The Other Side of the Ocean

It cooled off considerably overnight, but the sun remains brighter than bright. No matter, I spent most of the day in Pierrerue. For me, there is no greater motivation to get stuff done than to have the reward of places to go, foods to eat there, waiting. And so I settled in to work.

Not that Tuesday was a total throw away in terms of indulging the senses.There is something to be said for keeping your nose to the local ground. For example: in the morning, I went out in front of my stone hut to search out the legendary bread woman who careens around the villages with the daily supply of breads and baguettes. She came. I purchased.





And so my breakfast is on the front step of my hut.



could not resist a bite


From the step, I watch people in my village move into the fields and I visit with my neighbor. I swear she has the tail of another breed of animal. She sits between the two flower pots for most of the sunny hours of the day and comes over if I so much as look her way.





At noon, I take a short walk around the village, stopping by the notice board at our one intersection. Announcements included a fete coming up on June 10, the "bar" will open in the village center at 19:00 (is there a center? Is it where the number of houses is equal to that going the other way?), dinner at 20:00, make your reservations, here’s the menu. Other announcements: watch out for these caterpillars in your garden. Children, there is a nature walk scheduled for you at this time. All: visit the exhibit of 1936 photographs from the region, at St. Chinian, until May 31st.

I hear it takes twenty years to live in a French village before you are accepted as authentically one of them. And yet, the sense of good will, at the superficial level of greeting, of explaining, of helping, of inviting is there from day one.





Back to work. By 6, I am ready to quit. I have already worked probably three hours longer than the average French person. I take a walk along the country road. No great sight in the world could inspire a sense of tranquility in the same way that a country walk can, especially amidst blooming golden brush and rocky hills, with freshly green vines filling every spare crevice.

The soil is so poor here, but so pretty to look at. Red soil, gray rock, green vine, golden brush. A palate for an painter. The sun now feels warm, but the winds are there, famously strong. They account for the cloudless skies here. And for the huts built in fields, so that the farmers can find shelter when they gust through unexpectedly and dump stuff on a winter soil.









In the evening I am with car, but I stay local. One more attempt at finding a good eating place at St. Chinian. Yes! It’s there! I am your devoted client, your fan, your admirer for life, well no, for three weeks. Madame Suzanne, you are a genius. Or, your husband (M. Regis) is, or both of you are. We shake hands at the end. She knows she’s got me in the palm of hers.

It’s called La Caleche and it is right on the village square. As in every French restaurant, there is a set menu and I leap to try it: menu du terroir – of the region, combining the flavors of St. Chinian.

I wont fill you with details. A quick photo run should do it – from the melted chevre with pine nuts, in puff pastry, to the duck breast with fig sauce and a cheese ravioli, selections from the cheese board and a warm local chestnut flan.



with melted chevre and pine nuts



with fig sauce and a cheese ravioli



regional



from local chestnuts


I am so glad to have the car to drive back up the hill to Pierrerue at night. If I use it for nothing more than that, it will have been worth it. (Ridiculous statement. Of course I use it for more. The very next day.)

[Caution: this is an awfully long post. Tomorrow’s will be shorter, I promise.]

Should a woman, traveling alone, be cautious about putting herself in potentially troubling situations? Well, yes, but without necessarily avoiding potentially interesting (and information generating) encounters. I go with the motto that so long as there are people around, no harm can come my way. The accompanying motto is do not give out your real name or phone number if you are at all thinking that you may actually have someone make use of it.

On Sunday I had my worst meal yet of the entire trip and I had my sleeziest encounter as well. Not deterred, on Monday, I had a wonderful meal and a wonderful encounter. Both had innocent beginnings and, thankfully, innocent endings. I’m used to traveling alone and I am used to reaching out to strangers. And I am used to this leading to good outcomes and occasionally a not so good one.

I was psyched for trying out one of the three or four eateries in St. Chinian. This is to be my town, the place where the waiters will know me by name and kiss both cheeks every time I enter, the place where I know the menus by heart. Okay, I am eliminating from further consideration the place I went to Sunday eve. It may be fine by North Dakota standards (no insult there, it’s just that I’ve not heard anyone ever rave madly about an eating establishment in North Dakota), but here, you come to expect a lot more.

But before even sitting down to dinner, I was passing by a rowdy group just outside a bar next door. They were so exuberant! So I asked one guy to explain what was going on. It turns out they were supporters of a local rugby team. The team had lost that day, but this certainly would not keep anyone from coming out to cheer about their non victory.

The guy I asked was a chatty type. In providing full and detailed explanations of everything having to do with the sport of rugby, his home town and all in between, he bought me what he considers to be a local aperitif (kir, claimed as local by nearly every village in France) and he got quite close. You know, so that he could be heard. In the ten minutes I spent there in that crowd, I had nearly a dozen people come up and tell me that I should watch out for this dude. My camera and my entrance smile make me look quite like the innocent abroad. In any event, it’s never impossible to leave when you are in such public places and so I did. Only to have a bad meal. It was a gloomy and very dark fifty minute walk back to Pierrerue that night.

On Monday, I took a public bus (with all the village high school children from this area) to the big town of Beziers. They were going to school, I was going to pick up a car. I cannot move much without one and the intended motorbike rental turned out to be too difficult to contemplate.

In Beziers, I finally had one of those moments where you are in love with your setting. My setting actually wasn’t that spectacular – Biziers is just alright, acceptable only if you are passing through ever so quickly, but the café and croissant were nothing short of magnificent.





And so now I have this car. And I am on this morning close to the coast. I had wanted to see what the coastal towns and beaches were like here, at the point in France where it is almost Spain but not quite. And I wanted to see the first segment of the Canal du Midi.

You know about the Canal du Midi, right? It is more than a three hundred year old canal and it came to be built because of the pirate issue around the Rock of Gibraltar. One good way to avoid the pirates is to dig a canal through France between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

The canal is a fascinating 240 kilometers of locks and water slopes, connecting waterways all the way to Toulouse where it dumps boats into the rivers leading to the Atlantic. It is also a work of art, with the recognizable rows of old, evenly spaced trees making it all extraordinarily photogenic. So expect to see a lot of Canal du Midi photos in the next three weeks.



resting places for barges and boats




bridges


But the other body of water that I fell madly in love with on this day was the sea. I was driving along the coastal road up to the historic port of Sete and finally, I could not resist it. The sun was strong, the water was breathtakingly beautiful, there were gusts of wind and really, you cold not ask for a finer day to walk along hot golden sands.

Two things surprised me. There were cars parked along the side of the road and every several dozen feet there would be an umbrella or two, but not so many. Surely this place will swell with people in July and August, but now it is extremely uncrowded.



one umbrella here




on this windy day, another one here...


And the women are topless.

We are not talking about a nudist beach. There are those as well, but this is just one very public stretch of sand, right next tot the road, and there they were, not all, but a great many, old and young, walking around and wiping an occasional grain of sand from under an often sagging breast.

It was such a beautiful hour, there in that Mediterranean sun. I stretched out by a dune, rolled around some in the warm sand, walked by the water’s edge and studied these:



...wait, friend or foe?


…and generally thought evil thoughts about Victoria’s Secret and the post sixties generation that rejected early attempts to burn that damn bra for good (except for jogging – I can see its virtues then).

I did not stay too long because, brown as I am, I am not brown all over and without sunscreen, you can do some serious damage to yourself on those beaches, but I have to say that this was one great hour of bliss this week.

In the town, my little info booklet told me that I should climb up a hill to take in the spectacular layout below. Surrounded by sea on two or three sides, connected to the mainland by strips of sandy beach, broken up by an old canal running through the town center, it really is quite the marvel.



canal down the middle



looking at it (later) from the top



to the south, the beaches


And so I ask for directions of a person who looked like he might know the area.

Diego lives here, alone. He looks local, speaks local, eats local. Early in our conversation, he had been telling me about his beautiful grown up children and so I pointedly asked:
do you have a…(momentarily the word for wife escaped me)
Concubine? He asks, completely seriously. No.

He had once married a Parisian woman, had children with her, then decided she worked too hard and he wanted, instead, a life of beaches and fishing and singing late into the night (he is Catalan and earns money as a Flamenco singer). You could call that either romantic or foolish. She saw it as the latter and stayed up north. He’s been here for years.

He was giving me directions, in fact leading me up toward the proper roads when I interrupted to ask where I could get a good lunch salad. Sete does not lack eateries. There are lots and lots of them and so one must be suspicious, particularly after last night’s poor dinner.

Diego’s accent was thick and sprinkled with dialect, but he knew to speak slowly and I could easily follow along.

These places, they are mostly bad. For tourists. But there is one place that you will really like. Le Pique Boeuf. They make excellent salads, fish dishes, local foods. It is excellent. I know it well, I sing there every Saturday evening.

I ordered the bouillabaisse. Anyone who has eaten with me in seafood restaurants knows that I always order a bouillabaisse if it is on the menu. And here I am, practically at the birthplace of this flavorful concoction.

The staff was effusive. They brought tasting plates of mussels and olives and dates and on-the-house aperitifs (it’s a local one! Kir!) and I was there for more than two hours. Diego invited himself to accompany me, sipping on a cup of sweet tea and watching me find pleasure in eating.



a little extra, on the side



displaying what he'll place in the bowl



almost ready



ready


He invited me as well to come back and hear him sing. I protested – it’s a two hour drive to Pierrerue. He assured me that I could stay over at his very large apartment, but that violates my motto number two and so I nodded and spoke of trying, but really I will not do any of it, interesting as a night of Catalan-Flamenco would be.

Several post scripts and then I’ll stop. First, The waitress there was thrilled that she could chat up an American. She has this dream. She wants to be a make-up specialist for film. The kind that puts on fake old noses and wrinkles the skin some, etc. She is adamant about this. She will go to study in the one school here that teaches this craft (in Strasbourg) but she feels sure there is in America a school that does it better. She was not able to find anything on the Net. I told her I’d ask around. Let me know if you know of one.

Secondly, Diego, my all around problem solver for the afternoon, also finally cleared away my coffee issues. I am renting the apartment from an English woman. The English haven’t the need to start the day with a great coffee and so their coffee making utensils are of the uninteresting kind. I wanted to purchase my own stove top espresso maker for my use here. But where? So far I had wasted time on this found nothing.

Diego told me that I needed to go to what he referred to as the Arab bazaar. Sete, as most cities in France, has a significant community of Muslims. They tend to form clusters in the poorer sections of a city and they operate a number of stores which are geared toward their own families. And sure enough, my Italian moka pot was there, at the bazaar, priced at 5 Euros (one fifth of what I would have paid in a department store).

Thirdly, so long as I was in this bigger town, I decided to also put to rest my search for sandals. I cannot find anything ever for the summer in the States that fits well, looks stylish enough and is reasonably priced. In France, none of these are a problem.

Indeed, I found two pairs in a cool store and I loved both. So much so that I was working hard on developing my justification reasoning so that I could convince myself that buying both was okay.

A woman, a shopper, herself stylish, of course, paused and looked at me inquisitively. I can’t decide between the two, I explained.



which one?


She pointed to one and said: that one of course. The other, it is for a little girl.

With those words, she unwittingly dismissed half the women’s footwear sold back in Madison. Practical and like a little girl would wear.

And here is why I love being my age and in France. This is the age that you look forward to here. You have style. You have superior knowledge. You teach young women how to do right by themselves and young men how to make love with care. You are in your prime. People look up to you, admire you. Being young isn’t nearly as attractive as being in your fifties. A midlife crisis must manifest itself when you are experiencing great frustration that you are not yet there. Like purgatory, it is your limbo time. The summit has yet to be reached. And when it is reached, it appears to last for a long long time. It is an attitude I love and share.

Several corrections to the previous post: first, my patron (neighboring) town, St. Chinian, is bigger than I thought. In addition to the grocery store and bakeries, it supports at least two meat stores.



St. Chinian, from across the river


Second, I do not mean to imply that the French opt for leisure the minute the week-end begins (sometime early on Friday). They work hard, for example, at eating. 24/7. It is, therefore, no surprise that food stores are open Sunday morning and St. Chinain’s market days are Thursday and Sunday. And it is a big deal market. More on that later.

