdalena! I literally ran back up the hill to Magdalena’s office, or at least tried to put it was very steep and I almost passed out. A woman, not Magdalena, handed me my phone. I almost hugged me. I thanked her too profusely and then ran into the gift shop and waved my phone in the air. The woman was a bit bemused but smiled at me politely and said she was happy for me. I was so elated. It was a miracle. I should have been so relieved but I was. It was still just a stupid phone. But somehow it symbolised so much more. It symbolised that the universe wasn’t as bleak as I had imagined, that my luck wasn’t so rotten. It was like an awakening. I walked about everywhere smiling like a fool. I nearly skipped back to the entrance. I scratched the office cat on the head in celebration. He didn’t even flinch. With a new lease of life I bounced out of the site and realised I was extremely hungry and decided to stop for a very belated lunch.

Surviving Naples, Part 1: Staying Alive

chloebruce — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 08:20:00 GMT

We got a bus from Bari to Naples for the sake of our wallets. I watched out the window as the golden fields grew more and more fertile and the great Vesuvius grew closer and more imposing. Our first view of Naples was a city of skyscrapers, construction and industry. I felt so comfortable going there, I felt sure everything people said about Naples was exaggeration. It was far more urban than any other place we’d visited, not so much of the historic as in Rome or Florence. When we reached the bus stop at the train station my confidence started to get knocked. From the safe, confined comfort of the air conditioned and free wifi-ed bus to the bust heat of Napoli Centrale.

Taxi drivers yelled at each other aggressively and paced along the pavement outside the train station as a group of people who seemed homeless or drunk leant against the glass doors. Everyone suddenly walked at a rushed, city pace. The Piazza in front of the station was boarded up and the main road was busy with fast traffic. I didn’t really know where to go. Our hotel was supposed to be close by. I had booked it. I’d never booked a hotel on my own before. We needed to get to Via Novara. The sun beat down. My heavy bag made me slow, my resistive friend made me slower. We found the street, the busy main road right in front of us. We followed the hoards and walked further down. People stared, or seemed to, from shop doorways as we walked by the streets that we crammed with street stalls. These were not the street sellers of Rome or Florence, no official green gazebo type things. These had dingy looking crap on blue polythene sheets. An asian woman blared music from a speaker as she sat on a chair beside a box full of phones. The majority of sellers were African migrants.

I remember in Poligiano a guy had come up to us on the beach, he looked exhausted and desperate, trying to sell people water and towels. Me and Leona talked about it. So many came each year on those death trap dingies. The trips were arranged by people traffickers, they were offered the chance of a new start in Europe, if they risked their lives to get there, but when they arrived they found themselves sold into slavery by the people who brought them over, demanding their debt be repaid by selling tat to people who refused to buy it. This was the worst-case scenario, the best was that this was the only kind of livelihood they had access to. It wouldn’t be too far to call this part of Naples a ghetto. Every time I looked behind me my friend wasn’t there, she was always a few metres behind. I didn’t want to stop walking. I was irrationally frightened.

Now we had to find Via Firenze- there were no skyscrapers or polythene sheets in Firenze- We found it. It looked exactly like Via Novara. The actual buildings, behind the shanty town of stalls, were all dingy hotels. It dawned on me that one of these was ours. Finally we needed Via Torino- Oh Torino! Calm, pleasant Torino, where are you now?- A pretty black woman with a fed up look on her face walked through me. A creepy Italian on the corner gargled something at me. My friend was 10 feet behind. My ears were muffled, they must have changed pressure as we went through a tunnel on our way here and hadn’t popped yet. I didn’t have my glasses on so my vision was slightly blurry. My handbag had no zip to close it. My rucksack was heavy. I suddenly felt 19 years old. When I saw our hotel I was struck with relief and despair at the same time. Our hotel was here. Amongst it all.

The young man at reception told us to leave our passports at the desk whilst we took our bags to our room. I almost said no. When I went back down less than two minutes later he said he’d be another 5 minutes yet so I could go back upstairs. My friend told me to make sure I got the passports back asap, so I said I’d wait. There was a leather sofa in reception that your sweaty body stuck to like Velcro. Three guests, each one alone, passed me to leave the hotel as I sat on the sofa. A middle aged European man, a pretty Italian woman with obviously fake breasts, and a young black guy in a colourful designer shirt. The man who had been on the sofa when we came in was still sitting there next to me, staring silently at his phone. There was no wifi in the rooms. I stared at a mosquito on the wooden reception desk and twisted the key in my hand anxiously. My thoughts raced alone with my heart. Why did he need 5 minutes? It had already been 10. Where has he gone? Has he gone somewhere with our passports? What if he’s scanning them to sell the info to someone? What if we were stopped in Naples airport and couldn’t get home? He gave me back the passports with a sort of disappointed look. I ran back upstairs and voiced my concerns to my friend. She had been silent up until now. She looked mad. She told me she already knew I had booked a terrible hotel from the start. She thought it would be counter-productive to tell me. She told me not to worry, that the reviews said bad area, nice hotel. Her tone was not soothing, her tone was angry, full of ridicule. Her eyes glared, with every word she seemed to judge me. Why was I so afraid really? I felt suddenly overwhelmed with shame and an urge to go and apologise to the man on reception.

For a long time I was too afraid to leave the room. But as the hours started to pass I felt bad wasting the finite time I had left. I decided to leave the room and go back down to reception. I sat on the sofa and used the wifi as the other man had done earlier. I chatted in a little Italian with the receptionist and hummed along to his music, watching him obsessively reclean the shiny desk every five minutes and greet each guest in a friendly manner. The hotel was a lot busier than I first thought. All manner of people are staying here and each one returns in a happy mood. I heard the receptionist speak to people in English, French and Italian. If he realised I mistrusted him earlier he had risen above it. My attempts to speak Italian and nod as he replied too quickly seemed to have made him forgive my prejudice. The streets outside don’t seem so hectic now and people seem perfectly happy to navigate Naples, and via Torino, alone at night, so it can’t be so bad.

I didn’t pluck up the courage to leave the hotel until the next day. It was almost 2pm and my friend still wasn’t awake. We only had 3 days left of our trip. At first I was too terrified to leave on my own. I was used to receiving a free map with all the sites of the city helpfully circled but I didn’t have that here so I started googling things. I wanted a guide for Naples. Inside it had an warning about a man who died in 2011 after thieves on mopeds tried to steal his Rolex. Apparently moped gangs were a common problem. I looked down at my watch and thought about taking it off. Was this a matter of courage? Will courage make it less likely you will have all you money and your passport stolen? Is it worth the risk? Just to see one city? Is it cowardly to stay in your hotel for 3 days? Probably. Will holding on to your bag really tightly make you more of a target or less? Is it all a game of chance you have to play, and no one can help their odds at all? What if I stay in my hotel for 3 days and then when I leave to go to the airport I get robbed and stranded anyway? All my fear and caution was for nothing. How did something so trivial inspire such a deep crisis about the fate, chance and the universe.

In the guide there was a particularly terrifying, or rather ridiculous, bit. I didn’t know quite what to do with the information. It was titled “Signs you are about to be or already have been robbed” Already have been? How is this information useful then? The ‘signs’ are so innocent they will make you absolutely paranoid. “if you’ve just been bumped into, if someone offers you a flower, if someone comes up to you with an empty box, if someone begs, if someone stops to ask you directions with a map, if they are friendly and offer to help you with your bags. Be aware of children playing tig at the train stations and airports” What kind of world do we live in if every nice gesture was now suspect. I’ve stopped to help people on this trip, carried their bags, asked and given directions. I’ve been bumped into more times than I know. I feel like whoever wrote this article was trying to instigate hysteria within me. I felt like everyone in Naples was more trustworthy than this person.

The realisation that I’d succumbed to some bizarre tourist paranoia made me brave. I woke up my friend, told her I was going out and then left. The street seemed a lot clearer today but I still wasn’t confident. I walked quickly, too afraid to hesitate, but soon realised I had no idea where I was going. I finally got free of the polythene sheets but somehow this new area seemed worse. Everyone looked me up and down like I was prey. I followed behind some women and their children, assuming I’d be safe with them, but soon they turned down a residential side street. Dammit. I saw three middle aged French tourists with maps. They must be heading somewhere. They seemed to realise I was following them because they slowed down and fell behind me. Where the hell was I now? There were tram tracks on the street, maybe I should follow them? I came to a big square. There was rubbish lining the streets. A big building was in the middle of the square, it was covered in graffiti all along the bottom, up to the head height of a teenager. The dome I had spotted over the tops of the buildings was a dilapidated old church down an unquestionably dodgy side street. I decided to cross the road. There was a café on the corner full of locals. They looked safe enough; casalingas and a woman reading a book. Plus the young woman with the fan I had followed across the zebra crossing went in there. I had become a stalker in order to feel safe, what irony.

I bought a water and sat down outside. The boy who served me looked at me with a completely blank expression. He was dark skinned, skinny, with slightly protruding teeth. He looked like he had never seen a girl before, and quite frankly never wanted to see one again. I sat outside looking around, trying to figure out where I was. There was a tower in the middle of the road, two in fact, either side of a corner that looked like old city gates or something. There were two main roads and a road sign pointing to a piazza that seemed far away. The waitress put an ashtray on my table. Smoking was a very good idea. The portly man who said ciao to me as I bought my water seemed to be watching me from the doorway. I thought it was strange, so I tried not to make eye contact.

He brought over a tray with a coffee on and asked me a question, I thought he was asking if I wanted one which in hindsight is really not how cafes work, I said okay then and he started putting it down, I realised my mistake and informed him I didn’t order one. The boy yelled at him that it was for the other woman with the book and he went to her instead. But he came back to me after. “But you want one?” he seemed to gesture. “Latte?” he asked. I said “no, caffe” -in the north that means espresso, I hate coffee so if I have to drink it I want it over quickly and with the benefit of some instant caffeine- “But without milk?” he stumbled in English. “Espresso” I said smiling. He seemed surprised but said okay. He came back with an espresso and a glass (an actual glass not a small plastic cup like most places) of water with ice (ice! What a luxury!) in it. There were three different types of sugar. He tried to explain each one but his English was extremely limited. I laughed and thanked him and put ordinary white sugar in my espresso. He stood a little off watching me. He has deep brown eyes and a worried expression on his face. Suddenly there was shouting across the street. Everyone turned to look. The man, who I assume was the owner, took a step forward, so that he was slighting behind my chair, closer to the edge of the street, as if he was getting me behind him protectively. Across the road, a group of scrawny men in ragged clothes were pushing and punching each other. They looked like mangy dogs fighting over a bone. “Very bad” the man said. I agreed. The flailed for a while and then dissipated as the man gossiped with the other customers, still beside my chair. The man paced for a while, he tried to laugh it off with the other customers but I could see he was worried. A worrier knows another worrier. He looked at me, asked me if I was alright and refilled my glass of water. This time sparkling with a slice of lemon.

After hopelessly trying to figure out where I was for ten minutes I gave up and asked my guardian what the street was called. I showed him the half loaded google maps I was trying to navigate with. He fumbled over my phone, constantly correcting himself. He hardly seemed to know. I tried to explain that the map was bad because I had no wifi so I couldn’t search or zoom in too far, but he didn’t seem to understand me either because the concept was alien or my Italian was too bad.

Over the next ten or so minutes he kept coming back to reaffirm or correct his directions. Via Carbanara was there. Chiesa di Santa Caterina a Formiello, qua, pointing to the dilapidated church. That’s via Cesare Rosaroll. I smiled and thanked him again and he finally felt satisfied so he started chatting, or at least he tried. “Inglese?” he said, more a knowing statement than a question. I was happy, he didn’t assume Americana like everyone else. “Du?” he asked. Du? What is du? I looked puzzled. He helped, “Londra…o…” Oh! Like di! Wow Neapolitan wasn’t an accent it was a language. This explains why I couldn’t understand the receptionist or the cleaner who came in to make our beds this morning angry to find us still in them. Surely they must know I’m not going to know the local dialect? But people in Barcelona don’t try and speak Spanish first, and Glaswegians don’t start with standard English so I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s their native language at the end of the day. I tried to explain I was from a small town in the middle England but the word for town, paese, also means country and I just confused him. He understood, I think, when I said “mezzo, mezzo di Inghilterra”. When I asked for the bill he said “un’euro trenta” but when I gave him 1.30 he said okay, okay like I hadn’t given him enough but he was letting me off. That really confused me but I was grateful and didn’t know how to argue. I said ciao, a little sad to leave my sanctuary but he seemed eager for me to get out of this neighbourhood and go back to somewhere more central.

I panicked again at the corner and decided maybe I should keep going rather than turn. I needed to find Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. I kept walking until I saw that the road ahead looked even worse than where I’d come from. Oh god, this was via Casanova. I felt in my gut as soon as I saw via Casanova on my map to stay away from it. Instead of turning back the war I came I panicked and turned in the wrong direction. I used to have such a terrible sense of direction and getting lost in Italy had almost become habit. I came to a street almost empty of people. I felt safer. I took time to look around. Even at 3:30 most things were closed. Rubbish lined the gutters and teenagers professed their love on shop walls. There was a general smell of rubbish and piss. Betting shops were every ten feet, discount clothing stores and the lotto advertised in every tabbachi. I never saw one single betting shop in the North or lotto sign. It reminded me of my home town. I realised the place I came from was as poor and dingy as this and I had survived there for almost 20 years. I began to feel a sort of warmth for this rotten city. Somehow, I ended up on via Ettone Bellini and then Martiri D’Otranto. I really was going the wrong way. I was even more lost than before.