Third, though it is true that St. Chinian is not geared for tourism, neither is it 100% French. It is 95% French. And 1% miscellaneous European (guess German), here to sample and buy up some good wine options. And a solid 4% British. I could tell from the market. They were there, turning pink under the fierce southern sun (this part of the country is in the midst of a heat wave so that it is sunny and bright and in the low nineties, though nicely breezy and not at all humid).

I think the British must be doing well by themselves because they are the new Japanese as far as traipsing around European destinations goes. No cameras though. Just hats to keep the sun at bay and walking sticks. They seem to like a good walking stick to help push things along.

We first encountered them in Dubrovnik. There, they were just passing through. Lots and lots of pensioners, slowly passing through. A day, no more, and off to the next destination.

In St. Chinian, they are here for the season. Or for good. They have purchased simple homes and they go to the market and they turn pink and I’m sure they thank the Lord that they are not up north under the murky drizzly British skies.

My landlord at Pierrerue is such a person (hence the lovely flowers at the doorway). She lives somewhere in the vicinity of St. Chinian and she keeps this flat for occasional family use, but mainly I imagine to help the budget along. And she is not the only one. Downtown, I saw a real estate agent’s ad plastered on the wall with “English spoken” written at the bottom.

At the market today, I was a puzzle since I obviously am not local-sounding but I also do not turn pink; I am actually quite dark by now as a result of Sicily, Croatia and now here. The newset guess is --Spanish? I did overhear several of the sellers muttering a few English words, clearly prepared for the invasion from the Isles.

The British expats do seem to retire for the day early. Last night, when I stumbled into town late in the evening, I saw none of them. But the market brings them out. They drive in from their country homes, in their modest cars, and they shop and sip a beer or coffee and chat up the other expats mingling about.

Okay, that brings me back to the market. It was one of those extravagant markets that brings to town all that is needed to make life move forward. Half food, half practical clothing, it is there to ensure your survival until the next one (Thursday). I took some photos of course, but only of products I myself bought. So if you see it here, you can assume that it made its way home with me (among other unphotographed purchases). Heavy bundles, hot walk, uphill most of the way. But with a water bottle. I learn.



called a "country baguette," it has a thicker texture and a beautiful crust



I've been asked if food is more expensive here, given the emphasis on quality. Is it?



...no, it's not



farmer's son gets to pick his own cherries



which would you buy?




absolutely passionate about his organic oils




I ask, so, what's local here? He answers, I am!



everyone carries one; it saved my foods from becoming soup on this warm day


I did also visit a wine store – it is this town’s raison d’etre, after all. And I am glad, because wines of this region (the general area of Languedoc, running basically from the western edges of the Mediterranean down to the foothills of the Pyrenees) are my staple back home. I love a good Bordeaux, but my budget loves Languedoc wines even more. Needless to say, here, they a steal, rarely topping 5 Euros a bottle.

I desperately need visitors. I cannot myself drink all that I want to sample.

St Chinian (the AOC ones) are predominantly red so that makes it a little easier since I am a predominantly white enthusiast. But still, they have a fantastic selection of my very favorite summer beverage – French rosés and so I am back to panicking that my three weeks will end and I still will only begin to know the different choices. Life can be so difficult.



at a store selling only wines of Languedoc


Back at the apartment I would have collapsed, but remember, I am a changed woman. Not only do I sit down for lunch in cities, I cook my own if I happen to be in a village with nowhere to sit down except at my own table. The market foods need to be cooked and eaten otherwise I cannot justify shopping for more next market day. Again, guests are welcome to help move things from market to table, only please find your own place to stay. It would be too cozy in my little apartment for more than the most intimate of guests.

N.b., I had fancied myself eating lunch on the little terrace with the spectacular view, but it’s not going to happen. It is toasty hot in the afternoon and the shade of the tree only means that the are wonderful little tweetie pies out there, mating and eating and basically using the patio as their loo. Inside the cool stone house it will be and I am not sorry. I feel like others in the Mediterranean region who retire for several hours, close the shutters against the heat and do the eat and sleep number. Only in my case, it’s eat and blog.

A one hour hike, a half-hour bus ride, a two hour local train, a three hour TGV (French bullet train), an hour bus ride, a ten minute car ride, a three hour Internet installation process. That was my Saturday. You guess which one from this list failed me.

You think it’s the Internet set up, right? No! I am on! Slow, but chuggin' away! Then was it the local buses? No! Like clockwork. Well then the hike. Walking for an hour from the Savoie restaurant-with-rooms to the bus stop, with my supremely heavy backpack, wheeling the suitcase up hills, down hills, around hills – foolish, yes? Maybe, but I managed (and saved Euros by avoiding monsieur le expensive taxi).

What failed was the TGV: the bullet train stopped in Montpellier and could not get itself going again. For hours. Oh, technology.

No matter, thanks to miracles and favors along the way, I made it to the village of Pierrerue – home for the next three weeks. I am living in a tiny apartment in an old stone corner of a long-gone castle courtyard.





Some enterprising soul ran wiring and plumbing in through the original walls. The place has two tiny windows, but if you take the trouble of walking over to one, the views are of the countryside. Like this:





Pierrerue is in the heart of the hilly wine making region of St Chinian. Pierrerue itself has maybe a dozen houses, a church, a rooster, and a bus stop. I understand a bus comes through once a day. Oh, and on weekdays, the bread man comes through the village. He rides down the street shouting his presence and people come out to buy their baguettes. The French cannot live without a fresh baguette daily.

I am a forty minute walk from the town of St. Chinian (downhill getting there, very uphill coming back). St. Chinian is not a tourist destination. It has no hotel that I'm aware of, no internet café. It is small. But it has one large tree shaded square, four bakeries, four restaurants and a grocery store. And a market twice a week.

I am where I want to be – in the deep French countryside. Happily, the rooster is a French rooster: he comes out on a fine evening looking and sounding great and then sleeps in the next day. Even the church bells are quiet this morning. It’s Sunday, a do not much of anything kind of a day.

It became clear as anything that, in spite of my purchasing a year’s subscription to France’s Internet (no, I am not moving here; this was the shortest and cheapest way to link with the world from the apartment I am about to inhabit), I need more equipment to proceed. I need the special, ridiculously idiosyncratic French phone plug. Their sockets appear to be (sometimes) different from ours.

And so the day was allocated to a morning of work and an afternoon of bus travel to big Chambery (not that big by our standards, but certainly bigger than, say, Janesville) where I was to acquire a phone transformer-connector-whatever, words fail me as I continue my search for a more stable solution to my Internet problem.

I purchased the phone plug immediately, but I stayed in Chambery for a while. The town is enchanting.





The entire region of Savoie is France as you imagine France to be and Chambery is as you imagine a French town would be on a fantastically sunny Friday afternoon. People fit the stereotype here. Shops sell fantastic pastries, waiters stand around caressing their girlfriends and people in general do nothing, brilliantly.











I noticed that France has changed me. It is no longer even a question. I eat lunch here. I read the descriptions of their salades on posted menus and I rush to order one. Today, after great deliberation, I settled for the one with warm, toasted local chevre. I am in Savoie, damn it, I must do as the Savoieuse do (I’ll pass on kissing waiters; not that they don’t tempt, but there such a thing as trying too hard to fit in).





One thing has not changed though: my love of clothes shopping here. I find the stores in this country far too tempting for my own good. Maybe it has something to do with admiring the French sense of style. Maybe I have a hidden desire to be like them, to look, move, speak like them. They seemed to have mastered the art of presentation so well. In any event, when the stores start pulling up the shutters at three to reopen for an afternoon of business, it’s best that I leave town.

And so I head for the Tourist Office and pose what I think is a natural question:
Can you suggest a trip into the true Savoie countryside? Like I see in posters? You know, with fields and goats and spring flowers and stuff?
The woman behind the desk takes it in stride. She must be used to tourists asking ridiculous things. But there are limits to what they can offer us. I haven’t a car and it is getting late in the day. Their mind is probably already on where to eat le diner, not on where to seek out pastures and poppies.

Still, the French are resourceful. I am told to take a bus from the station to the village of Challes-les-Eaux. Not too far. From there I can walk into the vraie Savoie.

I am a fan of French buses. They are inexpensive, clean, comfortable, they run on schedule and the bus driver not only greets every passenger, but also bids him or her a cheerful au revoir and bonne journee at the end of the ride. And since passengers get off toward the rear, the bus is filled constantly with hearty back and forth wishes for pleasant afternoons and good days. It’s all rather reassuring and motivating. It makes you want to step down and try your hardest to indeed have the finest day possible.

In the village of Challes-les-Eaux I think I should solicit advice. True Savoie countryside doesn’t just throw itself at you, you have to state your claim and head up the proper paths. And so I seek out the tiny regional office of tourism. That this office is underused and overstaffed is possibly the understatement of the day. I would bet anything they had not had walk-in inquiries for weeks. Madame could hardly move herself from her comfy chair to the front desk. She was not used to dealing with, well, people.

But behind that tired from doing nothing countenance there was a person with knowledge. As I went into my pathetic I want to see poppies and cows and pastures and farms and true Savoie countryside little jingle she sat back and studied me in the way that one does when one is trying to determine if the person is serious.

You know, we have a flying school not too far. You could see a lot from up in a little plane… Can I direct you to it?
My God, no. I want to step on soil, smell the hay... Ultimately, we settled for something more down to the ground. She took out a map, worked her little highlighter all over it and directed me to exactly what I had been searching for. Something that fit my images of what Savoie countryside is all about: cows against the backdrop of the Alps. Beehives, poppies, fields of wheat. Poplars and blooming acacia. Windows with lace curtains and flowerboxes. If you look for it, you will find it.















Several bus rides and another hike later, I was back at my corner table at Atmospheres restaurant. Evening was setting in. The doors and windows were open so that the sweet fragrance of acacia blooms and roses from the outside came in to tangle with the savory kitchen smells. Alain outdid himself. I ordered from the standard menu: an appetizer, fish, meat, cheese and dessert, but Alain threw in extras. I ate and people watched for hours. It was a good thing fresh plates of food appeared on a regular basis or I would have dozed off in sheer contentment. Fresh country air, great food, Savoie wine, doing nothing. Mellows you out completely.

Just two photos, of two desserts – one blending basil with berries and the other blending a hot chocolate soufflé cake with a cold icecream on a stick. Perfection.

MORNING AND, AS IT TURNS OUT, AFTERNOON

Une petite promenade – that’s French for a little walk, no? I asked at the restaurant what my options were in the area. Everywhere I look I see beautiful hills, forests, mountains. Une petite promenade is definitely in order.

Delphine, the wife of the chef here at Atmospheres (the name of the restaurant above which I am sleeping these days), suggested the forest behind their little chalet. I found the path. Uphill, to be sure, but where there are mountains there will be inclines. Up I go.

It is clear that the French are better at marking trails than the Italians. It is also clear that I should have read something about the terrain, the gradations of difficulty, the options before me.

Ten minutes into the hike, my petite promenade turned nasty. You know you are in trouble when you grab for anything -- holly bushes, berry canes, anything, just to keep upright.

I felt defeated after the first hour. Still, there was only forest around me. Surely I should not turn back until I reach something. It would be a personal failing to kill myself for nothing, not even a view. Around me, there was forest. And more forest.

Yes, occasionally, glancing back I would see this:



looking up



to the side


And on the ground, every once in a while I would spot these:











Mostly, though, there were trees. And me, clinging to them.

Two hours into the ascent and I am at the stage of exhaustion where I am questioning everything about my life: why do I blog? Why am I doing this? Why did not bring water?
Because it was to be une petite promenade, I had neglected to take water or provisions of any sort.

I wondered how it was that the French managed these inclines. Of course, they are fanatics here when it comes to le sport. They bike on these roads, reaching the same elevation as I did (1200 m) without so much as a sigh. And then they crazily coast down again.