The route I took, I can’t remember. But bakeries began to look fancier and there was less garbage so I took it as a sign I was going the right way. I followed a smart looking middle aged woman for a while but she turned down a side street which had a shrine to Jesus crucified before a park. A sign said “Giardino e Cimiteri di Inglese” I was intrigued but didn’t stop. I saw ‘Garibaldi’ on the top of a bus stop and decided I was on the right track, this must be Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. For once I wasn’t wrong. A colomn with a beautifully serene Mary perched on top with a halo of stars crowning her head, held out her arms to welcome me to safety. I walked down to the very end. Piazza San Carlo III. Ah. There were maps on the street but why look? I knew I had walked the wrong blood way down Garibaldi. I trudged back the way I had came. Mary’s arms now looked like an uncaring shrug. I walked past the toy shop I had seen as a good omen a few minutes before and the bakeries full of tastey cakes. This was obviously the right way. People began to appear, groups of people. I thought I saw the American woman who was walking behind me earlier and I tried to catch up to see- I don’t know why. Then I realised I was back at the corner of via Casanova. I could see the café. I wondered if he’d seem me, trudging, sweating profusely, going in the wrong direction. Suddenly more appeared in front of me. Lots of people, streets sellers, idle people leaning on corners, the train station, via Firenze. I had made it. I felt relieved and safe to be on via Torino again. I may not have seen or done much on my first day in Naples but at that moment I was relieved just to have survived.

Unconventional Living

chloebruce — Wed, 8 Jul 2015 04:48:00 GMT

Two of the best sites in Puglia and the surrounding area are the small towns of Alberobello and Matera. Both are easily accessible by specially designated trains from Bari and both are unesco world heritage sites. Alberobello means white tree, and probably stems from the Trulli houses that lie on the outskirts of town (a bit of a walk from the train station- follow the brown signs). They are tiny white houses with pointed, dome tiled roofs. They are still lived in or used as restaurants and shops. They are cramped but naturally well air conditioned. The locals take very good care of them, just as they do in the Cinque Terre, probably thanks to all the funding from tourists and the like. Its preserved mainly for tourism and theres not much to do except walk around and check out the buildings, but still it's a nice day out. The roofs are decorated with pagan and early Christian symbols. The original settlement dates from the bronze age but most of the buildings still there are medieval. More like huts than houses, they are unlike any other kind of housing I have ever seen.

Matera, in my opinion is even more impressive than Alberobello, though probably not as historically important. Technically Matera is in Basilicata but it’s still easy to reach by train. It is also an example of unconventional living conditions. Matera is a town carved out of rock. Getting off the train there is little sign of anything special. A woman stopped to try and give us directions but gave up half way through and walked off. We saw a brown sign for Sassi and took an educated guess that that was the right way. It was. Below the modern town was another town that looked as if it was emerging half-finished from the rock. There was a big church on the top of the hill overlooking the grey. But this isn’t even really the start of Matera. You have to go through the little lanes behind the church that lead you to a walled road on the edge of cliff. Here you can see the hills that closely surround the town. There were little rocks and caves in the hills and down below between them and the town was a gorge with a little river running through it. The place was full of birds. Little swallows flew freely over the gorge and hawks glided through the blue sky. Suddenly a large bird with a deep orange back that glowed in the sun, most likely a Kite, dived to catch one of the swirling smaller birds. It clawed at one but just missed it. It was like a dragon rampaging the skies.

A sign told us that many rare birds lived on the hillside, even some eagles and vultures. Another sign pointed down the road to something called the Caso Grotto and we decided to follow it. We rounded the curve in the road and saw another group of rock houses. These looked much older and smaller than the others and even more merged into the rock. Again a church sat overlooking the small town. This was truly made from rock, a huge boulder sat on top of it like it had been thrown down from the sky. I’d never seen anything like it. This part of the town was the real Matera. It had been used to film parts of the Passion of Christ film. The Caso Grotto were caves that up until as late as the 1950’s people were using as homes. One was still furnished with beds and a stove, even family pictures and a fake donkey to show how it would have lived inside with the family. Another was called a nievene, which I discovered was a cave used to store the valuable commodity of snow during the hot Mediterranean summer, which in the heat of the day seemed impossible despite the coolness of the cave.

The squashed church on top is called the Maria di Idris. We got a bit lost trying to figure out how to get up to it and ended up walking the long way around. Inside it just looked like another cave. There were remnants of medieval frescoes on the walls but they were badly damaged. They give you a leaflet to explain where each part of the church was but it’s still hard to figure it out. It’s very interesting inside, hard to imagine any congregation ever having sat in there. We sat for a long time outside on the rock just overlooking the town and the hills and the sunset. Watching the skinny cats lounging in the sun and the group of school children climbing the rock and shouting obscenities at each other for fun. At night, back in the main town with all the restaurants and bars, the residents light lamps outside their houses to fill the grey rocks with sparkling light, though sadly in order to catch our last train back to Bari we had to leave before most of them came on.

In the Company of Strangers

chloebruce — Mon, 6 Jul 2015 01:23:00 GMT

Driving down from Rome I was again mesmerised by the mountains of Lazio. I never thought of Italy as so mountainous or hilly. Then we entered Puglia, the land of my foremothers. Fields, golden with wheat, endless grapevines and olive trees as far as the eye could see on the flat horizon. This was exactly like my dream of Italy. Maybe it was genetic memory. Maybe my grandma had told me about home when I was younger and though the conversations had been forgotten the images they stirred had not. We arrived in Bari in the evening. We had ordered a blablacar, like a long distance uber from Rome to Bari. It only cost something like 10 euros each for petrol money. The Italian autostrada is a mess of potholes and Italian drivers evidently don’t care about their suspension. But we got there in under 5 hours so it was for the best really. Along with me and my friend, there was another guy in the car getting a lift home from University in Rome. He didn’t understand why we were bothering to visit Bari, but everyone thinks there home is boring. For most of the journey I just sat and listened to him talk to our driver, trying to pick up what they were saying.

We didn’t really have a plan when we got to Bari. We had 5 days free before we had to be in Naples, our last stop. We purposefully didn’t plan anything past the first few nights in Bari, thinking that we would just check where someone was driving too and catch a lift. But the spontaneity had drained right out of us, and 3 weeks of continuous moving around had caught up with us. We decided to just stay in Bari for the whole 5 nights. That wasn’t such a terrible idea, since its well connected by train to the rest of Puglia, and has cheap direct buses to Naples. The city itself is a nice place to visit, similar to Edinburgh in a way with its historic old town and bustling new town standing opposite each other. Bari is a port town on the Adriatic. It was once the capital for the Byzantine (Greek) Empire’s holdings in Italy, but it was taken over by the Normans in the middle ages. This means it’s influences, specifically religious and architectural are unlike the rest of Italy.

It’s patron saint is Saint Nicholas, who is a more important saint in the orthodox church than he is in the western (except when he takes on his alter-ego of Santa Claus), his tomb lies in Bari and many orthodox Christians hop on the ferry from eastern Europe to make their pilgrimage to him. The ferry to and from Croatia leaves very regularly and so Bari is used as a stopping off point before leaving or entering Italy. This means the kind of people you meet in Bari is extremely varied. In our hostel room alone we met some people we would never forget. A young 18 year old Chilean girl about to start studying Anthropology and travelling around Europe for 9 months on her own, was staying in the bed underneath Kate. She was leaving in a few days but we spent some time with her. She was wise for her age and fun to be around (I have a very high opinion of Chileans after this trip). We went for lunch in the old town with her but the restaurant we were looking for was closed so we ended up just sitting outside a bar playing cards as we listened to a very loud argument between two bawdy women going on down a side street, trying to decipher the pugliese dialect to see what it was about.

Fran had temporarily attached herself to a man everyone nicknamed “Crazy” and his 15 year old son who were also staying in the hostel. Me and Fran were the only people who listened to his rants. He was a cliché. A 52 year old American guy who had evidently never left the 70s. He told us he had a spiritual awakening after a massive dose of LSD. He was temporarily a shaman but according to him got shut down by the FBI, who were still following him to this day. He is weather worn and perpetually talking. I listened for half an hour about his theories on reality; how all this was an illusion and really we lived in an Attack on Titan style universe where invisible giants ate us. There’s something harmlessly ridiculous about him, as he sat on the balcony, his leathery chest on show, smoking weed with his silent, always sleepy son, calling himself enlightened. On the other end of the scale was Anthon, an ex-Mormon who was in Bari updating a travel guide on Puglia. He was a much more intriguing and likable character. He told me about leaving the church, how hard it was to leave his family- he hadn’t spoken to them for 10 years, how his dad was pretty high up but that he couldn’t live with his doubts anymore. But now he was happily married with a child, lived in Copenhagen (or somewhere) and secretly called his brothers every now and then to check on them. He was gentle and open and honest.

Fran left the day or so after we arrived so most of the time we had two other girls as our companions. One was a 29 year old Australian writer living her own Eat, Pray, Love fantasy. She was cheerful and peppy and fun. She told us about how she had met her Italian prince charming on her travels. For real he owns a castle in Florence. I’m sure Hollywood would really buy the rights to her story. We went to dinner with her to this traditional local restaurant where you got a huge selection of antipasti, wine and pizza for 10 euros and she told us all about herself. She got on well with my friend, they had a lot in common. Our other friend, and companion on a few day trips, Leona, was an artist who worked in fashion from Manchester. I admired her a lot. She used to live in Switzerland, spoke 4 languages one of those being Italian (fluently), and was currently in China learning mandarin. She wasn’t quirky, neither did she have any mad opinions or personal stories to tell me, but I was more grateful to meet her than anyone else, especially at that time when my friendship had disintegrated and I was feeling alone. Companionship, whether it’s for a week or an hour, can save you.

One morning I wanted to go and explore some of the towns outside of Bari but my friend didn’t want to. Luckily Leona wanted to go too and invited me to join her. We caught the train along the heel of Italy to Poligiano, a little beach town. It had a very small beach in a cove, that was already packed with locals from Bari and the surrounding area by the time we got there. Instead of sand there are smooth, yet still pretty sharp pebbles, but that doesn’t stop the droves of leathery bodies basking on the rocks like lizards. My almost luminescent, pale body drew many gasps. It might not be a good place to sunbathe, but it is a great place to swim. The water is a beautiful shade of turquoise from a distance, but up close its perfectly transparent all the way down to the seabed. The cove, with its cave and rocky ledges, protect swimmers from any forceful waves or deep waters. On a boiling day, when the temperatures were nearing 40 degrees, swimming in those waters is like experiencing heaven. I wish I’d just swam around all day but we had more to see. The old town, very like Bari, is made up of narrow winding streets, close to the cliff edge, so that at the end of every street there was a spot to look out across the perfect Adriatic Sea. One alleyway was graffitied with quotes from lots of different poets; Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Italian poets I’d never heard of. Italy shows that graffiti is more about adorning a place than it is about vandalising it.

Next we hopped back on the train another stop down the track to Ostuni. It was nicknamed ‘La Citta Biancha’ because from the foot of the hill that its perched upon, in the glaring Mezzogiorno sun, the whole buildings glow the purest white. Up close they are a lot duller and more brown, but still pretty. The city itself is pretty far from the train station, and the sun was pretty unbearable. Luckily a kind bus driver stopped, picked us up and took us to the city for free. The town is pretty small, and apart from a few cute restaurants and pretty churches there isn’t much to see close up.

When we got back to the hostel we made plans with some of the others to go out for dinner, but our restaurant of choice had a long wait and no one wanted to walk across town. My friend was being impossible again. Most of us just gave up and went back to the hostel. I was hungry and I probably should have just gone with one of the other girls who decided to risk the walk to find some food, but I was angry at my friend for still being so uncooperative and I just wanted to go back and sulk. But I grew sad and lonely very quickly. A while later I ventured into the kitchen to find some company that didn’t hate my guts. Leona was snacking on some fruit and a friendly Argentinian chef called Sebastian was cooking a cheese and tomato risotto, and after making too much, and seeing I was hungry, he kindly offered some to me. It was delicious, and as we sat around the table and chat I was grateful again for the company of strangers.

Living La Vita Roma: Part 3

chloebruce — Sat, 4 Jul 2015 02:16:00 GMT

Our last full day in Rome I decided to bridge the gap that had been forming between us and organise that we spend the whole day together. We would wake up early, like 6am early, in order to get into St Peter’s Basilica before the queues formed and the sun began his reign of terror. After that we would go to the Borghese gallery across town. I had bought us both tickets on line, something you have to do to get in, they don’t sell tickets on the door, they only let a maximum of 360 or so people in at any time and you only get 2 hours per group. It’s supposed to stop the gallery getting too crowded and allow people to enjoy the art but it just seemed like a method of keeping out aimless tourists, or anyone else who fancied checking out some art on a whim.

So, my alarm rang at 6:30 am. It startled me, because I felt like I had only just drifted off. I spent the week sleeping on the sofa, because the apartment we were renting only had one double bed and our relationship had gotten too tense so that sharing a bed would have been beyond unbearable. I heard my friend’s alarm going off too, but she never woke up. I thought the sound of me showering would wake her up but it didn’t. I got dressed and had breakfast but it was getting to be 7:30 and we had planned to be at the basilica for no later than 8. So I tried to wake her up but she is such a heavy sleeper. I didn’t want to give up, in case she really wanted to come with me, so I persevered, but when I eventually did wake her up she was angry and in the end I left without her.

I stomped towards the basilica in a bad mood. It was already warm even though it was only 7:45, but the cool morning breeze had not yet been suffocated by the rising sun. By the time I had marched to St Peter’s Square I was already sweating. There was a small queue of 50 or so people, even at that time, but it moved down quickly and by 8am I was through security and on the steps of the basilica. Even with the first glance I was astounded. I don’t know if I can adequately describe it. Everything is made of mottled marble, in white, greys and copper. Everything is as elaborate and huge as it could be and the light streams in from the windows in beams of heavenly gold, perfectly. All the heat of outside was sucked out like we had stepped into another world. When you first enter, to your right, almost unnoticeably, is the La Pieta. The area in front of it is cordoned off so you can’t get within 30 feet of it. I heard a woman say a few years ago someone came in and smashed its glass case, I don’t know if purposefully or not, and so no one could get close to it anymore. You could see it, and it was still a beautifully carved image but some of its evocative power was lost by the distance. I stood and looked at it for a while anyway.

In the background, faint airy voices swam through the air. A group of voices were singing angelically. Just like you’d imagine; deep, medieval sounding, harmonious and in Latin. It drew me deeper as it echoed off every corner. I took in every inch of the basilica. The ceiling is breath taking; I audibly gasped. The statues are magnificent, bordered the whole place, gesturing with such animation and movement that they seemed real. The ceiling itself was weaved with gold carving. I felt such peace, my heart felt lifted. I don’t care if you’re not religious, something so beautiful can’t help but stir your soul. I wandered around for an hour, taking tiny steps, my head constantly raised to the ceiling or the walls. There was a shrine of Mary, in golden alcove, locked behind a metal gate, where she had a crown of stars, that glittered with light. The place was basically empty, there wasn’t even the 50 people who had queued in there. It was almost silent expect for the soft singing. They were singing for a small mass that was happening at the back, at one of the many altars. I stood and watched, just gazing at the ritual, they slow steady way they moved as if in a dance. After an hour though the crowds had started to seep in and the morning peace was broken.

But it was time to go to the top anyway. To go up to the top of the dome and onto the roof you have to exit the church through the huge wooden doors across the and then go back in around the corner. Then you have to buy a 7 euro ticket for use of the elevator or 5 euros to climb all 400 steps. I climbed to the top of the Milan Duomo- Jesus, I’ve climbed most of the way up the Eiffel Tower in the rain, I could do this. It didn’t even look that tall, I’m sure 400 steps was an exaggeration on Amela’s part. So I cut costs and paid the 5 euros, went through security again and round the back door. The door led to the start of the stairs in a wide cylindrical room. When I saw them I smirked to myself, “God this is nothing, this is going to be easy.” There were a few marble steps and then those strange long steps, that gently slope up. I was basically skipping. This went on for a while until it turned off into a normal spiral staircase like you find in English castles. “Ah” I thought “a bit cramped but nothing I haven’t done before.” These went on for even longer.

My legs were tired, I was very aware of the pack of Russian’s in a tour group that had been behind me the whole way. There voices echoed and the thought of them encroaching and engulfing me like wild bears genuinely quickened my pace. The tower was cramped and hot but an occasional breeze would float in through one of the windows. I tried to focus my mind on something other than how hot and tired I was, I tried to think of semiotics of the term spiral staircase. This was not technically a spiral because spirals curl in on themselves getting gradually smaller and smaller. This was in fact a helix, as it keeps the same circumference and stretches vertically. Strangely, this didn’t particularly make me feel any less like I was sweating to death climbing an enormous spiral staircase. I felt like I was being hypnotised. Going round and round and round like a hamster on a wheel, no sign of it ever ending. Finally, just as I thought I couldn’t take anymore I saw a door and some light and I was led out on to a balcony inside the dome. It was quite narrow and busy out on the other side. You could look down on the basilica, through metal grated fences. When I was down there I remember looking up and seeing ant sized people, now those down there looked like ants. There were pretty mosaics on the walls and you could see the art on the dome more clearly. I thought this was it but you go through an opposite door and a friendly plaque reminds you that there’s still 160 odd steps to go. I can’t remember if this is before or after you cross the roof, but at one point you cross the roof. There’s toilets, a water fountain, souvenir shops and a café all built into the roof. Unfortunately, there was little shadow on the roof and the sun was glaring forcefully. So, I ran quickly across to the next door.

There were even more spiral stairs, and just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get worse! Did I mention that I’m a little bit claustrophobic? The wall curved in on you in a dome shape and the wide open windows became those slanted gappy things they shot arrows from in castles. It was even hotter now. The air was stagnant and thick. I dragged my sweaty hands over the tiled walls, trying to push the walls outward for space. From one torture to another. Next there was a very low, so low you had to crouch, corridor with metal steps. The tiniest set of spiral stairs I had ever seen stood before me. The Russians had fallen behind and a little Chinese girl and her mother slowed me down. The mother asked me if I wanted to overtake, I yelled a little too aggressively that I was fine taking my time. The steps were too small, even for my tiny feet so dangling down the middle of the staircase was a rope. A rope with knots in it. How safe was this? How many people climb to the top of the dome on a daily basis and this is how you get to the top? My claustrophobia had reached peak. I grabbed the rope and started climbing, as fast as I could. A minute later I felt the wind, and the burning sun, on my face. I had made it! The view up there is pretty good if you can push through the people to the front. But I was just glad to have made it. I sat down and panted. I tried as hard as possible to cool down. I sat there for 15 minutes just breathing and looking down at the Vatican gardens.

I made the descent down in a carefree steady pace, getting lighter with every step. I was on schedule when I left the basilica and made my way across Rome to Villa Borghese. It’s situated on the other side of a big green park, that I could only navigate using my basic street map. Luckily it was only 10:30 and I didn’t have to be at the gallery until 12 to pick up my tickets. It was a pleasant place to stroll, the trees gave enough shade to keep you cool. Tourists happily whizzed by on segways and weird buggies. Music moved through the air too, first a saxophonist, then a man playing some kind of mandolin. I took the time to stop and draw and relax in the peace of the park. It was a return to the serenity of the basilica, but this peace was natural and earthly. I told my friend to meet me at 1 if she still wanted to come. When I picked up my ticket a woman tried to buy some at the door, unaware of the protocol and I felt so guilty. Should I give her my spare? What if my friend turned up after all and I’d given her ticket away?

The gallery itself is in the home of an old archbishop who spent more time on art and luxury than on pious business (there are several of these scattered about Rome). It’s not that big so I understand the limit on visitors. Though maybe the exclusivity is a bit elitist. Museums and churches belong to the people, they should be open to all at all times (for free). If you like classically inspired, Renaissance Italian art you’ll like the Borghese Gallery. The rooms were all named, and themed. The lower floor is mostly Bernini statues. I remember thinking that I preferred Canova and then thinking when did I become a pretentious art person? Two years before I’d never even been in a gallery, now I knew the difference between Canova and Bernini! Though the statue of Apollo and Daphne was really fantastic. The myth Daphne the nymph, in an effort to escape the amorous pursuit of the God Apollo, transformed herself into a tree. The statue caught her mid transformation, with Apollo’s arm clutching at branches and leaves. In another room, there was a statue called La Verita (Truth). It was weirdly captivating. Her face was contorted in a look of demonic, maddening joy. There was a Caravaggio of David and Goliath and a giant painting of Diana and her nymphs being watched by a man in the bushed (I think the rest of the myth is they blind him for it), and plenty other interesting and priceless treasures. By 2:30 most of the people had already left, and I had manged to look around twice, so I left too.

Most of the day was left and my appetite for art had been wetted so I after decided to go to another museum. I had heard that the Arte Antica at Berberini Palace was good, so I went to check it out. It was 4 o’clock at this point. The second floor was closed and one of its most iconic paintings- Caravaggio’s Judith slaying Holofernes- was out on loan. The man at the entrance desk warned me of this before he asked for the 3.50 euro entrance fee. But I decided to go in anyway. Inside it was almost completely empty. I wandered around the first floor with only 4 or 5 staff members for company. I couldn’t help but find it ironic. I paid twice as much to get into a gallery that prides itself on its exclusivity and it was still pretty crowded and now I get an entire public museum to myself for 3.50! Honestly, at first it was pretty awkward being watched as I watched things. The first floor is mainly religious iconography. Some were from the cathedral at Assisi but most were just really, ugly Christ babies. It was interesting how all the Mary’s in one room were in the exact same position, head tilted to the left, eyes down, frowning.

I walked around for a while, worrying that this was it, I couldn’t find any stairs. In the end, I asked someone if there was anything else and they said yes but you had to go out in the courtyard and up a grand staircase, which I did. Up there were several more rooms. One is a huge empty ballroom type, with luxurious wallpaper and a single futon in the centre of the room. I looked around perplexed. Where is the art? I looked around, walked a bit but nothing. Then I happened to glance up, I should have known by now to check the ceilings. It was amazingly detailed and extensively painted. There were animals, mythology, religious iconography. I’d never seen anything so laden with symbolism, I couldn’t decipher most of it. Luckily there was a laminated sheet that explained what most of it meant, and it took me a while to read it all and my neck was sore from looking up. So, I made the most of being alone and lay down flat on the futon just staring up. The other rooms had some truly beautiful paintings. Including some by the ‘Candlelight Master’ that were particularly eye-catching. There was one called Vanity, with a beautiful young woman with her hand on a skull, holding a dark, reflectionless mirror. There were two similar ones of the Penitent Magdalen. There was of a well-dressed dignified girl that looked like my little sister. I saw some Raphael’s Fornarina with her huge penetrating brown eyes and the actual Holenbach of Henry VIII that they always used in lecture slides. When I left the museum it was raining hard and gentle thunder rolled in the cloudy Roman sky. The heat steamed off the pavement as I walked and the once busy streets cleared of the crowds. Rather than get the metro I decided to walk in the rain. I got a bit lost and ended up looking out over the empty Roman Forum with the red sun setting through the dark storm clouds. My last day in Rome, was my best day. From the peace of religion, to the peace of art, to the peace of a soft storm.

I can’t say I learnt how to do as the Romans do, but I learnt how to do what you had to, to enjoy Rome, take your time, avoid the sun, relax, eat good food and take a good look around.

Living La Vita Roma: Part 2

chloebruce — Wed, 1 Jul 2015 02:12:00 GMT

The next day we were so hot we spent most of it just shut up in the apartment, trying to keep the cool air in. There was a TV with a DVD player in the main bedroom and we searched for something to watch. But all they had were tourism DVDs. I looked through the stack anyway, I might have even opened a few just out of pure curiosity, or maybe fate, and out of one fell season one of The Office (the original, not the American remake). Neither of us had seen it before but we’d always meant to watch it. We must have re-watched it at least 4 times during those 5 days. Just desperate not to go outside between the hours of 12 and 3. Lying there on the bed watching The Office is one of my fondest memories of Rome, and since I was pretty sure that avoiding the midday sun whilst lounging around doing nothing is the epitome of the Roman lifestyle, I didn’t feel bad about skipping some museums or churches to do it.

But we couldn’t waste the whole day. So we went to the colosseum. We didn’t make the same mistakes as Florence, this time we booked tickets before, as I did for the Vatican the following day and the Borghese gallery for later in the week. That way we avoided the huge queue of tourists lining up to get in. The heat was even worse today and I very much regretted not bringing a hat. The Colosseum on the outside is exactly as you’d expect, except with more scaffolding. But on the inside it seems much smaller. I overhead some tour guide say it could hold 75,000 though I didn’t believe it. I remember thinking, I’ve been to arenas bigger than this before, but then I don’t think the size is what makes it special. It was pretty crammed inside, since most places are off limits, you just walk around the middle bit. It’s actual name, according to signs and more tour guides (seriously, never pay for a tour guide, just eavesdrop), is the Flavian Amphitheatre, but it’s called the Colosseum because of a giant statue of Colossus that used to be nearby.

The ticket to the colosseum also includes entrance to the Forum and the Palatine hill. Honestly these are better than going inside the Colosseum. The view from the top is amazing. The crumbling villas hinting at their original grandeur, now being reclaimed by nature is stirring. But, me being me, I was mostly hot and tired and would have preferred a bit more sitting down and reflecting on something, rather than walking around like I was late for a bus. By this time it was 6pm and the Roman Forum was closing. You could reuse your ticket tomorrow to come back and see the rest of it, but we never did.

Because the next day we went to the Vatican. Even though we were staying 5 minutes away, the entrance is on the opposite side of the walls. We walked through St Peter’s square and saw the huge queue of people trying to get into the basilica snaking around the square, as they were slowly baked in the sun. The Vatican doesn’t open until 12pm so there is no way to avoid the heat. We took a giant umbrella to shade us but in the end we didn’t use it, just because it was unwieldy and then we had to put it in the cloakroom when we finally made it inside. The walk is shadeless because the wall casts shadows on the inside at this time of day. We thought we were late, since our ticket said 12:30 but there wasn’t much a queue and they didn’t mind about the time that strictly. After we got to the main entrance, we turned left, as the sign said ‘La Capella Sistina’ was that way. And it was this way, eventually. The only way to get to the chapel is to walk through everything else in the museum, which is clever I suppose, and makes sure you get value for money at least. But most people only want to see the chapel, and in their rush they create a hot, pushy current that drags you along. To stop is to risk being trampled. I lost my friend within the first five minutes.