When I firmly believed that I could walk no more, that I would have to hitch a ride down some paved road, even if it meant sitting in the lap of a crazed cyclist, I came across the only other hikers on this mountain – a family, with two little girls, aged perhaps 5 and 8. They had parked their car halfway up the mountain (smart French -- why kill yourself early on) and were on the trail just ahead.





Two little girls, happy as anything, sauntering ahead, occasionally asking a parent for a square of chocolate.

When they finally paused for a snack, I had to pass them. But two steps later, my sanity returned. I had been hiking up this damn mountain for more than three hours. There is no summit in sight. I am tired, hungry, thirsty and I haven’t a single square of chocolate in my pocket. Time to turn back.

In passing la famille, I was hailed over for a brief forest chat. And saints that they were, without question, without comment, they took out their huge bottle of mineral water and handed it to me. Politely, I only took ten sips.

They were used to the mountains, they told me. Their daughters often went climbing with them. They were here on holiday (it’s a national day of no work, perhaps the tenth one this month), doing what the French do best: taking time off. The usual question came forth – where am I from, Germany perhaps? Sigh… it is not the first time. For some reason I look German to the French. I rushed to correct them. Ah, an American. Hiking without water, without a bar of chocolate. Hmmm.

I was grateful I was not wearing my denim skirt.

Refreshed, I sauntered down and spent my last bits of energy in search of food and water down by the lake, in the little village of Le Bourget du Lac.

Unfortunately, I had come down too late. Restaurants were closed in their post-lunch rest period. Stores were shut tight. National day of rest means that people want to get down to the business of resting asap.

Still, I am in France. No one will ever starve in this country. In the next village (yes, another hour of walking) I found a tabac-newspaper-bar place that also had food.





It was off to the side of town and it had a smattering of locals, sipping their afternoon espresso or wine and it was happy to prepare a regional salad for me: the Salade Savoyarde. Magnificent! Lettuce, tomatoes, nuts, eggs, olives, gruyer cheese and freshly grilled tiny strips of bacon. Followed by fromage blanc with homemade fig jam. This late afternoon random meal was better than food served in heaven, of that I am sure.




After that, even the hike back to my restaurant-with-rooms seemed a breeze. Total amount of time spent on la petite promenade (including the half hour at the tabac-bar): eight hours.

EVENING

Alain and Delphine run the restaurant, Atmospheres, in the hills of the Savoie together. I can’t tell their age – they are younger than me, but then so is 75% of the world’s population. Last year, they converted the second floor of their chalet to four stunning little guest rooms. They live just above, on the third floor.





I traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to stay here and to sample Alain’s food. I did not get his name off of some Michelin list of superstars. Instead, I have a treasured book that I randomly picked up on one of my previous trips to France and in it I have a listing of the author’s favorite country eating places. Hundreds of them, all around France.

Atmospheres is completely unpretentious (no one dresses up, there is no fine china or silver, they do not decant the red wines), but it is a serious eating place.

Watching the French select things from the menu is a story in itself. They take forever. They discuss the possibilities. They consult. I am on my third course and they still have their noses in the menu (which, btw, is always short, since freshness is de rigeur here).

As so often in these places, I opt for the tasting menu. There are no choices to be made: the chef presents, in this case, ten small courses that show off his talent.

I’ll say this much: of all the wonderful country restaurants in France, this is perhaps my all time favorite. Everything about it is stunning. I sit at my table looking out over the lake and mountains and I watch the two young waiters along with Delphine deftly attend to the needs of the diners at the ten tables and I think they have perfected it – the art of presenting food. There is no room for improvement.

Go ahead, travel here if you must. I admit, it is a rare find. The brand new rooms above the dining room sparkle, the bathrooms glisten, the price is geared to a French budget, not a foreign one (a room, a sumptuous breakfast for two, wont cross 100 Euros). But don’t tell your friends and neighbors. Atmospheres is a French gem. I don’t want to run into the likes of me (the foreign tourist) next time I’m here.



predinner nibbles



frothy carrot soup, young peas, onion broth with reblechon mousse



shrimp on artichoke and tomato confit



lake fish, diced peache, asparagus



foie gras, grapefruit sauce



veal on grilled polenta strips and mushrooms



Savoie cheeses



wrapped in mango



100 per cent chocolate



postdinner nibles

I’m riding the train again – my second day of train travel. I feel myself to be completely immersed in the rail system of Europe. I paused only for an hour in Milan. I would have said that it was 59 minutes too long, it being Milan, but I did pull my suitcase around until I found a bakery and so yes, it was worth it, just for this:





I have a four hour segment now on a rapid train (TGV) through the Alps over to France. Why there? I am waiting for my apartment to become available (a three week rental, beginning Saturday) and I have three days to kill. Somewhere. I need peace and quiet – to take brisk walks and to get a huge amount of work done. A restaurant in a beautiful country setting, where the proprietor rents out a couple of rooms for people who eat too much and can’t move afterwards seems perfect.

The problem is I arrive on a day the restaurant is closed. Who knew. In anticipation of this, I used my pause in Milan not only to pig out on pastries, but to do shopping for dinner foods. Yes, this detour into Milan's food network did cause me to almost miss the train. Still, I had to carefully consider all my choices : bread and cheese, veggies, fruits and wine. It all added to a little under 5 Euros. You can imagine the quality of the wine – it comes in a box. The last time I drank boxed wine I was 22, a grad student and didn’t know any better. But popping a cork given that I misplaced my handy travel corkscrew seemed daunting and so I opted for a milk carton (with a nice and secure screw top) only without the milk. I’ll report on the quality of the wine later.

Or, I may not report anything. The restauranteur’s wife, with the promising name of Delphine (so French, no?) promised that there is Internet at their place, but I have heard that before and it is hardly ever true. Big hotels have Internet. Little restaurants in the middle of nowhere by a lake near the Alps do not.

UPDATE: Sure enough, the Internet here has been down for days. I am borrowing the restaurant phone line to dial up. Meaning, I am keeping the reservations from pouring in. I am such a difficult guest. But the setting, oh, the setting! Out on my little terrace, before me, the lake (France’s largest natural lake, I am told – but what does that even mean? I know they’re into organic everything here, but a lake?). If I turn sideways, I see this:



into the morning sun

The challenge will be not only to continue to raid their phone line for Internet access, but to get any work done given the sunny skies and countless opportunities for hikes.

Fortified by a breakfast of warm cakes and fresh berries, I think I'll start with a hike. To get my mind primed for work. Yeah, I need to get into the work groove. I'll find my groove up in the mountains. Off I go.

I am a seven minute train ride away from Venice proper, I have a morning to kill before my train to Milan and yet I am avoiding Venice, as if she were some horrible irritant, someone you wish would not show up for a dinner date.

So what’s wrong with Venice? Or is it me?

It’s me. I adore Venice. I forgive her the crowds, the pigeons (and that’s saying a lot), I forgive her the junk stores. I just find her demanding and I am not willing at this moment to give all that she would demand of me: patience, money, attention – I haven’t any to spare.

I had stayed in Mestre once before. I was thirteen and my parents had wanted to see Venice. They thought, correctly, that it would be cheaper to stay in this industrial suburb. Our little hotel turned out to be mainly a house of ill-repute and we all got terrible rashes from what appeared to be an infestation of bedbugs. Three years later, still poor and still wanting to see Venice, we returned, this time to sleep in a tent on the beaches of the Lido. After that, my mother proclaimed that Venice wasn’t worth it. As usual, I disagreed.

And yet, here I am, minutes away and turning my back to her. The guilt, oh the guilt.

True, it is raining…

*****************

The train pulled in late from Zagreb last night. Mestre was, of course, somber and gloomy. It is to be expected. My hotel is decent – I chose it because it has a small garden. Really, no other reason. If you are going to stay in an inexpensive place in Mestre, you may as well look out on greenery.

One notable thing about it is that it is not especially close to the commercial hub of the city and so I settle on eating at the hotel restaurant. There aren’t many places in this country that will serve a bad bowl of pasta.

I enter the dining room and it is loud! No wonder – at one end some two dozen men are seated at a long table. They are not drunk, but they are happy. Boisterous. Animated.

My waiter apologizes for their noise, but I wave away his concerns. How could anyone complain about sharing a dining space with these guys – their love of the moment is so palpable! I ask what the occasion is and he tells me they are local taxi drivers. They come to his dining room once a year to eat dinner together.

It is late and the dining room is now empty except for the cab drivers, myself and, way across the room, a young family. She is calming a baby, he is making sure the son is eating properly.





The baby falls asleep and the father takes the son out for a while. I watch the mother. She is oblivious to the taxi drivers. Simply dressed, with a look of hard work about her, she is, I think, beautiful. Her dark hair spills on her back, her face has the look of shyness. She is lost, in her world, dreaming. What of?

Her husband and son come back and she visibly shakes herself loose from her thoughts. She looks at me across the room. We smile the complicit smile passed between mothers the world over. You have beautiful children, it says. I know, is the response.

She whispers something to her boy. He turns around and looks at me. He asks his parents permission to leave the table. They nod. He pushes his chair, gets up and comes over. With a grin, he leans his elbows on my table.
My Italian permits me to find out that he is Matteo. He is all of five. Yes, they are here on vacation.

Permesso, let me light your candle. He takes mine and goes to the waiter. He asks for a light. The waiter obliges, the little candle picks up the flame, but on the walk over, it goes out again. Back goes Matteo, the waiter lights it again – as if there was nothing odd about a little boy looking to light the candle of a signora, sitting alone at a table, eating her pasta con frutti di mare.

The mother comes over now. Her smile increases her loveliness tenfold. Where am I from, she wants to know. America. Matteo, she is American! Does this have special meaning to a little boy? Do they talk about it? Do they have relatives there?

And you, I ask, where are you from? Calabria. Oh, the south! I love the south! I just was in Sicily.

It is late. The father has left with the baby and she now moves her boy toward the door. Matteo takes her hand. I wave to him, he waves back. The cab drivers are still eating, still laughing. I retreat to my room, upstairs, the one that overlooks a few green trees.



Mestre dinner

And so my adored Croats in my family (I’m a phony – I only hold on to a Croatian name) are returning home today. They take with them their laughter, companionship, irreverence, affection. How fair is that?

I can’t even think of being here without them and so I, too, am heading out. Back on the trains today, with a quick overnight in Italy and then, more trains tomorrow, putting me (I hope) in a little village by a lake in western France.

A special bow here, on Ocean to (my) daughters. Thank you. As always, you’re the very best. Even if you do insist on scaling mountains in flip flops, eating cherry strudel after every lunch and bringing a second copy of Zadie Smith’s newest book, just to show me that you read faster than I do.



one last aperitif: campari and soda with a shot of o.j.
...to the natural wonders of croatia




daughters

A day of ice cream, pretty dresses and church for some, of kicking the ball around, of conversations.



hungry for a roll?




after a wedding




the reward for sitting still




women talk, cat sleeps




a boy, a ball, a message on the wall


A Sunday here should feel different than, say, a Sunday in Marsala or Zagreb. Dubrovnik is a tourist destination. Tourism does not rest on this day, it speeds up and explodes, only to recede again at dusk, as day trippers return to their buses, their ships, their more distant hotels. The city becomes quiet only then, much to the chagrin of the restauraneurs, who survey their empty tables and wonder why, somehow, they have missed out on the madness.

We succumb to the pressure to do not much of anything on this last full day in the city. Breakfast, outside again, on a windy but dappled by sunlight terrace, lasts almost two hours. A stroll through town and it is time to think about lunch (pizza, thin crust, delicate sauce, sizzling cheese. Delicious).

Cappuccino follows and then, of course, a siesta, because one little cappuccino is not going to fight off the overwhelming desire to rest in the afternoon. Out on the terrace. With something to read.

It had been determined early on that we should scale Dubrovnik’s wall just before it closes in the evening. Empty now, against a receding sun and very very beautiful.




one last look, toward the setting sun




the main street grows quieter


Then a double and very protracted Summer Festival aperitif and a walk to the designated favorite eating place, Mediterano.



tables hugging the cathedral wall


Mario is there – our waiter from earlier in the week. He is surprised to see us again.