First you go through a small garden with alcoves full of Roman or Greek statues, in one Perseus holds Medusa’s head triumphantly; a popular scene. Then its corridor after corridor of art. The first room is statues, and bits of statues. Severed heads and bits of arms and feet. The next few are full of huge tapestries. One, I think, depicted Herod’s slaughter of the Innocents. It was graphic. Roman soldiers pull babies from the arms of wailing mothers. One is about to stab a child, holding his face and pushing him onto the ground. The next is the hallway of maps. The maps are old, antique looking and cover the entire walls. Their beautiful and interesting but I was distracted by the intricate detail of the ceiling. It was astounding. You could stare at it for a year and not see everything. I looked at the security guard with jealousy. Perhaps I should be a security guard in a museum. I’d love that job, except working so close to all those tourists who I judge to not to appreciate the exhibitions enough.

The next rooms were full of frescos and most if not all were part of Le Stanze Raffaello. I don’t remember the names to each room but one stuck out to me: La Sala di Constantino. On a central wall is a painting of an almost empty marble room. All that’s in the room is a golden altar piece of Jesus Crucified and on the floor is a shattered roman statue, lying in pieces. The painting was so good, the shading so accurate, I could swear it was actually there, in its chunks of alabaster. It was profoundly moving, not because of the religious connotations but the power of the seemingly simple image. It captivated me. If I remember rightly after that you walk along a weirdly boarded up terrace thing that overlooks a carpark. Then you reach the start of the contemporary art, and the air conditioning. A few Matisse’s hang in this room. I had never seen a real Matisse before, I remember learning about him in textiles class at high school. Most of the contemporary art had a religious theme, and by that I mean pain, gore and confusion.

After this, there were some stairs and then finally, the Sistine Chapel. A security guard gave out plasticy looking cloaks for bare shouldered women and herded us in. Never in my life have I seen human beings so resemble sheep. The Chapel is a long rectangular room with a decorated wooden parting cutting it unequally in half. People were crammed into one half and then guided into the next like sheep herded into pens. There loud whispers of every language melted into bleating. A security guard’s angry voice over the intercom shushed us and commanded silenzio that never came. I was so taken aback by this spectacle it was a good five minutes before I looked up. And then it took me another five minutes to actually find the recognisable ‘Creation of Adam’. There’s actually several panels, all depicting a different day of the creation story. Still I must admit I was drawn to Adam and the tantalising way the fingers don’t quite touch. Now I think of it this is the only painting of actually God I’ve ever seen. I heard that this was the first, that Michelangelo single-handedly created the image of God. I sat and looked at it all for a good 20 minutes before I gave up. The stuffy heat, the people, the pushing and the angry security guards continually shouting ‘no foto’, ‘silenzio’, ‘per favore, no foto’ got too much. After that I walked through the rest of the museum, and then sat out in the gardens to draw. But, without my hat, the heat beat down on the top of my head until I felt dizzy with heatstroke and decided to go home. The rest of the afternoon was spent eating ice lollies on the sofa.

Night time in Rome is the only time when the heat doesn’t kill you. You can stroll more leisurely, take everything in. And the best place to do this is along the river. The heat gets so bad in the summer that nightclubs are uninhabitable and instead they line the Tevere with bars and dance floors. Down the steps onto the banks there are cocktails bars and gin bars, karaoke bars and stalls selling food, and all sorts. There was a DVD stall flogging Italian versions of films and I almost brought one, though for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. It gets busy, but it’s still a nice place to wander around on the cool Roman nights. You can follow the river along to Trastevere, the trendy part of Rome, home to delicious restaurants and cool bars. It’s also pretty busy, but the atmosphere is jovial, if touristy. We ate a restaurant, full to the brim of people inside and out, ate divine deep fried courgette flowers, a Roman delicacy, and were serenaded by a band of accordions.

There’s very few things better than eating a huge delicious dinner when you travel, and Rome prides itself on being the epicentre of all good food on earth. The waiters are experts, or at least they think they are, and their recommendations are gospel. But honestly, trust them, all Roman food is good but they know what’s best. Eating dinner is my favourite past time when I travel. Most evenings whilst we were in Rome we found a place the perfect place to eat and strolled along the river. On our first night though, our search for food took us on a wild goose chase up towards a wooded park and a tiny road that was such a sharp bend you couldn’t see the cars coming at you until they were right in front of you. It’s good to look around for a local place but, at least ask locals for recommendations of where is good (or use google) otherwise you’ll be walking for hours and end up in the middle of nowhere, with an empty stomach. That was the night I decided me and my friend should spend a few hours apart in the day time. Our idea of exploring a place were very different. My friend just wanted to walk and see where she ended up, but I wanted to make sure I actually saw something, and to spend a good few hours just sitting down. I swear she was part camel, she’d just walk and walk and walk for hours. But I was worried our time apart had backfired a little on her part. She was resentful and started to become more distant and difficult.

Living La Vita Roma: Part 1

chloebruce — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 01:56:00 GMT

We had 5 whole days in Rome, which for me is a long time in one place. We had a lot planned and we got a lot done, but we learnt quickly we had to adapt to survive in this place. The sun is hot and the place is busy and hard to navigate. And I had to try and piece together my friendship, which had began to gradually fall apart, like the ancient ruins Rome is so famous for.

On day 1 our near miss of being blessed by the Pope had inspired us with optimism, but that soon melted. It was first to be bolstered by seeing Archbishop Desmund Tutu with an entourage of nuns, taking selfies with people on St Peter’s Square. We sauntered down from Saint Peter’s to the Castel San’Angelo, crossed the bridge and headed for the Trevi Fountain. But very quickly we realised Rome in June/July is not the place for a stroll. It was 12 and the sun cooked us alive. Each city we visited he seemed to burn brighter (which makes sense seeing as we were heading south…). In Rome there is no wind, no respite from the sun. Heat bounces off every surface like you’re in a sauna. The part boiled water in my plastic flask did not help me. The confusing, indecipherable streets did not help. Crossing the road and getting punched in the face by a passing drunk man did not help. Luckily Rome is littered with life-saving little water fountains, that pour out refreshingly cold water like manna. But even this didn’t really help.

My friend was keen on dawdling, she preferred to just walk around a city, but I was eager to get to the fountain. Our relationship had been strained to say the least since the start of the trip and I had it in my head a wish in the fountain, and an afternoon to do our own things, would solve all our problems. We passed the elegant Piazza Navona with its inexplicable obelisk and surrounding restaurants. Then we reached the Pantheon, where we stopped for a break. The Pantheon itself was closed (Monday again) but I entertained myself by watching a long queue of tourists line up outside the huge closed door. Like lemmings, each person waddled up to the door, peered as hard as they could through a small gap, tried to flash a picture through, sighed, turned to the person behind them shrugged and told them you couldn’t see anything and walked away dejected, only for the next person to nod, yet for some reason not trust the person in fronts testimony and decide to try for themselves. This charade continued for the entire time I was sitting there, which was a good 10 minutes.

Than it was back on the trail to the fountain. Even after a sit down in the shade of the Pantheon I was hot and exhausted. The fountain symbolised hope to me, and for some reason I thought if we could just reach it, everything would be okay. We were close now, and when I realised how close I basically ran down the side street towards the statues I could see at the end, like the light at the end of the tunnel. I stood looking at the fountain. There was no water in it. It had been completely drained. Huge plastic walls surrounded it like the walls of a penguin enclosure at the zoo. Scaffolding covered the giant elaborate statue. I late found out that the fountain had been undergoing restoration for the past few years. A quick google would have warned me. They had left us with what can only be described as a fish tank of water and desperate tourists were still standing and chucking a coin in behind their backs. I laughed. I couldn’t help but laugh. I felt like the universe was having an ironic joke on my behalf. This proves it, I thought, this trip is doomed.

Here me and my friend separated, as we had planned. Or rather I had planned and my companion had begrudgingly accepted. We said to meet at the Basilica San Clemente, though I honestly had no assurances she would be there, and we only had one key to the apartment we were renting. The first hour was awful and I started to regret my decision. I was preoccupied by finding shelter from the heat and worrying about finding her later on. I kept trying to find wifi to check if she’d messaged me to say she would be somewhere else. After sitting for some lunch I calmed down and found my bearings. I realised this was the first time I’d been alone in a foreign place and I was nervous but excited. I walked to Barberini fountain and sketched the fish statues, but the heat was too much and I sought the refuge of the air-conditioned metro. The Rome metro is pretty terrible, it only has two lines (they were building a third whilst I was there), with one connecting point at the central train station- the busiest place in Rome. But the metro has air-con, and if you can get a seat, which most of the time I did, you can rest your feet for a minute. So, without shame, I paid 1 euro 50 to go one stop to the Spanish Steps. The Steps are nothing exciting really. But again, it’s a nice place to sit down. Most of my evaluation of Rome is based on whether it had a chair and aircon. My main aim at most times was avoiding the heat.

Finally it was time to head towards San Clemente, close by to the Colosseum. I headed over and decided to find a restaurant for more wifi just to check my friend was still coming. She wasn’t. She couldn’t make it. I wasn’t surprised. I decided to order some spaghetti. I had picked a restaurant where I could see the Colosseum in front of me at the end of the street, that way I had something to look at. It was nice looking at it, just sitting there where it had been for the last two thousand odd years. To foreigners it is this great, unusual icon but to Romans, it’s the Coloseo, it had always been there, and it always would be. The restaurant was empty except me and another young woman sitting outside. I overheard the waiter talking about us, how we were probably American, how it was strange that we were on our own. I was annoyed and my annoyance made me brave. I leant over to the girl, do you speak English I asked, she said yes in an accent, I told her the waiters were talking about us she shrugged. And then we got talking. Her name was Amela, she was from Chile, she was studying Law in Vienna, she was friendly, my age. She was only in Rome one more day. She told me about this really good restaurant around the corner. When I went to it the next day with my friend I saw her there, with her suitcase ready to leave. She said she had to come back for one last plate of cannelloni, I didn’t blame her, it was the best cannelloni I’d ever had (or have had since). We were having such a good time talking I totally forgot about the terrible day, being let down by my friend and fate at the Trevi fountain. After that I was determined to enjoy this trip in my own way.

The Pope

chloebruce — Sun, 28 Jun 2015 04:44:00 GMT

We had planned to get to Rome on the 28^th of June so we could catch Pope Francis’ last appearance in Vatican City before he went on tour to South America. We’d done St Francis of Assissi’s tomb and we’d done the Shroud of Turin, but no pilgrimage of Italy would be complete without a blessing from the main man. So we booked an early morning train from quiet Perugia to bustling Rome. He would be giving Sunday mass at 12 o’clock and our train got into Rome Centrale at around 10, giving us plenty of time to get the metro across town, fetch the keys for our apartment, maybe stop for a quick sit down, drop off our bags and stroll to St Peter’s. But the best laid plans of mice and men, and backpackers, gang aft a-gley to paraphrase my old pal, Rabbie. We thought when the kind woman at our hostel in Perugia had remembered to book us a taxi at 6 am to catch our train we were set. We thought when we arrived in Rome without any delays we were golden. And even when we under estimated the distance from the San Pietro metro station to our apartment, had to stop to get Google map directions from a friendly female police officer, and walk for 35 minutes at a snail’s pace, up hill in thirty degree heat with our bags, and it didn’t significantly delay us we were absolutely positive we would make it to get blessed by the Pope.

It was 11:00 when we got to the apartment and were let in by our friendly landlord Sergio. We were staying in Rome for a week, and since we’d lived cheaply for the last week and a bit we decided to spend extra and live like real Roman’s. Sergio showed us around, gave us his number, the keys and most importantly the wifi password and then left us. We threw our bags on the floor, guzzled a glass of water and even had time for a quick sit down and a cheeky cigarette. I took the key whilst my friend was getting ready and went out into the little courtyard of our semi-subterranean flat to unlock the thick metal security gate and head back out onto the street, and into the heavy Roman sun. But when I turned the key in the lock and pulled on the door it wouldn’t open. Was this the right key? I tried the other key despite knowing it was for the front door. Certain I had the right key originally I tried again. And again. I yanked, I pulled, I twisted but nothing. The door would not move. I called to my friend that we were locked in. I checked my watch, it was 11:46, time was ticking but if we left now and walked quickly we’d make it. We tried using the intercom buzzer inside the flat, to see if that would unlock it, but no luck. The door was stuck.

We decided Sergio would know what to do and immediately set to contacting him. Our best way to do this was with Whatsapp, since there we no charges. Unfortunately neither of us had Whatsapp. So we had to download it. I looked at my watch again 11:50. Okay, we would have to run even if we left now. 11:55, we could still catch some of it. 12:05, we might still catch the end? As my friend watched the always slow download bar on her phone creep to the finish line I was sitting outside puffing away on endless cigarettes to diffuse my impatience. As I sat there I heard the sounds of a shrill, panicky American voice. It was a young guy, on the phone to his mother I presumed, nervously telling her how he had arrived at his apartment late and the art group he was meant to be living with were no longer there to let him in and he didn’t know what to do. I felt an affinity with him. He was my kind of worrier, with my kind of rotten luck. My friend called to me from inside to tell me Sergio said the door was just a bit stiff. She took the key off of me and gave it a go. With a simultaneous twist and shove the heavy door flew open. We had missed the pope, because I didn’t know how to open a door.

But at least we were free. We decided to leave and go for a stroll down to St Peter’s anyway. I popped my head out of the gate and saw the American boy standing forlornly in the crushing midday sun. I couldn’t leave him to his fate. I asked him if he’d like to leave his suitcases in our apartment and come with us for a walk down to Vatican City to see if the pope was still there, rather than stand in the hot sun. He thanked us and happy for the company, tagged along. When we got to square the crowds of people were just dispersing. We had just missed him, a few minutes and we’d have seen him. By this time I had gotten over the disappointment. The square was full of excited people. Romans, pilgrims, activists, tourists. It was a cacophony of noise and colour glittering in the sunshine. The square itself is breath taking. The fountains shooting sparklingly clear water into the blue sky, the giant pillars that surround the piazza like loving arms embracing you, the huge dome of the basilica. The pope had been delivering a speech on climate change and there were environmental activists with banners. One guy was holding a sign in blue and gold that read “Solar Power is from the heavens” and he waved it around with happy glee. We walked about and watched as the crowds slowly dissolved and then, hungry and hot we decided to head back to the flat, stopping at a Carrefour we’d spied on the way, to buy some lunch and some ice lollies and other provisions for a week ahead. Andrew, our temporary companion bumped into his art group on the way home and was able to head off in the right direction with his people whilst my friend and I had some well-deserved lunch.

The next morning, we were walking back to St Peter’s so we could walk down to the Castle San’Angelo when heard the sound of loud speaker. We quick stepped into the square to see what was going on and low and behold, a white dot stood high up in a window of the Vatican. It was the pope! I gave my Italian skills a real test as I strained to hear what Pope Francis was saying, and then translate as quickly as possible. Apparently, the 29^th of June was St Peters and St Pauls day, the patron saints of Rome, and to celebrate the occasion the pope was giving an extra appearance and later there would be fireworks at the Castle San’Angelo. He wished us all well and gave the few lucky tourists and well informed Romans on the square a quick blessing and disappeared back from his balcony to recorded shouts of “Viva Papa” on the speakers. We walked further into the square and caught sight of Bishop Desmund Tutu, with an entourage of nuns, posing for selfies which we were too hesitant to ask for and almost bumped into a cardinal, one we didn’t know the name of, strolling about carelessly. My friend gave me this ‘I told you so look’. She was a big believer in things happening for a reason and right then it was difficult to disagree with her. Our plans had amounted to nothing, but we had accidently arrived in Rome in time for a festival and left the house at the exact right time to not only be blessed by the pope but be informed about a little shindig he was throwing at the castle San’Angelo. The best laid plans indeed.

Notes on Umbria

chloebruce — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 07:18:00 GMT

We had decided we needed some time out of the city, and planned to stay for a few days in the isolated peace of the Perugian hills. A bus ride outside the city of Perugia was a farmhouse hostel with donkeys and rentable bikes. Umbria, though lacking in exciting things to do, is much more beautiful than Tuscany in my opinion. Everywhere looks as if it’s crying out to be admired, touched, strolled on, cycled on or just enjoyed. The rolling hills are not as spectacular as lush and rocky Liguria but it kind of reminded me of home; of bike rides to Cannock Chase on Sunday afternoons. We got off at the wrong bus stop and had to walk a little longer than expected, which was totally my fault. But the farmhouse itself was secluded off the main road, down a dusty lane with wild garlic and lavender growing along it. My friend, more in tune with plants than me stopped to point some out and we were met by an old woman walking the opposite direction. She explained that the man who owned the farmhouse was her grandson. We followed her directions and kept walking until we came to an idyllic gate completely bathed in lavender and butterflies and bees. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing in Perugia, sitting outside under the grape veins and eating homemade pizza with the other guests.

The next day we decided to go on an organised trip to the Perguina chocolate factory that was just down the road. We learnt all about the famous Italian chocolate Baci, how it was invented by a husband and wife who worked in the factory, and the little love notes are inspired by the love notes they used to pass to each other. Originally the wife wanted to call them punches because the shape looks like a fist, but a savvy business type recommended they call them kisses instead, because they’d sell better, which they did. We also got to taste a lot of them. And witness some of the problematic Italian advertising posters they’d used in the forties to symbolise mixing milk and chocolate, if you can imagine. If you like mixing nuts and chocolate, as all sane people should in my opinion, then Italy is for you. Just think of Nutella, that stuff flows like ambrosia here, and most places in Europe actually, god it’s delicious isn’t it? What was I saying? Oh yes. The chocolate factory was a fun, and non-strenuous way to spend the day. The walk wasn’t so bad there, but coming back, in the midday heat it seemed much further. For the rest of the day we did nothing. We just relaxed by the pool, bathing in the sun, reading, sleeping or sketching the hills.

We broke our streak of doing very little the next day and took two buses and a train to get to the medieval hill top town of Assisi. At the bottom of the hill there was a whole field of sunflowers, and at the top you could see across the field of Umbria. It’s a gorgeous little town, similar to the windy streets and picturesque stairways of Urbino, which we visited earlier in our trip.

If you know anything about medieval catholic saints, which honestly why would you, you’ll know Assisi is home to the famous saint Francis of Assisi, namesake of the Franciscan order of monks. As far as medieval saints go Francis is a popular one, evidently from the queues of tourists who came to visit his tomb, vaulted below the Cathedral. Though even if you don’t care about showing respects to dead saints, Assisi’s Cathedral is worth a visit. Forget the Notre Dame, forget bare stone walls and echoey churches, this is what a medieval church looked like. On the outside it is not very special. A simple white stone building with a bell tower and a hint of gothic stained glass. But on the inside, it’s spectacular. Every wall is painted with elaborate and highly colourful frescoes of Francis’ life. Mosaics of colourful tiles fill the columns and the entire floor. But the most spectacular is the low vaulted ceiling, which is painted a rich royal blue and scattered with hundreds of individual painted golden stars, to mirror the night sky. Outside it was oppressively hot but now inside I swear I could feel a cool evening breeze from that celestial illusion. I overheard a tour guide say the frescoes are particularly special because they were the first to be painted in 3D perspective. They’re not fantastically realistic, in fact they reminded me a lot of paintings I used to do as a child, but that was somehow comforting.

Downstairs there was the low, dark crypt. A conveyer-belt of people trudged toward a large, wide, circular pillar made of brick with a marble lip at the bottom to pray or sit and put tokens and offerings on. This was the tomb of Francis of Assisi. About a hundred or so people were crammed in this little cellar, scrambling for a pew and attempting to sneak a photograph without the angry volunteers exasperatingly pointing to the no photos sign. You’d be surprised how many people tried to take one despite that. I couldn’t decide if it was ballsy or disrespectful. You couldn’t really stop to take any of it in, you were pulled along with the current of visitors.

The rest of the day we spent just relaxing in Assisi and trying to avoid the hot sun. We knew that this part of Italy was famous for its truffles so we found a nice restaurant to eat dinner in and ordered something with truffles on it. Honestly truffles just taste like really strong mushrooms, but still the food was good. We went back to Perguia, spent our last relaxing night in the hills and prepared to get the early morning train to Rome.

Taking the 7.09 am train from Perugia to Rome reminds me how much I miss my early morning commutes to college. The world is most beautiful in the morning, before the sun has had chance to begin its oppressive reign, or the rain clouds have staged their coup d’état, when the world glows a blue-grey colour. The shadows on the ground solely pull back as everything stretches to life. The morning breeze snaps you awake, caresses you or bites you like nudging cat impatient for your attention. I feel serene at this time of the day, and I feel serene on a train; temporarily suspended in time and space; just an observer to the world’s levee. And Italy is also most beautiful in the morning, without the heat or the fiery sun glaring off the hills.

The Other World of Venice

chloebruce — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 04:04:00 GMT

When the train pulled into Venezia San Lucia train station I was surprised by how much water separated the mainland and the islands. It seems like a stupid thing to be surprised by. I suppose it’s obvious to most people that, being an island, it would be separated by more than just a canal, or a river. Venice has a habit of being surprising in blindingly obvious ways. I was surprised how much the houses were submerged in the water. You could see half visible doors and windows bobbing on the water’s edge. I wandered how many stories it was to the bottom, whether you could still go downstairs and see the water line, or whether they’d filled them up somehow. I wandered who had lived there before, whether the furniture was still there, what the water had done to the wallpaper. I imagined it looked like the sunken ballrooms of the Titanic. I was surprised how much of the architecture was influenced by the Middle East, despite learning about the permeation of cultures during Venice’s high days as a centre of maritime trading (history lectures coming in handy). I was surprised that there were absolutely no cars, not even many bicycles, which are as common as Tabbachi’s in every other Italian city. The canali are not just pretty waterways, they are a road system. They have taxi’s, buses, traffic lights, stop signs, right of ways, speed limits. Even though you expect it, it’s very different when you actually see it. It’s like a completely different world. It’s like a world from Gulliver’s travels- a topsy turvey version of human civilisation. There’s something quite bizarre about watching people hailing boats with orange ‘Taxi’ stickers on them as the police cruise about in blue speed boats. It’s like looking at your reflection in a spoon; you recognise yourself, but you look so different.

Google maps said it was a 30 minute walk from Venice train station to the hostel. 20 minutes of dodging hoards of tourists and navigating the tiny streets and bridges with our huge rucksacks on our backs and I knew it would be more like an hour’s walk. Venice is more like a maze than any city on Earth I’m sure. Corner after corner, tiny alley after tiny alley and then boom, a dead end. A Piazza appears from nowhere and you cross a tiny bridge and boom, another dead end. The buildings are all several stories high, like a forest of houses, so you can’t look out over anything to try and find out where you are and there are very few sign posts to direct you. All it needed was a Cheshire cat grinning and mocking you from the side lines and the feeling of disorientation would be complete. In the last few days we must have walked almost every square inch of the city, we have walked back to and from the hostel 4 or so times and I still have no idea where to go. Although I’m not particularly well known for my sense of direction as it is. When I first moved to Edinburgh I walked up and down George IV Bridge three of four times looking for the turning onto the Cowgate before I realised it was underneath me; you’d think the ‘Bridge’ bit would have given it away sooner.

But finally we found it, a floor of an apartment building on the edge of a bend on a thin canal. The receptionist Yuri, a handsome Albanian, showed us to our room and we all collapsed on the beds. After freshening up we headed out again to explore and find somewhere to have dinner. We walked down to Saint Marks square to a nice, if a little expensive restaurant in a side street along the Grand Canal. My friend tried some octopus and ink spaghetti whilst I was forced to opt for Pene Al’Arabbiatta again. It’s not that I don’t like it, in fact Arabbiatta is one of my favourite dishes, it just gets a little dull having the same meal over and over. But Venice is famous for its seafood, so there aren’t many vegetarian options here. Afterwards we thought about splitting a gondola with an English mother and son sitting next to us but nothing came of it. Gondola’s, we were told, are a complete waste of 100 euros and it was better to pay 7 euros for the taxi if we wanted a boat trip on the canal. And yet perhaps we missed something by not getting one. By the time we had finished dinner the restaurant was about to close, and as we quickly found out, so was everywhere else. Bed time in Venice is strictly 11 pm, so if you like spending the night drinking or socialising in a bar your sore out of luck. But we were pretty tired anyway, so we just headed back to the hostel to rest for tomorrow.

It’s lucky that the narrow streets and dainty bridges and dead end piazza’s are so beautiful otherwise the frustration of never really knowing where you are would be too much. But this way, gazing at the ornate windows and balconies and sun lit piazze make it so you don’t mind being lost. Venice is mostly houses and yet I’ve seen very little evidence of locals, expect the shop keepers and waiters. Perhaps they blend in with the hoard of tourists suffocatingly crammed along the tiny streets or maybe they stay well out of it. The epicentre of Venice, around Saint Mark’s square, although beautiful, is like a cattle pen of tourists. In the midday heat in peak season this part of Venice is like one of the seven circles of hell. But a little further out in any direction and the crowds disappear and it becomes a nice adventurous stroll in the maze. You shouldn’t walk around Venice with a destination or even a route in mind you should just look around and see what you stumble upon. That’s how we found a small enclosed garden/art installation whilst we were hunting all the 27 churches that my friend wanted to visit. It was a small red brick walled Romanesque courtyard with modern art sculptures scattered about and some decaying roman statues in a columned veranda type thing, smothered in creeping ivy. And when your feet hurt from walking you should just find a place to sit, be it a café or some steps on the edge of a canal where you just sit and watch the boats go by, letting your breathing syncopate with the gentle waves.