The inevitable question is asked – where are we from? This always astonishes me, because I think, to these English speaking Croats, it must be so obvious. The big A, emblazoned on our foreheads.

But there is always the registered surprise when we respond with the A word.

So far! You have traveled so far to be here?

And even greater surprise that we should choose to do the entire family vacation in Dubrovnik, that we are not boat people, here for a day or two and on to the next port and the next; that instead, we are here and only here, this is it – designated UNESCO city, designated Camic vacation spot.

Are you the owner of this place, Mario?
No, my pal Marinko is. He is the cook. You have made his day by being here again. But you know, we work together. I do not work for him, we are friends. Only we are so new and we worry about how it will turn out.




the cook and the waiter


And what reassurance can I offer? None. Mario, Marinko, you have a winner here. Your seafood is so sublime that you should not worry! I will tell everyone to come and eat here. I will make you famous!

I, of course, can say none of this. We talk about the fish of the Adriatic, about the difference between octopus, squid and calamari, we drink the Dalmatian wine, we thank them profoundly and we leave.

A planned day trip to the islands morphed into a hop over the border to Bosnia, which in the end turned into not Bosnia at all, but a long trip down south to Montenegro. Or, more accurately, Serbia-Montenegro, since they are now one, at least until the referendum today, when Montenegrins are voting (one hopes with ballots only; the European press is watching for signs of violence) on whether they are to become a separate nation-state. It’s going to be a close one.

My mistake was to ask for advice. Croats have opinions and they have this tendency to not budge. Ask for a table in the sun and you will get one in the shade with an explanation of why it is better there. If you persist with your request, they will persist with theirs and in the end, guess who will outlast the other?

When the seas became rough on Saturday, we gave up on the islands idea. A village in Bosnia seemed intriguing.

Not to the hotel desk clerk, whom I asked for advice on how to get there.

Don’t take the bus. Unreliable. Don’t go there anyway. There is nothing there!

Before the conversation ended he had connected me with his friend Veljko, who drives a car and takes people places and knows Montenegro very well.

Their coast is beautiful, Veljko tells me. But they don’t like to work. The joke is, if a Montenegrin is getting up, it must be noon! Without Dubrovnik sending them a few tourists, they would have nothing. I don’t know how they will manage as a separate nation. But we get along with them. We share the sea, we speak the same language. Still, they are poor. You will see.

And we do see. You cross the complicated border and you notice the potholes. You notice other things as well: little commerce, simple homes, simple lives.









But it is better here, in Montenegro, than in Bosnia. In Bosnia, there are no street signs, no traffic lights. You come to a sign saying “Atena 900 km” and that will be it. There will not be another sign.

He takes us to Budva, halfway down the Montenegrin coast. I do not think any overseas travelers come to Budva.
But Serbs come here! It is their playground!

A walled town, washed by the waves of the Adriatic, it is, like Dubrovnik (though a miniature version of it), a UNESCO protected site.












I remind Veljko that, sadly, UNESCO’s designation did nothing to protect Dubrovnik during the siege.

Yes, my family’s house was hit seven times, but Dubrovnik houses are solid!
How did you manage all those months, without food?
My mother stocked up when she sensed that war was coming. We had some supplies reach us once a week. But it was dangerous to go get them. If you stood in line, you were a visible target for the Serbs.

Do Croats get along with the Serbs now?
Mostly. The bad guys, Slobodan Milosevic (nc: himself a Montenegrin Serb), they’re gone. It was crazy then! My brother was in the Yugoslav army when the war started. So they asked him to shoot his own people! He left for Germany and never came back.

And you stayed in Dubrovnik?
Yes, I am starting my own touring business next year.
(I am guessing he plans to put Montenegro on the tourist map.)
I have a wife, a little girl. Her name is Ira.
Is that a popular name here?
Actually, in Dubrovnik, they like to name girls Dube, short for Dubrovka and boys Vlaho, after the patron saint.
(I suppose I might feel the same fierce loyalty to my home town had it experienced all that Dubrovnik did.)
My mother worked in tourism before she retired. You know, there used to be 55 hotels in the Dubrovnik area before the war. Now 35 have reopened. It is still slow.

We drive further south, along the coastal road to Sventi Stefan, another tiny former fishing village, walled, jutting out into the sea.








leading up to Sveti Stefan




village close-up



Sveti Stefan close-up


We pass olive trees on steep mountain terraces.
Do you make olive oil here?
Yes and in Croatia too! My father-in-law makes olive oil. I will bring you some to the hotel before you leave.

And there lies that Croat hidden friendliness. You look at a face and you think: serious, reserved. And yet, by the time you finish the day, they are telling you about family squabbles and life’s dreams.


The trip south messed with our regular afternoon eating habits and so we targeted this evening for a great big Adriatic indulgence. You could not ask for better seafood. You really could not.



asparagus, mussels, olive oil



grilled octopus salad with warm chicory



risotto with shrimp and zucchini



crispy sea bass with capers and candied lemon



pear, calvados and amaretto souffle and rum raisin ice cream

There is nothing large about this city except for Mount Srd at one end and the Adriatic at the other.

The miniscule daily market has small-time growers bringing maybe several dozen eggs, a bunch of roses and a few bottles of home-infused grappa to unload. Only a couple will fill the table with mounds of fresh fruits or veggies.











I buy a very small, recycled olive jar filled now with grappa. Not because I am especially fond of the stuff, but because there is a certain home spun beauty to it: the combination of herbs, a flower, a bay leaf swimming in this reused container. So much of what I find beautiful about life in these parts is like that: simple, artful, shared, understood.



grappa and figs


It has been decided that Saturday, the day the cruise ships come in, is the day to leave Dubrovnik during daylight hours. But on Friday, we still loiter.

We visit the market.
We visit the cathedral.
We visit the Sponza Palace.
We visit Rector’s Palace.
We visit the old synagogue, the only one in Europe that remained open during the entire Second World War.
And in one of these sites, we visit the room dedicated to the memory of the several hundred who died during the ‘91-‘92 siege of Dubrovnik.

And so it is no surprise that in the afternoon, I want time out.

I want to climb the mountain that shelters Dubrovnik. Sure, I remember the warnings about landmines. But I also read the poignant accounts of mothers scaling the summit daily to pray for their sons whose lives were lost on these hills. And I hear there is a path. And if you stick to the path, you are safe.

I twist daughters’ arms and we set off.

It takes no time at all for me to get lost. One path becomes a dead end. Another leads to a seemingly deserted house with chained dogs growling the minute I come within 100 meters of them.

But if you know there is a path, you will find it. That is my new motto. Indeed, it takes only half a dozen queries and we are on it again, heading up, up through the pine forests and then above the tree line, up, up, past thirteen crosses in memory of the war heroes…




…up up past blooming brush and flowers and rocky stones, until, looking down, we have the city, wrapped by its wall, the same wall that gave magnificent views before but now looks like a little thimble, nothing more. And the sea and the islands, from the quiet of a mountaintop.



looking sout, toward the walled city



looking north, toward the islands


And then it is but a roll and a stumble back to town.

Dinner is absolutely stellar. Mushrooms stuffed with seafood, covered with melted local cheese, prawns with polenta, prepared in the Dalmatian style and of course, ice cream filled crepes.














It is late and we head to the Franciscans. A quartet is playing to a handful of visitors. The Beethoven piece brings me to tears. By the time they finish with a Schubert and a Rossini, I am one wet noodle. Small markets, large mountains, the quiet of a summit, the clear notes of a flute, all pulling at your emotions, so that it becomes about your own life, reconsidered against the drama of this little town on the coast of the Adriatic.

If you haven’t the room for a park in the city, then find room for it elsewhere. The people of Dubrovnik took that message to heart and put their park on an island, a dozen minutes away by boat.

And so when the city was feeling just a little too overrun by school grops, English pensioners and tourists speaking languages I cannot place – it was time to head for the park.



ferrying for an afternoon away from the city pace


The island of Lokrum is a quiet place. So close and yet so quiet! There is an old monastery and a small church, but you really come here for the lush vegetation, the coastal views...





...the winding trails, and the nudist beach.

Yes, that. We stumbled upon it by getting lost in the woods (I had the map and I forgot to follow it) and coming upon a sign that basically said put away your cameras and take off your clothes or stay out.

So, did I oblige or did I move on?

It turns out Croatia has a long “naturist” tradition. People expect to be able to go out on select beaches sans attire. They like the feel of water on their bodies. They’ve been commanded to do a lot of things in the past, but here, in these spots up and down the coast, they can do as they please.

They say the coastal waters got toasty warm – good enough to swim in – just this week. And the sun has been out daily, with pleasant breezes keeping the days at a perfect temperature. Why not swim and frolic and eat well at night. Why not…



a peacock watches



a boat goes by, taking it in




yet another place to swim on the island: the dead sea (cameras permitted here)




a late dinner, outside, by the sea

1. breakfast

At times I get immensely jealous of countries that have both the salty seas and the sunny spring skies. To do food well, they need only not ruin that which the season and the sea readily provide.

Dubrovnik does food well. It does not choke meats and fish with starch and cream in the central European way. It looks at a product and says – hey, it’s fine the way it is. Let’s just cut it up and put it on a plate. Like this:




…along with a good cup of coffee and some bready stuff, served early in the morning, on a sunny patio. Can’t go wrong.


2. lunch

I have a very complicated relationship to lunch. Back home I ignore it. Here, I am seduced by it.

It’s 1 in the afternoon. We have been walking the back alleys of this town.













The sun is warm, the air is still. It’s everybody’s lunch break. And so you sit down.
You are served this, with a glass of house white.



grilled veggies, octopus


The waitress hovers, fusses.
I like Americans, she tells you. Most of the time. But just now I had one take out his calculator and go over my sums. As if I can’t count! The other week, I was asked if I knew what a p.c. was. No, I count on my fingers and I come to work on horseback! Americans think we are so primitive.

Oh, that Eastern European complex. And that burning (not always untrue) image of the condescending American. They are a bad fit.
But I like your language. I studied it here, in Dubrovnik. I am an engineer in fact.
Underemployment, the problem of a country with a fledging economy

It’s 2:30, you move on to a café for a cappuccino and then an ice cream shop for a scoop of fruits of the forest ice cream. By now it’s nearing 5. One brisk walk out of the city, along the shore…





…and it’s time to think about the aperitif.


3. dinner

A new place opened up a year ago on one of the side squares of Dubrovnik. The tables are roomy, comfortably spread out over much of the square. To the side, at a jazz club, a combo plays an odd assortment of music. A boy runs past, kicking a “football.” From a doorway, you hear the sound of soccer on the screen, with occasional shouts of joy as one goal follows another. The stars are out.

The waiter brings a bottle of Croatian white, a bottle of mineral water, plates with fish pate, crusty bread.

We order. Time to try some Dalmatian favorites: risotto blackened with squid ink with chunks of seafood, a sea bass pan fried in olive oil, flavored with lemon and Dalmatian spices. A crepe with ice cream for dessert. Four people means two bottles of wine. The total tab comes to 560 Kn., which is about $100. The food at this place is so outstanding that it could survive the competition in the big capitals of the world.










I’m a failure in finding effective words of praise. They all sound so… standard. This is great. You are great. Wonderful, really wonderful. We are so glad we found you. We’ll have to return.

Maybe we will, maybe we wont. Who knows how the week will unfold. But there is always Ocean, the conveyor of important information. When next you are in Dubrovnik, eat there, at the Konoba Mediterano. And pat the guy on the back for his efforts. Or kiss him. Or leave him a big tip. Or write an effusive post.

(Being a tourist can be emotionally draining. So often you worry that you’re not doing a good job of it.)

One writer noted this about Dubrovnik: if they were to design a Hollywood set that looked like this, everyone would think it to be fantastically unreal. Dubrovnik, in fact, looks unreal.

But it’s not. It is as real now as it was when the wall around it first went up more than 1000 years ago.