Knowing to expect early closing times the next night we went to a supermarket to get some wine and some food to snack on, out on the balcony of our hostel that evening. We sat out there for only half an hour playing cards with the deck my friend brought from Prague, that had Mucha ladies on them, before another hosteller came and joined us. His name was Avery. He was a chubby, blonde haired frat boy from Tampa, Florida who spoke with a southern American twang and offered us all some of the 4 boxes of Cuban cigars he was hoping to smuggle back to the US. Soon Yuri came to join us and we all sat, sharing life stories, playing blackjack for cigarette filters, sipping white wine from a carton and puffing cigar smoke into the night air like we were feasting at Belmont listening to the music of the stars like the lovers in The Merchant of Venice. There's just something about Venice, almost as if its not a part of the real world, but instead lies in the world behind the mirror, with its own rules of space and time; familiar but strange.

A Quick Note on Pisa and Florence

chloebruce — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 03:43:00 GMT

On our way to Florence from La Spezia we decided to stop off at Pisa, to take the obligatory leaning photo before heading on to Florence. I’m glad we stopped off in Pisa if only because I will never have to go back there. It is probably a nice little town outside of the madness of the tower and the cathedral. So many tourists desperately trying to take the best, and most inventive, picture and getting frustrated whenever someone accidently walks behind them and ruins it or their hand won’t stay still enough to take the perfect shot. Looking at a hundred people leaning into thin air is a very sobering sight. Pisa is pretty missable. Yes, the tower leans, it’s no better in person than in pictures. There’s actually a cathedral in the same courtyard, made of checkered stones like a chess board, but we didn’t attempt to wade our way in that far. We were feeling peckish and a little flustered from the heat so we sat down for lunch before heading back to the train station to catch the train to Florence. Then true to the current tone of the trip we caught the wrong train and had to wait 45 minutes in Livorno for the right train back toward Florence.

We were being different in Florence and staying in an Air BnB in the residential area in the North of the city nearby Statuto train station. But the woman we were staying with, hadn’t got back to us yet to tell us the exact address so we were stranded in an internet café on the Piazza Pietro Leopoldo trying to get in contact with her and sucking ice lollies to cool down. Eventually she did and we made our way to her flat. She and her two small children greeted us and showed us to our room. We didn’t get to see much of her or her family while we stayed at her house, which perhaps was the best for awkwardness sake. The woman was cheerful and friendly and her two children, a boy and a girl who were just typical shy but playful children. Her husband worked nights and we only heard him shouting at his wife to get his children to shut up grouchily now and then, which she almost completely ignored. She left almost as soon as she let us in to take her children for ice cream with some friends and didn’t come back until past 11. The next morning everyone was gone before we got up and we were left to try and leave the flat. This trip was cursed by our inability to open doors. The door to the flat was a complete mystery to us. It was heavily fortified by cross bolts and had a handle which detached so you couldn’t open it without it. For the life of us we couldn’t see this handle and we had to root through all of her draws until we eventually found it and managed to unlock all the bolts and finally leave the apartment. From there we made our way into the city centre towards the Duomo. I can’t remember why we chose to use Air Bnb, maybe it was the cheapest option, that seems like the most logical reason to use it. I don’t regret it, the house was very nice and she was a great host. Plus, it’s oddly exciting to be inside a stranger’s house, seeing how they live and feeling welcomed by them as a visitor rather than just an observer. I felt safe and homely and we got to see how the Florentines live, if only for a few days.

There were many things I didn’t get to do in Florence, and I can’t shake the feeling of unfinished business. I would have loved another day (and the foresight to book the tickets) to go and see the real David not just the replica in Piazza Della Signoria, to go inside the Duomo not just snap pictures with the crowds outside it, visit the university and museums. Not that I didn’t have a nice time doing what we did. We saw all the nice Piazze, like the Piazza Della Signoria with the huge fountain and statues. We relaxed in various cafés and restaurants with coffee and gelato and pizza. We were serenaded by a man playing the accordion. We walked down the Ponte Vecchio with its clusters of expensive archaic jewellery shops that crowd the sides so that you would never know you were suspended over water. We strolled along the murky waters of the Arno and watched the locals sunbathe on a spit in the middle of the river. We saw a breath taking view of the city with the bell tower, the Palazzo Vecchio, the terracotta tiled roofs and its surrounding walls, from the hill at the Piazza Michelangelo. And we wandered down the narrow sleepy midday streets of domestic Florence.

The city reminds me of Paris, every street, every building is a piece of art to be admired, so a simple walk is more than enough to enjoy the city even without visiting any of its attractions and museums. The villas and poplars (maybe aspens? I know nothing about the names of trees) are very different from the small quaint and cramped houses and the tall broad jungle of Liguria. There is no sea breeze to help combat the suffocation of the midday sun. The two regions almost seem like foreign countries, and this goes for the modernity and flatness of cosmopolitan Milan compared to Liguria or Tuscany. Each region is so different from the last! Not like England, where everywhere looks pretty much the same, except some places are hillier than others. Although there is one feature that seems to unite all the regions so far, and that’s the people. The locals stroll, stop to chat, take the long way round just because it’s prettier or there’s a tastier bakery that way. Like cats they embrace the sun, find a nice place to sit and relax like they have all the time in the world. It must be this slow pace life and total disregard for time that makes them so helpful and hospitable. Here they still worship the sun, not the clock. They will go out of their way to help you, take you rather than show you where you need to go, risk missing their own bus to make sure you get yours, they might do it with the exasperated air of a grandmother who is sick to death of telling you to be quiet or sit still, but they do it. Whether it’s Rosanne, the old lady who showed us to the bus stop, and told me many times that she had seven grandchildren, the old man on the bus who made sure we got off at the right stop to see the tower at Pisa, or the countless others who are gracious and helpful when we stop them for directions, even though their English is bad. I see my grandmother everywhere in this place.

The Calm After The Strike

chloebruce — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 02:11:00 GMT

The Cinque Terre is a popular destination for travellers heading to Italy. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site and protected national marine park on the Italian Riviera. It’s uniquely picturesque and highly recommended by all good travel websites, so of course we had to see it. Travelling as cheaply as possible whilst not skimping too much on comfort is my mantra so we were staying a little outside of the Cinque Terre in a hostel in a small town in in the hills called Biassa, just outside La Spezia, the nearest city.

Our plan to get there was admittedly convoluted and without time for mistakes, which is never a good idea. It was the day we were meeting our other friend and instead of using common sense and meeting her in Genoa, which was about equidistant from where we were in Turin and where she was in Milan, we decided to go back to Milan to get the train back to Genoa and then a connection to La Spezia in time for the last bus to Biassa before the hostel reception closed at 11pm. Trains in Italy are cheap and easy to use but they have one fatal flaw. Although it would be disingenuous not to say I was at least partly to blame. We arrived back in Milan from Turin at 2:55pm, only 5 minutes late, with 15 minutes to find our friend and get our train. We almost made it. I had given her the instructions to wait at the metro entrance inside Milano Centrale. How was I to know there were about 20 entrances to the metro from Centrale? We had no way to call her, since our phone plans didn’t allow us to call abroad and there was no wifi, so we couldn’t even try and find out where she was. We ran around in a mad farcical haste with our heavy backpacks jangling like a one-man band, to every entrance looking for her. It really doesn’t help that the place is a maze! The train station above ground is really just a disguise for the underground mall below with its network escalators and packs of confused and angry people. I could hear the Benny Hill theme playing in my head. At 3:08 we spotted her sitting against the glass banister as we whizzed by on one of those said ramped escalators they have everywhere. We then went up and down the ramp about three times trying to get to each other; Three Stooges style. We finally reunited and without any time for greetings and we ran to our platform just in time to watch the train lock and pull away without us. So we missed our train, thanks to my terrible instructions.

But Milano Centrale wasn’t done with us yet. We begrudgingly headed downstairs to buy new tickets, although the others saw the comedy in this a lot more than I did. The ticket office and the main area outside the platforms were teeming with people. The station was like a bomb shelter. Crowds of people crammed together looking bewilderedly at the departures board as all their trains seemed to be cancelled. I desperately tried to find wifi to find out when our next train was and what the hell was going on. I got on to the TrenItalia, the national train service, website and at the top of the page there was a notice, the only word of which I read was “Sciopero”. Strike. It says a lot, that my Italian tutor had specifically taught us the word for strike. All the engineers and signalmen and train drivers were on strike until 6pm when they would maybe, think about getting the trains moving again. So trains in Italy are cheap and easy to use, but reliable they are not. For 4 hours we sat on the cold marble floor of Milano Centrale, waiting for the trains to start, stranded with a group of New Zealanders heading to the Cinque Terre too, and watching the torrential rain pound the humid streets of Milan.

But eventually the trains started again and a train arrived in which our new tickets were valid and, after a further 20-minute delay, we finally left Milan. I won’t do my companions the injustice of pretending I had coped well with the wait. The train ride was tense to say the least and an argument broke out at the hostel when we finally got there. Looking back at it now it seems ridiculous that I got so stressed, after all everything worked out in the end, but at the time I was so angry, mostly because we would have avoided it all if it wasn’t for my terrible instructions. Luckily for us we weren’t the only travellers caught out by the strike so there was a steady supply of taxis from La Spezia train station to the hostel in Biassa and the reception was still open when we finally arrived at 11:30 pm. The rude Americans who pushed us out of the way of a taxi and the fuming hostel worker who yelled at people for not even bothering to call and let him know they would miss pre-booked tours and activities made me feel better knowing I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t handle a minor mishap.

But tomorrow was another day, and as the bell chimed in the town square and the soft dawn light cracked through the window, serenity awoke us from our exhausted sleep. As soon as we got up we headed outside to the patio to have a much needed cigarette. In the darkness we didn’t get a good look at where we were, but now in the white morning light we were greeted by the thick green jungle that engulfed us on all sides. The cute little villas are all painted in warm pastel colours and each have a neatly kept garden full of bright exotic flowers. After a quick breakfast we headed down to the bus stop to catch the shuttle bus to Riomaggiore. From the bottom of the hill where the bus stop was you could see the glittering turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea biting into the port city of La Spezia down below. The rock of the mountain on the other side of the road was covered in tiny little lizards and dainty flowers. An advertisement board nailed into the rock was covered in nothing by black and white posters announcing which grandfather or mother had died recently and inviting the whole village to the funeral, if they so wished. The house by the bus stop had a playful little dog who barked at us for attention through the fence. We had so long to wait for the bus I even sat to sketch the blue domed church tower, with its regulated but somehow soothing bell. There is little in Biassa other than the hostel, a pizzeria, a tabbachi, a bar, a shop and the church. To quote the shopkeeper, Biassa is “tranquillo”, in fact, it’s like peace personified. The only noises are the birds singing in the thousands of trees that cover the hillside, the faint calls of “Ciao Luca”, “Ciao Luigi” as the villagers go about their quiet lives and the regular toll of the bell. But, unfortunately, we didn’t come to see Biassa. We hopped on the small infrequent bus to Riomaggiore, the first town along the coast of Liguria which makes up the Cinque Terre National Park.

The pictures of the Cinque Terre may seem too perfect and too idyllic to be true but they are not. Even the flocks of tourists and backpackers can’t ruin it. The sea, bluer and stiller than any sea I have ever seen stretches for eternity across the horizon. The pastel coloured houses and vineyards nestled in the hills and around the coves are just as you imagine, well kept, bright, clean. That’s thanks to all the tourism and protection this place gets but also to the pride of the locals who live there. Riomaggiore is steeply set on the side of cliff, and a lot of the streets are narrow steps and steep hills. There’s a sweet almost hidden little chapel on a side street that we stepped into, that had a few chairs, a tiny altar and very little light. There is a small path that runs along the cliffs to the neighbouring village of Manarola called the Via Dell Amore. We had planned to walk along it since it’s the shortest distance but there had been some sort of landslide and half the path was covered in mud so we just had to catch the train. A kind woman who was reading a book beside the entrance to the path explained what had happened and kindly stopped reading to walk us a little way and then point us in the right direction.

To get from the main town to train station you have to walk through this underground tunnel that’s all decorated with brightly coloured tiles. We sat down for another slice of focaccia, a particular local dish for Liguria, and waited for the train to Manarola. We had planned to get the train between all the other villages anyway because since we only had one day we didn’t have the time, or the stamina or the correct footwear, to hike between the villages like you are supposed to. A special service links the towns together and they do special discounted tickets, so it make it a popular (a.k.a crowded) choice. The next town, Manarola, is slightly bigger, or at least slightly less squashed together. Its bay is wider and the flower lined path that snakes around the cliff to a sweet little garden and some nice restaurants that overlook the cove make for wonderful views. The bay has a few rocks strategically perfect for cliff diving tourists. In the off season Manarola would be like heaven. We sat down to eat lunch in the café on the cliff then sat for a while in the garden above it and looked out over the sea and across to the next town Corniglia.

Corniglia is on top of the cliff rather than on a bay like the others so to reach it from the train station you have to climb a hundred or more steep steps. From the bottom is seems like hell, especially in the blinding midday sun, but it’s not actually so bad. On the way down, when you can stroll and look at the flowers and trees that frame the stairs and a pretty little shrine to Mary that looks over the bay, it is actually quite relaxing. The stairs, or the heat, must put people off because it was mostly empty when we got up there. It was nice and secluded, a lot less touristy than the other villages, but there wasn’t much to do. We sat and had some gelato in a little gelateria and popped into the small church on the top of the cliff. The day began to pass by and we still had two more villages to see before we caught the last shuttle back to Biassa at 8:30pm. As a result we visited Vernazza and Monterosso very briefly. Vernazza is famous for its caves and as a good spot for a swim. It has a tiny little beach that was full of people. I wanted to dip my feet but we didn’t really have time. Onward to Monterosso! Monterosso is by far the biggest of the villages. It has actual hotels and an actual beach with deck chairs and parasols. It’s the Italian version of an average seaside town, but so much nicer. Go through the tunnel at one end of the town and to the quaint winding streets of the old town and it’s much nicer. In the last fifteen minutes that we had in Monterosso before we had to catch the train back to Riomaggiore to catch the shuttle bus back to Biassa.