Walking the walls of Dubrovnik, climbing up at a gate and then walking the whole circumference. Hey there, Dubrovnik, I have looked at you from all sides, I have circled you like a swallow. You are stunning!



from the wall



old chimneys, new roofs



from the wall



Ocean author, on the wall


A walled, car-less city that sparkles. It is Venice in that its survival (and demise?) depends on the tourist credit card. It is unlike Venice in that it is immaculate. A street made of marble stone, cream houses, many with new shingles (because the old ones were shelled during the war of ’91-’92), flowers in stone crevices, blue waters with visible pebbles at the bottom and fish throughout.



just outside the wall, an inlet

















A young man scales the Dubrovnik walls and collects the plastic bottles that tourists tend to toss during their walk along the walls. Croats do their work well. But rarely do I see them crack a smile. I am beginning to think that history has given them too little to laugh about.


A break, I need a cappucino break. With a slice of cheese strudel. Followed by a quiet moment, studying a well placed orange tree inside a Franciscan monastery.








At dusk you have two choices: to sit down for some serious people watching or to be watched yourself. I choose the former. An aperitif out on the marble street. Colors of cream and orange again. I pay, leave a tip, always on the high end, I am sure of it, because there is always a look of surprise. Is that a good thing? Man, those Americans just throw their money around. Or: man, those Americans are cheap. Both are probably true. We tip well at home. Less so here. It seems we can't figure it out. Foreign customs are like foreign currencies. They confuse us. Best to stay home, tend to your own backyard. It's comfortably clear there.



campari based "summer festival"


The swallows use the long straight street as an aerial highway. They swoop down and fly away, quickly, quickly, only to return, sometimes in teams, sometimes alone. I'm remembering the small tattoo on my back. A swallow, poised upwards, in flight.

The airport is small. The flight is full. Croatians, conducting business in Zagreb, returning home. A handful of us are tourists. We take our bags and breathe in the sweetly scented air of a blooming Adriatic town.

I’m leaving in November, to go to the States, our driver tells us. He is cheerful, affable. He is also brutally realistic. I cannot make a life here. In the States, I can go out to eat four times a week. Here, we Croats cannot afford the prices that are set for you, the tourists. We can’t even afford to heat our houses.
Were you here during the war?
No, I was lucky, I happened to be in Turkey. Afterwards, there was so much hope, but now I think there is less. Privatization was a disaster. Two hundred corrupt people grabbed everything and got very rich. The rest of us have nothing. We are worse off than when we were part of Yugoslavia. Now they say we wont be ready for the Union until 2009. Me, I am against the Union. European countries, they are all so different! And that is a good thing, I think.
Beautiful views! Can we hike up into the hills?
No, there are no cleared trails and there are still land mines that are dangerous. Out on the islands, you can hike there.



approaching Dubrovnik



a close-up



and another


He waves to a little boy out on the road. Big smiles are exchanged, a shout back and forth.
You know everyone here?
I know that little boy. I chose to work in an orphanage instead of going into the army.
You’ll do well in the States. You have a winning personality!
I know I’ll do well. I already have. I worked for Marriot, they want me back!

Later:

I’d like to order the lobster and potato salad and then the buzzara (shrimp and mussels steamed in a spicy broth). Oh, and a good Croatian white wine.








The restaurant is on a street filled with outdoor eating places. As we walk to it, others ask us to come into theirs, to sample their foods. Tables tend to be empty at this time of the year.





At the close of the meal, a jug appears at the table.
What’s this?
Grappa, from us. Try some.





You speak English, right? I just wanted to tell you that friends ate here two years ago and told us we must dine here as well. I am so glad we did. You are a terrific cook.
I get many warm kisses for those words. Old, smiling eyes. What have they witnessed in the last two decades? A siege that made no sense. Destruction. Rebuilding, so that indeed, it is, to visitors at least, the pearl of the Adriatic.

The hotel where we are staying served as a shelter during the ten month siege. The roof was blasted away, but the walls remained solid. It was reopened last year, finally, and now it waits, splendid in its sunflower and orange tones. It waits for people who will be charmed by it, people like me, who will sit on the terrace and sip a drink late into the evening and then wake up the next day for a breakfast under the blue skies of a gorgeous May day.

If you have been there, you’ll recognize it instantly. The buildings, tramcars, foods, parks, people – what more can I say. Mitteleuropa: Warsaw, Vienna, Zagreb. They have more in common than anyone living there would probably want to admit.

The “other Camics” will not be arriving until late tonight and so I use the day to do some work and then to go out and get a grasp on the Zagreb Sunday. Is it more like an American Sunday or an Italian one? You tell me.



park bench, pink chestnut tree



park bench, markings on tree



watching magic performed on the square



old town, café life



for me: krustada with cheese and cherries, capuccino, lilies of the valley


They speak a butchered Polish here in Croatia. In Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia as well. They take my language, mess with some of the words and it begins to sound like Polish with a few too many beers thrown in. A Pole can listen to a Croat and understand a lot. And conversely, I can throw together some Polish-like words and a person from here will get it.

Still, Zagreb is its own place. Even though I do tend to pick up on the similarities – the flowers sold by old women (the intense smell of lilies of the valley…no lily of the valley ever gives such powerful perfume in the States; I do not know why), the cafés filled in equal proportion with beer, coke and coffee drinkers from morning onwards, the chestnut trees, the lovers, the dreamers, the smokers, the Croats the Poles the Poles the Croats. God, it feels awfully close to home.



I bought from her; they were fresh and she was honest.



at the entrance to the market



red strawberries, red bag, red umbrella, red shirt, black cloak



she sells small amounts of lettuce



old town, looking up



old town, looking down


Monday afternoon we fly down for a week in Dubrovnik. Incredibly difficult to get to by land. Minutes from Bosnia-Hercegovina, significantly damaged in the conflict some fifteen years ago, it is now in a state of recovery. I’m happy to put tourist dollars into its effort to again become a favored Adriatic destination. I want to get to it before it puts itself in the league of all the other beautiful and significantly unaffordable spots along the Mediterranean coastline.

Oh, a post script to Sunday: a perfectly beautiful Mother's Day gift is to have your daughters show up to join you for dinner. And what is a Croatian dinner all about? Mine had the taste of a country that bounces between a Mediterranean culture and central Europe.



tomatoes, mozzarella, melon



baked cheese strukli



daughters

I had only once traveled to Yugoslavia when it was, well, Yugoslavia. On my way from Poland to Italy, I stopped at Ljubljana, counting the minutes until I could set foot in my beloved Italy.

Then, when I married some thirty years ago, I took on a last name that is Croat to the core. I’ve kept it and liked it. Especially when it isn’t misspelled as “comic,” though even that forces a smile out of me.

These are good enough reasons to do a family vacation in Dubrovnik, the southern-most city of Croatia.

I had been warned about the train trip from Italy into Slovenia and Croatia: be careful. Do not travel at night. Hold on tight to your belongings. [Perhaps I should have been warned as well about train travel through Switzerland where indeed I did somehow let go of my passport.]

My first leg of the journey is in fact to Ljubljana and the train to it is spiffy. One of the few I've been on with electrical outlets for computer use.



train to Ljubljana


I had spent the entire morning shopping in Venice for food. I mean, it was for the pleasure of marketing and people watching as much as for the sustenance. I took one pause and one pause only, to eat, of course. I needed a rest after the strain of all that food viewing.



purple, green and white



arugula, porcini, parmesan



a last nod to the children of Venice


I have with me now a chunk of bread (corona al olive – with green olives throughout) from a bread store, a bunch of small tomatoes, a radicchio head and strawberries from the open-air market, a big wedge of cheese (Caciotta Travisana – typical of the Veneto), a tub of green olives, biscottini con pistachio e aranccia, a small bottle of a white Cuvee di Pinot wine and a bottle of water. The problem is with the cheese. It is starting to smell. Right now, there are only three others in the train car. How soon before the smell wafts over to where they are sitting?

Soon. At the very first stop, the seat next to me is occupied by someone. Why? The car is 99% empty! I could get up, I suppose, but I am settled in. I do not want to be rude. Besides, I am fascinated. Typically, I am the one mocked for excessive fussiness. I handwash stuff when I travel. I clean shoes in watering holes. But my seatmate really truly did take out a white linen hankie to spread on the seat before sitting down. Her cream-toned pants are safe from whatever hidden microelements are on the leather seat.

Oh, now she is wiping down the table in front of us (state of table prior to wipe-down: immaculate – see photo above) with a tissue, which she then folds and places into a clean tissue so that she does not have to contaminate her hands with the used one. I feel better about myself already. I am a slob next to her.

And so now we are conversing. My seat mate is Croatian and I am getting the usual train warnings. Watch out for the ride from Ljubljana to Zagreb. That train has Albanians and Bulgarians. Dirty drunks! If they smoke, you tell them to go outside the compartment. And the train station in Ljubljana (where we have a two hour layover… where will she sit there, I wonder…): full of drunks. Oh dear. Suddenly I am thinking that my small bottle of Pinot, to accompany the foods described above will not go over well. I have no cup. Does drinking straight up put me closer to being one of them?

Later, in Ljubljana:



the station


Perhaps my seatmate was right. Many bars, many in them looking rather down and out. Still, I do find a quiet one to sit in for a while. Oh, I need money. Fine. Is there a bankomat nearby (Europe-talk for ATM)? There is. I put card in and ask for some minimal amount. I get a thumbs up from the machine but no money. Try again. Same thing. I envision my account being drained of funds that I will never see.

Back at the station, another Bankomat. This one asks about the amount. My, those numbers look huge! 5000 is the smallest. Is that like a thousand dollars? I press it anyway. I need local cash. Wait, I don’t need local cash! This is NOT Croatia yet, it’s Slovenia. Damn! Why did I just get Slovenian money? I understand that Yugoslavia split into many smaller nations, but did they have to make up different currencies too? Here I am, holding on to $30 worth of Slovenian money. How much wine can one drink during a two hour layover anyway?

I sit and take out my computer. I need a friend.

Later, on the train:

The lady in white did not get on the Zagreb train. Was she lying about her destination? Was she a spy? A thief? Why did she sit next to me anyway? I’ve lived too long in America. I have learned to think this way about my own home regions (Poland, Croatia, we were all in this together once).

So many passport checks! Just for crossing the border from Slovenia to Croatia! Is this a good thing? Weren't they one country not too long ago? After the last check, I fall asleep. It is close to midnight and so I should be forgiven. But it is the train traveler’s nightmare to oversleep a station. And here I am, doing just that. I wake up to silence and stillness. The train is not moving.

All those warnings about not taking an overnight train because of robberies during sleeping hours and here I am, alone in the car, asleep.

Thankfully it is the final destination. I get off in Zagreb and tug my suitcase to the hotel, a place of great beauty and calm. And Internet access.

This isn’t the only place in the world that draws Euros or bucks from tourists by the cartload, but sometimes it seems that Venice has become overwhelmed by the numbers. Of tourists, not Euros.

You enter Piazza San Marco and it is like Disneyland on the Fourth of July. Yet the cafes there stand mostly empty. People come, people go. People buy trinkets, not expensive drinks and desserts.

And for those who serve us here, it must just seem like each day spits out a flood of never ending questions, badly asked, in broken Italian, or worse, in drawly and incomprehensible to them English.

The other night on the Vaporetto (boat bus), it was crowded and my suitcase was wedged somewhere in the back and so I asked the boatman in my tired Italian how many more stops before the Accademia (where I was to get off). He shrugged his shoulders. Two maybe – he said. I don’t really remember. In Sicily, I would have been told how many stops, how many seconds to get to it and where I can get a good coffee once I’m off.

The thing is, I could not blame him. He had done this trip a million times with a million disoriented people on board. The captain at the wheel kept knocking on his window because I kept standing up to take photos and inadvertently I would block his view. That must happen another million times each day. Tourist stands up. Bang bang bang, motion to please sit down, can’t see a thing, may run down some poor soul on the water.

There is a barge out here selling vegetables on a side canal of the Dorsoduro. It has been there since I started coming to Venice some thirty or forty years ago. I always take a picture of it. I don’t know why. Sometimes close-ups, other years with daughters in front. Same boat, same veggies. It’s a camera magnet! I’m not the only one. The guy selling the veggies is uniformly pissed at the photo taking (even though surely it must be a different guy each time). He wants to sell vegetables. Cameras block the real shoppers. He wishes we would all trip and fall into the canal, I am sure.



In the evening, we cross the Rialto bridge on our way to dinner. Rialto is sheer madness, but if you hug the perimeters, there are quite the people watching opportunities. Three American student types are sitting at the edge of the canal. The aperitifs must have been flowing that day because they are laughing excessively and even for this noisy place, are boisterous beyond the beyond. One more sip and a bottle is now empty. The one who is laughing hardest tosses the bottle into the Canal. This causes her to almost topple in along with it, she finds it that funny. Out comes the digital camera, as she takes pictures of her gift to the Canal. A taxi boat stands nearby. The driver watches these young women without any expression at all. He is no longer surprised, no longer bothered.

We are early and so we stop at an outside café–bar so that I can sip a Campari spritz and pretend for a minute I am one of them and not one of the tourists.

We eat in a tiny restaurant (five tables only) heartily recommended by the proprietor of our tiny hotel (five rooms only). There are several Italians and several Americans. We are pretty much oblivious to everyone as we sit in a corner and wolf down plate after plate of glorious food. The mamma type who serves us is straight out of the movies. Proud of what the kitchen makes, happy to be there, feeding people.



seafood salad with polenta


A woman, an American, gets up and comes over to me.

Excuse me, she says to me, I hear you speak Italian. I wonder if you can help me say something to the woman (the mamma type) who is serving us. Can you tell her that we witnessed what happened there, at that other table of Americans?
What happened?
They were joking around and someone ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu (about $100), you know, just for laughs. She brought it to them, opened it and then they said they didn’t really want it and would not pay for it. We want to offer to pay her. We are so angry and ashamed.

The mamma type would have none of it of course, but she smiled extra hard.
They hugged her good bye and left her, I am sure, a generous tip.

In the small bar around the corner of the hotel (seats no more than three, with standing room for an additional two), we stop for a Cynar. (To commenter chuck b.: I did this for you. Herby and medicinal. Grows on you.) A stunningly gorgeous young Canadian woman comes in. She is waiting for the manager to close the place – they have a date. She has been traveling around Italy alone for a month and has another month to go.

It’s been my dream to do this. I stay in hostels and eat pizza a lot, but today I blew a fortune at a restaurant these guys recommended. It was extraordinary! The Italians, they are so nice to me. Everywhere I go, they are so kind.
How long have you been in Venice?
I just got here.

I wanted to tell her – they’re more jaded here. But don’t blame them for it. We have done this to them.

Venice is a working city. It takes so much work to keep it afloat and reasonably clean. Here are some photos of those who do the work and of one (and not the only one) who appreciates the effort.


(but first, a capucci'o moment)




waiting



more waiting



working



resting



delivering



going to work



Ocean author, enjoying


Ed, my traveling companion for two weeks, left this morning to return to his work and his ambitious plans to plant a million tomato bushes.



Ed, at the farm, the one at Campofelice di Rocella


I walked him to the boat for the airport. In a few hours I’ll catch a train that many many hours later will place me in Zagreb, where I will be joined tomorrow by my family. I came to Venice by moonlight, I leave by the dazzling rays of a morning sun.



glittering in the morning sun

It was a travel day. I'm leaving Sicily.


Sicilian memories

From car to plane to bus to train to boat. My suitcase got tagged as heavy. I saw Ed several times giving a glance to the canal then to the suitcase, then to the canal. I know what was going through his mind.

We pulled into Venice late, just before 10. By the time we got off the Vaporetto and walked over to the little hotel on the “left bank” (Dorsoduro) of Venice, it was well after 10.

Ask someone where to get dinner as the clock ticks past 11 p.m. in Venice. Go ahead, ask. You’ll get an answer, sure. And you’ll go there, and it will be closed. I’m going to guess that Venetians are ashamed of their early closing times and so they pretend they don’t exist. But they do.

Eventually we did find a little Sardinian place where the cook did not throw down his spatula at the stroke of twelve. We sat, we ate, we drank, we took in the warm night air. Venice can change rapidly from lively to quiet. From bustling and bright, to moonlit and quiet. Just turn a corner, or move the clock forward.



from lively...




...to still

(Thursday post, all caught up now!)

1. on the trail

We have been lucky. With the exception of the very first hike, we have had all the trails all to ourselves. It is quite possible that this is thanks to May travel. Or maybe it’s because we are the only ones who still cling to Hiking in Sicily, copyright 1998, while everyone else has moved on to something better, or at least more updated, something that has not yet reached the shelves of Madison’s Borders Bookshop.

Yesterday, though, we had company. It was a remote trail through a forest preservation area, high up among the more jagged peaks of the region.





Getting there was hard enough. Only forty kilometers from our farmhouse, but what a forty! It took two hours to drive over to the starting point. True, there was a stop at a village for a capucci’o.



a pause in Isnello



as I work the car down the tight space, others take a more relaxed approach to the day



first capucci'o break of the day


And it took many sweaty minutes to navigate the car out of the narrow alleys leading in and out of the village center. Still, we reached our hiking destination by 3 pm. Not bad for those known to start late and get lost, all in the space of one day.

It was a brilliant day – perfect for a climb up rocky paths, bordered by every shade of green. This particular area has hundreds of species of plant, some found only in here, extinct in all other parts of the globe (note fir trees below).








Eventually, we did meet up with clouds. But not for long. We climbed above their level and forgot about them.





The same cannot be said for the German couple. We came upon them early in the hike. We could not shake them.

Wanting the solitude and quiet of an empty trail, we gave them space. We paused for ten minutes. Up ahead, they paused for ten minutes. We stopped to pick the little caterpillars off our clothes. They paused to pick the little caterpillars off their clothes. I took photos. She took clothes on and off – it took the same number of seconds.

We would have passed them, but every once in a while they would get that brisk German step going, signaling in every way “we are unbeatable.” We tend to be more leisurely about things.

They were the only other souls on the mountain. We cannot complain about their presence anymore than they can about ours. But I do have a suggestion for future hikers on mountain trails: keep your voices down. Sound travels.



a photo pause at the top


At least we did not get lost on this day. We knew we had it right each time. The Germans paved the way, with the help of their sturdy leather shoes and very detailed maps. Not for them, Hiking through Sicily, copyright 1998.


2. in the restaurant

In the evening we went to our “other” village restaurant, Portico Antico. Signora Cristina (from our farm) described the place as big, noisy, family oriented, full of locals, but with exceptionally fresh and honest (or words to that effect) food.

All predictions were exactly correct. In the background, the TV was on. And so the meal was against the backdrop of some rescue movie with, Ed tells me, Sylvester Stallone, dubbed over in Italian. I, myself, could not really tell. Amazingly, all patrons were arranged around tables in such a way that the men faced the screen and the women – any place but the screen. [Five minutes into the meal I threatened to take away Ed’s glasses if he continued to direct his eyes toward the set.]

Patrons included a mamma with her two teen daughters, a couple with their one year old, a woman with her frail great grandmother, and an assortment of men and women variously related to each other.

It was the kind of place where if you ask about the fish of the day, the cook comes out to show you what he picked up this morning.





The restaurant completely won me over. But then, I am, in general, quite smitten with this little corner of the world. The village of Campofelice di Rocella is close to the mountains, the sea and fewer than a dozen kilometers up above the trendy coastal Cefalu, the town that has my Internet Point and perhaps more importantly, looks like this on the drive down to it:





Campofelice di Rocella is a laid back, unpretentious kind of place. Not many visitors seek it out. According to our server, no Americans ever set foot in her country restaurant. Such a mistake. True, no one speaks English here, but how could that possibly matter? I no longer take my ancient little dictionary anywhere. Sicilians are brilliant in getting their point across. And each explanation, each encounter ends with a handshake and a smile.

You come hungry, you leave happy and satisfied. Again, well cared for. It was our last Sicilian meal. Tomorrow we head north again. But I’m hooked on Sicily. I’ll be back, certo.



antipasto



risotto



fresh and honest

(Wednesday, post 2)

Our Tuesday hike took us to the top of Monte Zimmara. I had not known there would any summits involved. When Ed read the description to me, I focused on the part about gravel roads, relatively straightforward climb, all at the outset. If you’re going to strain yourself to death, I feel it’s best to get it over and done with.

But the hike was from The Book. The one published in 1998. Before the years where wind energy swept over Europe. Sicily has often been scornfully regarded as standing still, but here, in the northern mountains it has its share of these:



cows and wind "mills"


The hike was through a Riserva Naturale, but here, a Riserva Naturale can include villages and farmsteads. In the oak forests, in valleys and on mountain crests, the sound of cow bells is everpresent.

I would not call the climb easy. “Only 450 meters!” Ed said, using exclamation marks to emphasize his perception of things. But from the top, you could see pretty much all of Sicily.












sweat peas, poppies, etc.


Still, the quiet has been disturbed. When you get within a few feet of the tall masts, the whirling sound of the powerful spinning blades is close to that of a hurricane passing through. The cows seem not to mind. And you have to keep thinking how excellent a source of energy this is. In Germany, our hosts were less enthusiastic. Nuclear is the way to go, they told us. But here, in Sicily, where the winds are so strong, the arguments against its use fail, I think. And, there is something majestic about harvesting the force of wind.

(Even though I wish I had worn more than two shirts, a sweater and a jacket to protect myself from that same majestic sweep of air.)

As a post script, let me add that this is the third hike from The Book and the third time we lost our way, this time on the descent. Amazing. You would think that finding the trail down is easier than searching for the one to the summit. You would be wrong.



she reassured us that we were not lost


Oh, looking for evidence of dinner foods here? Back in the village of Campofelice, we went back to the tiny trattoria, where cheese and roasted eggplants joined forces with tomatoes to produce this:

(Wednesday post)

So what’s it like to stay on a farm in Sicily? This is our third. Each has been different, but let me say a word on this last one.

It has no name and it appears to have a sole inhabitant, Signora Cristina. I did not correspond with her. She speaks no English. I’m guessing she has a friend handle any email in another language. She is gentle in spirit and manner as she has an expquisite sense of detail.

The house is very very old. She tells me it has been in her family for hundreds of years. The guest room is in the second floor, over the old olive press.





In all three farm houses, we have been left to ourselves. In Wisconsin, you have to be social if you go the bed and breakfast route. Most of the time, breakfast will a communal affair, whether or not it is your inclination to be bright and chatty from the minute you take a sip of o.j.. Not here. You are given space. But if you ask questions, you are given the moon (see post below).

These are all working farms. The first one was a serious producer of olive oil under its own label. The second sold grapes to the cooperative. This third one has the olive trees as well, but it seems more laid back – as if their livelihood did not depend on farming.



farmhouse, olive trees


The breakfasts have been typical Italian affairs: excellent coffee and then some stuff thrown in – usually breads and jams, sometimes a boiled egg, sometimes cheese. In this last one, we eat in the garden, bordered by lavender bushes on one side, and the sea coast, just a few miles down below, on the other.









view from farm to sea

There are no phone lines, no televisions. Tile floors, puffy quilts and a sprinkling of antiques. All have views onto gardens and all abound in the wake up calls of birds, or, as I write this, the occasional rooster.

[Tuesday post]

Sometimes I feel that by the time I find an Internet place, I will have enough pages ready to publish on Ocean to constitute a book.

I apologize in advance for the eyestrain.

For simplicity’s sake, let me group yesterday’s events into four chapters within this odd little chapter of a day

1. the long answer to a short question

It happens that on this day (Monday) we leave the western coast of Sicily and cross the island all the way to the north-eastern shores. Unless you are determined to make this journey ten times longer, your only choice is to cut through the mountains of central Sicily.

I must have switched into second gear more than a thousand times in the course of the day.



goat herder below, mountain village above



his close-up



their close-up, hidden by grasses and flowers


Ed promised, in the empty way you toss about promises to make your traveling companion shut up already, that several of the towns along the way would have Internet Points. He was not exactly wrong.