The next morning it was time to head back to La Spezia and catch the train to our next destination. We bought a breakfast from the shop in Biassa that is owned by a lady and her mama whilst we waited for, and then missed, the bus. It sells everything, including the sweetest cuorecini biscuits and tastiest Zucchini Torta ever. We sat and chatted (or rather attempted to chat since none of them knew any English and my Italian is mediocre at best) with Mama and her daughter and all the other old ladies that came to start their morning routine with a trip to the shop. Although, I did understand more of what they were saying than I let on but when they all started demanding bewilderedly “Dove sono I tuoi uomini?!” I had no idea how to answer in English or Italian. One grandmother tried to get her young red headed grandson to speak English to us, as he had been learning it at school but he comically stamped his feet and protested that English was hard, he wasn’t very good at it and he wasn’t about to talk to some strange girls anyway. Then sadly it was time to leave Biassa and I watched the pastel houses and the bell tower disappear in the trees from the bus window.

The Shroud of Turin

chloebruce — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 04:26:00 GMT

We were only in Milan for the day before we had to catch our train to Turin late in the afternoon. We were meeting our other friend in a few days but rather than stay in Milan, which I was warned was underwhelming and had to agree at least a little, we took the opportunity to go west to the Po’ Valley and see the Shroud of Turin, currently in display in its home town. My flatmate and I are always keen for a spiritual experience and we thought one of the most famous and most controversial catholic relics was a good place to start. A visit to the shroud was free but it had to be booked in advance (though we found out later from a fellow traveller that that wasn’t strictly true, and you could just queue up to see it) and the only slot free on the day we were in Turin was 7:45 am. So it was an early morning. We had planned to make it an early night the night before but we got caught up chatting and hanging out with some fellow travellers at our hostel.

They were an eclectic bunch of guys all in Turin for an environmental conference and another young guy, a brooding and handsome Turk the same age as me, who strummed soft chords on the hostel’s communal guitar in the shadows like a travelling troubadour. We stayed up until 2 am discussing food, art and religion, despite the fact we all had to be up early, the passive aggressive Italian man who lived in the flat opposite the shared courtyard threw water at us to shut up and the boys hadn’t even started the presentations they had to give tomorrow yet. And yet we weren’t tired when we woke up at 6:30 am and left to catch the bus across town from our hostel to the Giardini Real where the shroud was on display. But we didn’t think of the time. All tickets for trams and buses in Italy must be bought beforehand from a Tabbachi, a corner shop, and then validated on the bus or tram. But it was only 7 am, and everyone was only just waking up. The market place on Via Madama Cristina was just coming to life, and fruit sellers were getting ready for the day and a few locals, more prepared than us, were waiting to catch the bus to work. I asked around but they all told us the Tabbachi’s wouldn’t open until 8 and that would be too late. The clock was ticking and the google maps said it would take at least half an hour to walk across town so we decided it was better to start walking.

Turin was quiet and cool and the walk, though hurried, was nice. I’ve heard others describe Turin as boring but I think it’s a sweet little place. It’s surrounded by fertile hills and a cool breeze runs down the streets. It’s quiet and uniform and authentic. Tourism isn’t big here and people get on with life calmly. There are sweet little boutiques and delicious pasticcerias and wide 19^th century piazza’s everywhere. We managed to make the walk and get there for exactly 7:45 am. We were pretty proud of ourselves. In the park there were temporary fences and big white tents to regulate the non-existent crowds. We passed the gates and the armed men and began what in all seriousness must have been a mile long walk through white tent after white tent to the other side of the park. If the size of the cordoned area demonstrated how long the queues got later in the day I was glad we got up early. Every ten foot or so a volunteer, dressed in long white robes so they all looked like priests, greeted us with a jolly “buongiorno”.

I must have wished 50 people good morning in the 30-45 minutes it took to trudge through the parade of tents to the Cattedrale San Giovanni Battista on the other side of the park where the shroud was actually housed. We even had to pass airport style security checks with x-ray machines and metal detectors. The walk to the church, tiring and unnecessary as it was for the 25 people eager enough to book at this time of the morning (or book at all) was made bearable by the brief glimpses between tents where you could see the gardens we were actually in. From what I could see a lot of it was overgrown and looked sort of neglected. At one point there were crumbling Romanesque statues, covered in weeds and drowning in a pool of long grass up to their necks. There were also decaying benches and disarrayed gravel paths adding to the neglected aesthetic. I wondered if this was intentional or if the garden was simply left to nature, due to lack of money or lack of interest. Either way it was beautiful in an old and abused kind of way, like an antique, faded with history and life. We finally reached the shroud, or rather the start of the “preparation” to see the shroud. I thought it was odd they felt they needed to psyche us up, we had been teased enough with the mile long walk and to be frank, the hype surrounding the Shroud of Turin, already surpassed the reality of what was basically a bit of cloth scientifically proven to be from a thousand years after Jesus’s death, with the outline of a man painted on it. Maybe the amount of scepticism is the very reason they chose to “prepare” visitors and persuade them it really was the death pall of the Son of god, Jesus Christ, our saviour.

The “preparation” started a few tents back from the church entrance, with some posters of various Turinese saints from effectively the start of time to present day. All the information was Italian and after finally reaching the beginning of the actual exhibit I wasn’t about to stop and hash a quick translation. We passed, quickly, into the final preparation stage. We were herded into a dark tent with a door, draped over with a dramatic crimson curtain on the other side with 3 flat screen TV’s on the wall above it. There were benches all along the sides of the tent, which everyone rushed to, to rest their tired feet. One woman was wearing huge platform heels. She stood through the whole ten minute presentation without the slightest indication of fatigue, which impressed me. The “preparation” consisted of a video of the shroud. Dramatic music played in the background and on the long middle screen the shroud appeared. Then on the smaller TV’s either side, in 4 different languages, the label “The Holy Shroud” was displayed. Over the next five or so minutes the video zoomed in and out on specific areas of the shroud and the labels describe exactly what could be seen. “Thorn wounds”, “evidence of lashing”, “nail wounds” flashed on the screen as each blood stain was pointed out and we were forced to imagine the agony of Roman torture techniques in a morbid kind of glorification. At the end the video slowly and very eerily focused in on the vague outline of the face, the dramatic music reaching a crescendo, and then the whole thing faded to black.

At first I thought that was it and was about to complain very vocally about what a waste of time the whole morning was. But then a mysterious crimson side curtain was pulled open and the doorman ushered us in like we were entering an illegal dog fight or a Speak Easy. From this doorway we entered the church. It was completely dark bar the spotlights that shone on the paintings on the walls like mood lights. We had entered from a door at the front of the church. The altar was completely blocked off by large boards and the mounted cabinet that, slightly illuminated with small lights, held the Shroud of Turin. A ramp took us round in front of it and we were motioned to stand in two rows, one along the railing that stopped us getting too close and the other behind those people. A calming Italian woman’s voice invited us to gaze in wonder at the face, the bloody wounds, the final image of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I tried to gaze, or rather strain as even with my glasses on it was hard to see the faint lines on the worn cloth. But it was even harder to see past the vivid and beautifully symmetrical burns that scorched the cloth from when it was damaged in a fire in 1532. The symmetry and patterning caused by the fire were like their own piece of art and I couldn’t help but focus on them. I was also distracted by the hidden beauty of the church itself. Although obscured in the almost pitch black the whole place called to be looked at, especially the Romantic religious paintings hanging on the walls, with their bright blues and pinks and emotive expressions and gestures. Even more distracting were the two English women, one middle aged, and the other elderly, who were chatting behind me. The younger woman was getting impatient with her friend, maybe her mother, who couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of the shroud. She couldn’t see anything on the shroud that looked vaguely like a man. Her friend tried to point out his feet, then his legs, his torso, you know, next to the burn marks that look like teeth. It’s double sided, so it shows his front and back, look there’s his face, in the middle of it! Can’t you see the face? With the long hair and the beard and the blood from the crown of thorns? Just when our time was up and we were being ushered away her elderly friend cried, “Oh yes, I see” but she probably didn’t.

I don’t even remember if I actually looked at the image on the shroud for more than a few seconds. Looking at the supposed death mask of an executed man freaked me out. I couldn’t hold his hollow glare. The other viewers gazed in wonder and crossed themselves in adoration. The image of their faith held more power to me than the Shroud itself. Don’t mistake me and think I don’t respect the Shroud, it is important as a piece of history if nothing else. But it is something more than that, it is a religious symbol and symbols have great power, power that people give it every time they queue for miles just for a glimpse or greet it with bows and genuflexion. The power is tangible; you can feel it in the air and in the pit of your stomach. Yet with a change of opinion or a little time the spell is broken and the Holy Shroud turns back into a tatty piece of burnt cloth. Divinity is as much manmade as it may be celestial but that does not make it any less powerful, in fact it makes it more so. Whether you believe the Shroud was the actual piece of cloth that the dead body of a murdered man was gently wrapped in by his loving mother and friends as they wept or just a medieval painting representing that moment, it doesn’t make it any less emotive, or any less interesting.

Making friends in Turin

chloebruce — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 03:08:00 GMT

It was dusk when we arrived at Porta Nuova train station in Turin. Whilst we were trying to figure out where our hostel was we walked down the wide Corso Emmanuelle II. Every town in Italy has a street called the Corso Emmanuelle II. The evening was cool, it was 50% less humid than Milan and the streets were lined with huge trees amassed with deep green leaves. At the end of the road in the direction of the Po river are great hills covered in trees that frame the city. There are many boutique shops, artisan cafes and cute little pasticcerias. The area where our hostel was seemed quite hipster, it was full of bars and trendy pizzerias and a cool art studio/gallery with a quote from Yoda in Italian as its sign. Apparently the residents thought the area is pretty trendy too since someone had graffitied “Via Hipster” on the wall. The hostel itself was even nicer, it is colourfully and cosily decorated, super clean and has a “relax room” with sofas, foosball, a communal guitar and a bar with free coffee. Our plan was to grab a slice of pizza and head to bed by 10:30 so we could wake up early. A pizzeria around the corner called Frattelli Pummarò was recommended to us by the guy at reception so we headed down to pick up a pizza. On the way back we decided to pick up a beer each from the local corner shop. With our bottle of Moretti and our delicious pizza we went to sit in the hostel’s garden, eat, drink and head to bed.

Across the beer garden was a table of guys, chatting away who introduced themselves to us. Three of them, Yaya, Najd and Oli, were in Turin for a conference on environmental building techniques or something and the other, and Mustafa, was just a kid backpacking around Italy like we were. Yaya was an architect from Tehran now living in Liverpool and to say he was passionate would be an understatement. His antithesis Najd, a Moroccan living in Vienna, did something with computers according to the others, a fact he vehemently rejected. Najd spent most of the evening attacking Yaya for being an architect and liking art and music and literature too much, things he seemed to find at least pointless if not completely abhorrent. The rest of the evening he spent abusing his French companion, who used to be his colleague back in Vienna, but apparently wasn’t anymore, and whose name I can’t pronounce let alone spell but sounded like something between Orlean and Oliver so I will just refer to him as Oli. He said it was the name of some medieval cardinal. Oli was a calm, quiet Parisian. He looked typically French. Pale and thin with big eyes and thick curly brown hair, he looked plain and too angular at first but seemed to become prettier with every glance. All night he was silent except for a random fact or awkward comment. Najd seemed to think Oli was very similar to me, which I didn’t know whether to be insulted or complimented by.

Our other companion, Mustafa, was a handsome Turk who oozed mysticism from the shadows of the garden veranda. He was a lone traveller of 23 who doing pretty much our route around Italy but in reverse, from Rome to Milan. He was in his last leg and would be heading to Milan the next day. There was a neat sort of symmetry to our meeting. They were such a funny, chatty group it was hard not to be draw into their dynamic. We talked out in the garden for a good hour and half before the passive aggressive neighbour who kept clapping and throwing water down at the gazebo we were sitting under finally defeated us. The way Italian houses are built, all backing onto each other in a square, makes it uncomfortably crowded and a little to communal. And since it’s too hot not to have the windows open at night, the smallest sound bounces off the walls and into every fidgety slumberer’s bedroom. We all agreed it would be weird to live directly facing three other people’s balconies and bedroom windows, Yaya told us that it was illegal to build houses like this in the UK, and I can really see why, we can barely stand our neighbours sharing a wall with us.

Instead of taking the opportunity to head to bed we decided to head downstairs to the “relax room” and keep debating about religion, colonialism and which vegetables we would be if we were a vegetable- a question my friend insisted on asking every new person we met. Whilst we tried to stop Yaya, the Richard Dawkins devotee and Najd, the self-proclaimed Radical Muslim (in a ‘I drink beer and eat the occasional bacon sandwich’ kind of way) from going to blows, Mustafa quietly serenaded us with some expert Spanish guitar music. Soon Yaya and Oli headed to bed as they all had to be up early to give speeches and presentations that they hadn’t prepared yet, in the morning. Before I could convince my friend it was best if we went to bed as well, another one of their bunch, a Greek who lived in London and whose name I have probably misremembered as Alexei, traded places with them. Mustafa kept soothingly strumming the guitar in the corner and my friend and I tried to defend ourselves against the Greek attacks about British food and we all tried to explain the mysteries of the Sunday Roast to Najd. Finally, way past 1 am we dragged ourselves to bed, knowing we had to get up in less than 5 hours to go and see the Shroud of Turin. But it was worth it, meeting people you’d never normally meet is almost as good as visiting a new place. In a way they are both the same. These cities and countries can seem foreign at first, a little odd or strange but get to know them, talk to them, explore them and you realise they have more in common with the cities you know, than differences.

Killing time in Milan

chloebruce — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 02:50:00 GMT

The weather forecast that day said rain and even maybe lightning, but as is the universal rule of weather forecasts, they were wrong. The sun shone down through the occasional cloud down on to the pastel coloured streets of Milan. But the stagnant humidity oppressed us as we wandered around. It is hard getting used to the heat after coming from windy Edinburgh, especially at night whilst trying to sleep. It is also strange getting used to sleeping in a dorm with 4 other strangers. The two girls in the bunk beds opposite got up and packed up their rucksacks and 6:30 am and woke me up, so by the time we left the hostel to find breakfast I was already tired, hot and grouchy. We first went back to the nice piazza and the canal to look for somewhere to have breakfast. We couldn’t really find anywhere in the light of day, so we decided to catch the tram into the centre.

I showed off my Italian language skills by buying us the tickets for the tram and then immediately humiliated myself by not noticing that the sign at the tram stop “passo per d’uomo” that my friend had mistaken for directions to the Duomo in fact meant “suitable for walking”. So we got on the wrong tram, and it wasn’t 20 minutes into the journey when we got to Repubblica that I realised we were heading back to Centrale and in the completely wrong direction. By the time we got to Duomo my stomach was rumbling madly and my caffeine cravings were too much to bare, desperate and longing to have a cup of tea and a some carbs in front of the Duomo I sat down at a decent looking café. Unfortunately I made the wrong decision. The café sold no food had a cover charge of €1.50 and the espresso cost €3.50. But it was too late, an overpriced coffee and a fag would have to do. From where we were sitting the beautiful façade of the Duomo was covered by a huge H&M advertisement of a very effeminate man in blue sunglasses with long brown hair and glossed lips that hid a scaffold.

Despite the price of the coffee and the lack of food, relaxing in the square put me in a much better mood. The cathedral from the outside is truly magnificent, beside the unnerving display of advertising. The sheer whiteness of the stone and intricate statuettes and carvings that adorn every corner are beautiful. The white stone, illuminated by the sun and juxtaposed against the other more subtle 19^th century buildings, makes it stick out like a chalky mountain piercing through the piazza. After gazing at its beautiful façade we decided to take a look inside and then climb up to the terrace. Always eager to save money whenever we could we decided to climb the hundreds of stairs, rather than pay extra for the lift, which although I regretted almost immediately, it’s a tactic I’ve stuck to in every cathedral terrace I’ve visited since; it gives the visit an feeling of accomplishment. The Duomo entrances are guarded by soldiers in chipper little Robin Hood-esque hats, with huge brown spotted feathers sticking out of the back that made them seem completely unthreatening. The inside although nice, with a huge vaulted ceiling, gothic pillars and statuettes and stained glass windows , didn’t make much of an impression. At the time we visited they were setting the Duomo up for something, I assume a venue for the Milan Expo 2015 and so a lot of the cathedral was covered in plastic panels, metal stages and speaker systems, so not as serene as you’d expect a cathedral to be. But it is the terrace that really makes the Milan Duomo really special.

The roof is a tangle of arches and towers, looping and jutting out of the roof, each intricately carved with floral patterns and saints. As if the centuries old gothic art wasn’t enough the terrace also has a few modern art sculptures dotted around, they all look like big plastic blobs but they are interesting nonetheless. Its slanting roofs and narrow walkway, arches and small steps give it exclusivity, like you’re in a special zone once reserved for builders only. There are different stages and levels which give it a greater dimension than most cathedral roof top walkways. Looking out over the dusty Milanese skyline framed by blue skies makes you feel more like a pigeon than ever. The pigeon is surely the spirit animal of the tourist. Regarded as vermin by most locals, they congregate by all the cities greatest buildings, waddling around in circles and bobbing their silly heads identically, looking at everything but not seeing much of anything at all. Con men and anyone offering food can command them in the palm of their hand, literally in the case of the Piazza Del Duomo, and they all cluck and coo in a cacophony of endless noise. Everywhere they go they are treated with apathy or disdain, but they’re just sad eyed doves desperate for attention and approval.

The roof is so beautiful I couldn’t resist sitting down to sketch a little. Meanwhile my friend went to take some artistic shots from higher up on the terrace. If I had known that the terrace was strictly one way traffic and the main part of the terrace gets very busy I would not have separated. After half an hour of waiting by the exit, trying to think what I would do to find her with no network on my phone and no wifi to contact her and repeatedly making awkward eye contact with the staff checking tickets (to stop people who’d only paid 7 euros from sneaking into the lift, which most tried to do) my friend finally appeared round the corner through one of the many arches we made our way downstairs and out of the Duomo. We only had a day in Milan but my friend told me the only good thing to see was the Duomo (and the Last Supper but that was closed on a Monday- as most things are in Italy) so now that that was done we could waste some time.

A part of me wanted to go window shopping outside Gucci and Prada in the Emmanuelle II shopping centre but my friend said it was pointless, and she was probably right. So we decided to check out a place our other friend, who is meeting us in a few days time, had somehow discovered from an online article. It was a café across the city designed by the film director Wes Anderson. Now being a Wes Anderson fan I felt obligated to go and see it. It was in a place called La Fondazione Prada which apparently is an old Prada factory in a really residential area of the city about a twenty minute walk from the Lodi T.i.b.b metro station. It was unbelievably humid and frankly we were tired and had no idea where we were going. There were huge plain white billboards with “la Fondazione Prada” in huge black letters all along the road, so we assumed we were in the right place. After asking for confirmation that we were, we eventually found the building, a strange fortress type thing with black gates and small neon lights on the side that said “la Fondazione Prada” almost invisibly. Inside it’s even odder. There was a square ticket booth selling tickets for I have no idea what, perhaps an art exhibition? There are posters for sculptures and yet no sign of them. There are the weirdest most mind boggling toilets you’ve ever been in with huge heavy grated metal walls, floors and doors that all blend together so it’s impossible to find your way in or out. And there is the café, which though cute with its pastel colour theme and jukebox, is just a cute café. If it was in the centre of the city I can imagine that it would be pretty busy, I would certainly go there regularly if I was one of those hip Milanese dog owners but it really isn’t worth the trek across town. To this day I have no idea what la Fondazione Prada really was.

From Dream to Reality

chloebruce — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 22:09:00 GMT

I had been planning this trip since I was a little girl, sitting in my great grandmother’s dining room, the smell of simmering meatballs and ragù on the stove and her thick, sometimes indecipherable, accent flowing through the air, painting pictures of life in Apulia during the war, even when no one was listening. Italy was a land of dreams, the legendary home of my foremothers, a Neverland of golden wheat fields, olive groves and cloudless blue skies, or so it seemed to me. It was like a kingdom from a fairy-tale, where young Italian girls with flowing raven hair fall in love with handsome English soldiers and elope together, without being able to speak a whole sentence in each other’s language. It was all rolling countryside, clear seas and delicious food. It was freedom and beauty personified. Going there was a dream of mine; it was more than that, it was a duty, it was a pilgrimage. By the time I had enough money to go my grandma had died, and our thread to the magical land of my dreams was severed. But that only spurred me on all the more. I had never travelled before, outside of the rare family holiday or school trip to France, and I felt that my first time had to be special, as we rather idealistically do. So I sketched myself a route and told my friends who immediately insisted on joining me, and set out to the holy land of my daydreams.

When we landed at Bergamo airport outside Milan on that afternoon in mid-June the humid drizzle and clouds seemed to have followed us from Manchester. The terracotta roofs of a small cluster of houses and the undulating hills of Lombardy were cloaked in fog and the sun, the eternal king of Italy, was obscured by grey clouds. This was not much different to England after all. The hour and so shuttle bus ride to Milan revealed a side of Italy I had never expected; the modern consumer capitalist side. The only buildings I ever pictured in my dream of Italy where villas, cathedrals and Roman ruins. But here, running along the tarmacked road of the autostrada were warehouses, empty and abandoned industrial parks, petrol stations, retail parks and all those other ugly scars of modern industry. The villas I saw were tarnished with red stains from the rain like they were secretly made of metal. Even when the suburbs of Milan through broke the monotonous landscape we were greeted with ugly tower blocks first, looking, if you can believe it, almost as if they had economy and housing in mind more than aesthetic appeal. Then the grand Risorgomento era buildings were stained with ugly blotches of meaningless graffiti and the streets lined with litter, like every city in the world. Wasn’t Milan the fabled home of fashion and culture? Even the grandiose Milano Centrale, the central train station that the bus drops you off at, with its luscious marble was picketed by pushy sellers peddling shuttle buses and homeless people begging for change, and its marvellous interior was infected with fast food restaurants, electric light and a literal labyrinth of shops and escalators. We sauntered from the bus down to the metro to catch the train to Duomo metro stop to head to our hostel, thoroughly disappointed. So this was Milan. With its graffiti, its rusted chuntering old tram, its advertising and its rubbish. A pit stop at the Piazza del Duomo, with its wide square full of people and pigeons in front of the stunningly white Duomo, and a much needed cigarette could do little to fight my disillusion.

When we finally reached our hostel, after getting temporarily confused trying to pick the right turning from the Piazza del Duomo and twenty minutes trudging with our backpacks through the stuffy late afternoon heat, I was completely deflated. My dream was shattered. Wheat fields and olive groves I never expected from Lombardy, but no blue skies? No sunshine? Italy was not a land of romance and idyllic countryside. It was a modern nation state with serious and entrenched socio-economic problems, facing the consequences of growing urbanisation and stilted capitalist industry. At the time I was angry at this fact, I felt like I had been betrayed, like someone had just told me Father Christmas was fictional or fairies didn't exist. We stayed in the hostel no longer than half an hour before we set out again in search of a restaurant to eat in. We wandered down the road from our hostel in the opposite direction from the centre where we were met with a wide piazza. On the piazza is the historic Porta Ticinese, a 19^th century arch commemorating the original 16^th century city gate. It looks over a junction of the Grande Navigli canal system. Huge colourful snails littered the piazza and strangely jarred, in a good way, against the neoclassical architecture. Why the snails were there I could never find out, perhaps they had something to do with the MilanoExpo that was on at the time, but they made me chuckle anyway. The evening was coming in and the dimming light finally broke through the clouds to fill the piazza with a warm dusk light. A soft cooling breeze blew the smell of warm bread through the air. Fashionable dog walkers and sauntering couples promenaded alongside the sweet little Darsena, a branch of water of the canal system that looks like a long narrow lake, and a group of quite attractive fire-fighters ordered an espresso in a little café.

So this was Milan! It wasn’t until then that I realised what I had felt before in the hostel was right. My dream of Italy was dead. The magical land I had wished it to be was no more than fiction. Italy was not a mythical playground from my imagination and my summer break, it was a real place with its problems and its ugly blemishes just like every other country in the world. Travelling can too easily become a self-indulgent escape for the bored with a bit of money in their back pocket. Sunny, pretty places can become enslaved to our ideals and desires. A place will never be what you dreamt of or you imagined from your flat in Britain, hunched over your laptop on google images and skyscanner. But don’t let that you stop you from seeing the true beauty of a place; the beauty of its local people buying an espresso or taking their dog for a walk; the beauty of a gloomy day that melts into a perfect evening. And don’t be downhearted or unforgiving when the capitalist economy, the globalisation, the poverty and urbanisation lurches around every corner; it is only another facet in the glittering diamond. My trip around Italy was far from perfect. From being stranded in Milano Centrale for six hours because of rail strikes to missing the Pope in St Peter’s Square because I couldn’t open the door of my apartment to wandering alone on the dirty, frightening streets of Naples because my room-mate and I could no longer bare the sight of each other, nothing about my month in Italy was how I planned. But don’t be mistaken, the love I feel for the real Italy, warts and all, is deeper than the shadow of love I had for that childhood fantasy. So if I could give budding travellers a piece of advice it is this: enjoy a place for what it is, not what you wish it was, after all it wasn’t made for tourists, tourists were made for it. I wish I could say I learned the lesson from this epiphany on that first night, but it wouldn’t be much of a pilgrimage if I learnt everything so soon, without the chance of the clichéd dramatic realisation later on. I have no great love for Milan if I am honest, but I always fondly remember that first night opposite Porta Ticinese eating pizza and drinking white wine in the warm evening breeze, watching the teenagers at the Macdonald’s across the street goad each other, laughing loudly at videos on their phones, when I felt just for a second like I was seeing something real.