The only way to locate these points is to ask. The preferred category of person to direct inquiries to: young-ish, male, on a motorcycle. Works every time. But it took us a while to think this one through.

What becomes clear from the very first person we hail as we drive through the first big town, to the very last, as we pull into the coastal city of Termini (see brief note posted the other night), is that the people of Sicily have an overwhelming desire to give even more than is asked of them. I am remembering several chance encounters on this day:

[first encounter]
Do you know if there is an Internet Point in this town?
Yes, yes, just a minute.
The man works his body into the car, passenger side, where Ed is sitting. He has a look of great concern. He points to Ed’s foot.
But what happened here? Did you hurt it? Is it broken?
He looks closer and the lines of worry on his face change to lines of laughter. He pulls on the elastic of Ed’s big burly white socks (Farm & Fleet, a dozen for $5).
Socks! They are only socks! I thought a cast for sure! What a relief! Now, here, you want to turn the car around. Go right into this driveway. More, more, that’s right… (and so on)
[n.b., the Internet Point is closed. Why? A neighboring storeowner shrugs his shoulders. It’s Monday so maybe they needed an extra day off.]

[and another]
Do you know if there is an Internet Point in town?
Yes, yes, but it is hard to find. It is far, out of the way. Come, follow me, I’ll lead you there on my motorcycle.
[There follows a crazy ride through back alleys as I struggle to keep up. Internet Point is about to close, but they stay open one minute so that I can post my Ocean disclaimer.]

The desire to help, to explain, to protect, does not arise only on matters of the Net.

[Conversation in the late afternoon, in a café, in a mountain village]
One capucci’o please.
You want a capucci’o? Let me see if I want to serve it to you. [Man behind the bar takes out carton of milk, opens it, inhales deeply and shakes his head] I am sorry, but for you I do not think it is good enough. The smell is not good.
He knows I have three other bars to choose from in town. He has just saved me from spending the rest of the day in a toilette.



happy to switch from capucci'o to gelato


And:
[It is very late. I pull up in front of a store.]
Do you know where the road to Campofelice di Rocella is?
Campofelice di Rocella! Come, walk with me.
She prods me to go with her. We amble up the road. She points to the hills ahead.
Do you see those lights there? Campofelice di Rocella. Not the pink lights, mind you. The blue ones.
And how do I get there?
She has prolonged the moment. But now I must move on.
Ah. Just follow the road. There will be a sign.




2. Another set of hiking difficulties, all blamable on “Hiking through Sicily,” copyright 1998

We do not have time to get lost, Ed, pick an easy one for today.
Okay, right in the central mountains of Sicily. It’s rated “average” and talks of gravel roads.
I have enough sense not to wear a denim skirt. We set out.



watching us



showing off





It says we are to go through a gate and cross the field.
Ed, there is a herd of sheep and I see at least three dogs and they are all barking ferociously at us.
Let me see if they mind my walking toward them
They are directly in your path. Do the dogs mind? Listen to them! They think you and I are wolves ready to destroy their herd. Their teeth will be firmly around my shin any minute now!

And so we detour.

And then, yet again we are faced with a path that disappears.



all flowers, no path


And it continues thus.
It says to look for a solitary oak on a meadow.
Brilliant. There are a dozen solitary oaks. Which one?

Where there is a path, it is wet, muddy, good for horses, less so for people. When three hours later we do finally make our way back toward the village, I wash off my shoes in a watering hole, picking at the muddy soles with a thin stick. I should have photographed the look of shock on Ed’s face. I do not think he has ever even contemplated that anyone would, in the middle of a hike, wash the soles of shoes. We are different in this way, Ed and I. Very different.


3. The men

This is a country of men. By five in the afternoon, the piazzas, bars, benches are filled with them. We all know what the women are doing – fixing their food back at home. Still, the sight of all these men makes you think that a plague has swept through the towns and deliberately wiped out those with different reproductive systems.

These, then, are the photos from the village to which we returned at the end of our hike. It is 6. The sun is low, the stone houses are the color of burnt butter. The men come out to talk.














4. lost

The farmstead that is to be home for the next three nights is the most obscure of the whole lot. I do not even remember how I found it: it has no name. It is not listed in any of the books I own. It has no website. But as I corresponded with a Signora Flora, I became convinced that it was special. The owner is an advocate of organic farming. She rents just one or two rooms, not too far from the sea, in an ancient stone structure in the middle of nowhere, of course.

And when it is dark, that nowhere becomes even more nowhere.

What’s that smell? Didn’t you say they practiced organic farming? The air is absolutely acrid!
I agree. But as we get out of the car, having finally found the place, only because out of the three dozen people we bothered along the way, one actually had heard of Signora Flora – it becomes clear that the smell belongs to the car.
Have you been riding the clutch??
I have. I am tired. I have switched gears close to five million times as we navigated roads, paths and terrain that has made our rental look like it signed up for a mud bath special and they forgot to do the final rinse. We should have arrived at 7, instead, it is 9:30. Riding the clutch comes from not giving a damn anymore.

After we are shown our quarters, we are told of a small eating spot in the village, some 3 kms away. The place is empty. The food is, of course, excellent.

Are you from here?
It is a two people place: he cooks, she serves.
No, but my husband is. I am from Paris.
Do you like Campofelice?
I love it. My entire family comes here for the summers from France. My two children play outside and I do not worry about them. They are well cared for in this village. They are safe.

Safe, cared for. Fussed over. It describes me here as well.



bruschetta



pasta

[Monday post]

As I type the last words of yesterday’s post and watch the sun come up over the orange trees just outside the baglio, it strikes me that it is Sunday. In travel, time is measured by how many days are in front of you and how many have passed. Dates, days of the week are irrelevant. Until you realize that they are very relevant to everyone around you.

Sunday is not a work day here. Nothing that can be closed stays open. Internet points? Forget it.

We drive into Marsala just to make certain that someone somewhere hasn’t decided to rebel and open the door to the world of the Internet for the likes of me. And there we find the obvious. This is a day for pleasure, not for work. People, crowds of them, dressed with great care, are out for The Stroll, and maybe The Capucci’o (with pastry), nothing more. In groups, in pairs, in embrace, arms, hands linked in a physical demonstration of connectedness. It is jarring how different their world is from ours back home.



Sunday stroll, 1



Sunday stroll, 2



Sunday stroll, 3


We interrupt our own hiking plans to join this sea of humanity. We stroll, we eat pastries.



selection



choosing the right one



my choices


…And I ask with my best smile a hotel clerk downtown if I can, for a moment, use his computer for two minutes. Ocean is there, of course, but equally significantly, I cannot tear myself away from an email check. The world may implode and I can live without learning of it from the NYT or CNN, but email? That’s another matter. [In fairness to myself, I am anxious to hear from family members who are in the midst of a number of significant events back home.]

Thus, yet again, our hike is pushed to a later hour. It cannot be helped. La passagiata (the stroll), the café, and the drive through hill towns (you haven’t lived until you’ve driven a five foot six inch wide car – with a 900 Euro deductible for damage to it – through twisting five foot seven inch wide lanes), admiring the symmetry of grape vine fields – it all takes time.








As if awakening from a siesta break, we finally abandon the car and start looking for the trail for this day at (please don’t laugh) 4 in the afternoon.

After realizing that this island is not full of recorded paths nor marked trails, Ed has succumbed to studying the printed word. He has lost himself to books and texts, poring over pages and pages of tourist matter to find the ideal path for the day.

On this Sunday, we are to climb a mountain that stands across the ravine from the Segesto Temple – possibly the most beautifully positioned ancient architectural wonder of the entire Mediterranean basin The goal is to view the temple from this more remote, neighboring peak, towering more than a thousand feet above the ravine.

The path begins by the creek and crosses over the water repeatedly before beginning the ascent. In places it is overgrown with shrubs, reeds and grasses. Ed reads this as I survey the terrain.
Ed, there is no path. What year is that book from?
1998.
It was “overgrown” in 1998? Let me tell you, it is “gone” in 2006. And the water level is, shall we say, “different” as well.




overgrown, wet, rocky


But we are old and foolish and we think we can make it. The going is absolutely treacherous. Vertigo be damned, I can’t be bothered. I am climbing up a mudslide, while reeds, made wet from an afternoon shower, are marking up my bare legs and a short denim skirt is absolutely saturated with water.

Yes, you read it right. I am hiking in a short denim skirt. Why this most inappropriate attire? It’s like this: we go from hiking to eating. Everyone around me is dressed up. Women are wearing pointy shoes and jewels. I refuse to go to Sunday dinner in hiking jeans. So I compromise with a denim skirt, thinking, how hard can it be to hike in a denim skirt? Never again.

By the time we are half way up, we can catch glimpses of the Doric columns across the ravine.



first view: looking up


It is inspiring. It makes us continue, up through the forest, up, climbing now between squat palms and sage brush, legs scratched to the core – until, three fourths of the way up, the path completely disappears.



next view: eye level


And still we continue, cross country now, looking for any possible way to reach the top of the mountain. We read that there is a jeep track on the other side. The idea of descending through the ravine is absolutely horrifying and so we are determined to reach the summit, just find the track down. We are rewarded with this:



slightly higher


Ed tells me later that the climb was absolutely too risky and should be eliminated from public consumption. But the view, oh the view!



from the top, looking down


We return to Marsala for dinner at La Botega del Carmine – a simple trattoria, empty when we arrive at 9, packed by the time we leave at 11. The meal, Sicilian to the core (it’s sort of like taking Italian cooking and turning up the spices a notch), is fantastic: my pasta, with fish and eggplant is faultless. Next come huge prawns, steamed in their shells in a spicy broth. But it is always the antipasto tray that stands out. Mounds of variously spiced and grilled vegetables, calamari, salami, couscous in the center (a Sicilian bow to the continent across the sea) – it is a wonderful assortment of flavors.



antipasto


I eat and watch the families around me. Behind us, the mother takes into her lap her sleepy four year old daughter. She smiles at me. I am sure she can tell I am moving back in time to my own images of daughters in restaurants, in laps.

The two men that run the show at the Botega are determined to please us. At the close of dinner, they place bottles of grappa and herby liqueurs for us to sample. The room is charged with the music of Italian banter and laughter. A Sicilian Sunday. No work. Not today.

[Sunday post]


A relative term. Late. Yes, you may show up beyond the hour set for a meeting and you will be late. But otherwise? It’s all in how you regard a day.

Take Saturday. Our daily hike was to be at a natural reserve some 30 – 40 kms to the south of our farm. Would you consider showing up at the entrance just a hair past 6 pm late? Maybe. Unless your day looked like this:

Up before sunrise. Sort through the dozens of photos from the previous day, play with them. The sun comes up, the world is pink. You stop for a farm breakfast, do some laundry in the sink, hang it up on the balcony clothes line to dry. You are like one of the locals – clothes on a line, all colorful, waiting for a tourist camera such as yours.

You edit the post that has been in your head all night. By noon, you’re ready to go.

Leaving the baglio, you pause to talk to the man working in a field of baby vines. He touches them delicately, with pride and tells you way more than you can understand.



tending young vines


So you’re driving now. But where? To Marsala to find an Internet point. There you make friends with the man behind the counter. Why? Because you’re going to spend a while there. May as well be friends. It takes time, after all, to transfer your own photos to a DVD, find out their computer wont take a DVD, borrow the nice clerk’s external drive (see? friendship), load it, transfer it to your flickr account, put it all together and post. And of course, there is email nudging you, reminding you that everyday worries are just an ocean away. You engage in worry for a while and finally unplug the whole damn thing and leave.

It’s 2pm. Not too bad. Time for a cappucci’o (there, got that one right finally).



capucci'o break, 1


Back to the car, point it south. Take note of yet another cloudburst. You wonder if your colorful clothes on the clothesline out on that farm balcony are enjoying a second wash.

You pass fields and groves and you stop every .05 of a kilometer. Because you cannot resist it. The beauty of a grove of olives, framed by flowers and vines.





You get chased out of one such grove by a local who suddenly needs the same single car dirt lane you chose for a photo base.

You come to Campobello di Mazara and note that the rain has passed. It’s after 4, you have, in two hours, traveled 35 kilometers. Nice going. Celebrate progress with a cappuci’o break. I mean, these frothy drinks are small. Compare it to my Madison afternoon grande latte.



capucci'o break, 2



Marsala, proudly displayed



in town of capucci'o break


[Compare the price as well. Madison latte: $3.25 plus tip. Italy cappuci’o: 80 Euro cents. With pastry, grand total 1 Euro 60 cents. Go to Italy for your coffee break, save money.]

You’re almost at your hiking spot. But first, a visit to the Acropolis. Not the one in Athens. The one in Sicily. You admire it for more than a minute. After all, it took more than a minute to build and it has been standing there for a while, though crumbling a bit at the edges.





Onwards. Oh, but wait, it’s hilly here and so beautiful!





And you come across fields overgrown with fennel and artichoke.



artichoke and fennel, close-up





And finally, it is past 6 and you are there, ready to hike.



riserva naturale


Needless to say, the hike is greatly cut back. Why? Well, because you are hungry. Between here and the baglio there is a medium sized town: Mazara del Vallo. You were told there is a good place for dinner there. You point the nose of your car north and give the command to find the food. It’s a Smart car. It can do anything.

The Smart car takes you past hills striped with rows of vines and olives. The sun is setting. It takes your breath away.






in a hill town, enjoying the dusk


...Again and again





And when the Smart car finds the town and a parking space, you note that it is past nine.

You are given a table in spite of the full house and in spite of your attire (for me: jeans skirt and hiking shoes. So, well, causal for a Saturday evening dinner). Why the friendly reception? Because people in Sicily again and again go out of their way to help, to explain, to delight in your choice of travel destinations.

The chef comes out and recites the daily specials. Can he tempt you with any of them? What, you are going to say no? Of course not. You say yes to every one of them (warm seafood antipasti, homemade spaghetti with artichoke and shrimp, a fish sautéed with roasted potatoes, strawberries with lemon sorbet) because you did not have lunch, you’re starved out of your mind and you do not want to be the dumb foreigner who does not appreciate local food.



antipasto



pasta



from the grill



from the fields


At the table next to yours, a young couple has with them their four-month old daughter, Maria Vittoria. They are Sicilians, from Catania. They, too, are curious what Americans are doing in this not exactly touristy town in a remote corner of southwestern Sicily. And the chef is back to smile at the baby, and they all pass around last month’s copy of the magazine, Cucina Italiana, because lo, there is a short story about the very place we are eating in.



chef, guest, baby

And you leave, reluctantly, but still, it is after 11 and you are tired from all that non-hiking.

Do you call this hour late? Not for the people living in Mazara. During the day, it looked shuttered and deserted. Not now. There are hundreds out and about, packing the street. Young, old, all in conversation with one another. I am inching forward. Ed asks me – what does it mean, “zona pedonale?” Pedestrian zone? Damn! It’s a pedestrian zone until midnight. Drive on, Nina, you cannot possibly back out. Besides, it is almost midnight.

And of course, we get lost. Not to panic. You get used to it. So you’re lost on narrow lanes that meander through vineyards. So what. Eventually you will find the right combination of turns and you will not have to retrace yours steps after dead-ending yet again. You will get to the baglio, check on the wet laundry, note with pleasure that it is only 98% wet, so there’s progress made and you retire. Late? It’s relative, isn’t it?

A handful of searches through towns, cities and villages later -- no success. Internet remains elusive. Tomorrow I go back to seeking out people with phone lines. Two posts, with no place to go.

A domani!

It is Sunday. Sicily parties, eats, takes walks, eats, goes to church, converses, eats. But it does not offer Internet access. A kind soul lent me his station for thirty seconds so that I can write that tomorrow, two posts will appear for the price of one. But today, I must do as the Sicilians do and put the computer to rest, so that I, too, can walk, eat, sleep, converse, eat, etc. Because it's Sunday.

There, I’ve kept the text brief for those in a hurry. The day is in the title.

The morning is devoted to, well, posting. Perpetual Internet access challenges will only be on the rise as the next two farms do not even have phones, making even old reliable dial-up a thumbs down option.

By noon I am done. Yes, it takes time, yes Ed is patient, yes I do not mind sacrificing sleep for it.

We ask for a walk through the olive oil making operation at the farm. The Baglio Fontanasala where we spent the night apparently makes some award winning (aka damn good) olive oils. Ed is now carrying a bottle for me to have back home. Sometimes it pays to travel with a guy who fits two weeks’ worth of clothes into one little baggie (or so it seems).




We leave the olives and oranges of Fontanasalsa and, in the middle of a cloudburst, make our way up up up to Erice – a medieval town perched high, atop a mountain. Certo, it is terribly fun driving up the winding road, as water and mud cascade around you and you spend the minutes-seems-like-hours explaining that indeed, you do have vertigo, but no, you do not want to stop and hand over the driving to your traveling companion because you do not like his habit of taking the hands off the wheel – something that just does not work on snaky roads that haven't an inch of straightness about them.



at the top, fennel and a castle


Erice is dazzling. I would think that, sure. It is home to two best-in-Sicily pastry shops. And so we dispense with the stroll through the town quickly and make our way to both, where, consecutively we sample five pastries. That is correct, five in each. Yes, just between the two of us. For a total of ten pastries. [Okay, only two were full sized.]

Ed claims that they are all variations on the same almond theme. I don’t agree. Sure, when in doubt, guess almond paste and you’ll probably be right.



all with almond


But the one that locals favor, the Genovesi (ask them to warm it up for you so that it oozes ricotta in your mouth), is actually a simple pastry around a cheese filling. Absolutely delicious. And I have no bones to pick with the almond ones either.



warm, with ricotta

If you are going to build a medieval town on top of a mountain, you can expect that for hundreds, nay thousands of years thereafter, tourists will come, both for the architecture and the views. So it’s a sound investment. Guaranteed tourism and a source of revenue. More towns should try it.



toward the hills on a hazy day




toward the sea on a hazy day




Erice, toward the top


Of course, early May is the off season. So that in spite of perfect temperatures and wonderful walking conditions (once the clouds burst and move on), you have the place pretty much to yourself. Except for a few locals who are far too busy engaging each other in conversation to pay much attention to you.



expression: face, hands, words

A note on guidebooks

If I could, I would write a guidebook of the type I myself would want to have. It would have the small inns and guest rooms, sure, and the favorite local eating spots. And it would have listings of archeological and historical treasures somewhere toward the front. But the bulk would be on where to walk, drive, sit if you want to see life as lived by the people in the place you are in.

In western Sicily, it would describe the coastal villages as you head south along the water's edge toward Marsala (yes, THE Marsala, of the wine fame). It would mention the poppies that come together with vineyards and olive groves, creating colors that are best admired in the first week of May, when the greens are delicate and the reds brilliant and daring.



right next to the farmhouse

And the salt fields. Certainly it would suggest that a drive to the salt fields is worth the trouble, so you wouldn’t just stumble upon them by accident, because of your backroads driving habits. I mean, there stand a series of old windmills, still draining beds that are then converted into sea salt sold the world over. Sicilian sea salt. Look for it.





It would certainly suggest getting out of the car for a close up look at how men paint their boats, how in their complete friendliness, they tell you that no, orange is not the color of the boat, it is the base coat and it will be covered by a deep blue.



nothing is done solo


And finally, it would mention the baglio we are now staying in and include an explanation that a baglio is a farmstead built around a square courtyard, and that it is found only in western Sicily so that even in the eastern part of the island people don’t know what the word means.

Wake up, Frommers, Fodors, Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. You’ve got work to do.


A dirt road leads us to the first place on this trip where we are spending not one but three nights. So that I can finally unpack and put my feet up.

Tonight we are eating at the baglio because the young man that runs the place (it has been in his family for hundreds of years) feels like doing food. Other nights we can eat in Marsala, some 20 kilometers away. And what in between, during the day? Who knows. Probably looking for Internet connections. In a town that does business with the world, surely they will have points of access, wouldn’t you think?



farmhouse dinner: antipasti



Sicilian past: with artichokes, fennel, tomatoes



at the end, local marsala

We are in Sicily to hike. That is why we came here. Moving between three farmsteads with rooms to let, positioned in key regions where the terrain is rugged, beautiful and underappreciated, we are to give ourselves a truly rural adventure.

I would not have thought, when planning this week of hiking, eating, more eating and more hiking, that I would ever write the following, but I say this with dead earnestness: today I came closest to experiencing the most dangerous situation of my life. There were several tricky twists to this day, but most certainly, it was at the end of it that I faced a movie-worthy moment of near terror. Read on and tell me if you don’t agree.

Such a benign beginning! We return to the Palermo airport to pick up one of those fantastically smart cars. They are called that – Smart cars. I think they’re supposed to virtually travel on air rather than gas, which is a good thing, because gas is topping $7 per gallon here.





We head toward Zingaro Nature Reserve. I gave my traveling companion, Ed, a book on hikes from these regions, but if you tell Ed that someone recommends a set of trails, he’ll head with enthusiasm toward that area, but then completely ignore any suggestion on how to proceed. This is a man who likes to invent his own wheel, a man who has hiked and sailed solo far too many times to work with anything but his own maps, setting his own course.

Of course, a stop at a sleeping village for lunch food is molto importante. Siesta means siesta here, but a local grocer defies the norm and sells us fantastic tomatoes and strawberries.



sleeping





We add these to bread, cheese, olives, several bottles of water and we’re set. Okay, we’re set after I make us take a cappuch break (I'm catching on to the lingo, truly!).





We reach the Reserve by two, Ed finds a ranger, gets himself a map and we’re off.

And it is breathtakingly beautiful. The plan appears to be to stay with a lower coastal trail in one direction, then climb up to the top of the ridge and head back. Estimated hike time: five hours.



the beginning



watching



along the coast, an abandoned farmstead



rock flowers



fennel everywhere


Ed and I balance each other. He is happy to carry the day pack, I am happy to carry my camera. He is steady and forceful on climb up, I am wiry and spry on the downhill stretch.

There seem to be more uphill than downhill stretches.

Having done the coastal run, we start heading up. Initially energetic, I start to pant now.
Ed, we are heading straight, up! I am sweating in my tank top, I have nothing more to remove. Ed, the sun has disappeared, we are heading into the clouds! Ed, it is near five, shouldn’t we stop for lunch?

Ed is reluctant to stop. I notice half way up the hill that his initial amusement with me is disappearing. He has turned serious. And now the balance of anxiety has shifted.

Nina, we should not stop until we reach the top. Nina, we may have to turn around. Nina, we cannot work these rocky paths after dark. I may have underestimated the length of the trail. If we can’t see where we’re going, we’ll have to sleep in a ditch until it is light again.

Sleep in a ditch? I have a beautiful farm stay set for tonight! I want a bottle of Sicilian wine with pasta and a grilled something or other, followed by desert. I want a shower and more water than we’re carrying!

At five, we reach the top and pause for ten minutes to eat. It is stunning up here. A few ancient stone huts where cattle are herded, flowers filling meadows and rock crevices, old olive and almond trees and the sea below – magnificent.






lunch spot



lunch


But the note of concern remains. So now I play the role of the spirited one.
Ed, we’ll be back in the car by 8, I know it. We’re virtually flying up here.
Nina, it is a long long hike down. Nina, that bull looks ready to charge you. Please back away with your camera!







We move on. I sing. It’s what I do when a physical challenge presents itself. I am cold and sweaty, I am covered with Sicilian dust, but I am absolutely thrilled by the scenery, the fragrant smells of chamomile and rosemary.





And I get to say those favorite words that Ed and I like to toss between each other: I was right. We make it to the car by 8.

In the lot, Ed studies the map. We need to find the farmstead. A lonely trekker comes up to us. Have you seen a woman out there on the upper ridge trail? She is walking by herself, she has red hair. No, sorry, no one up there at all. A few cows, one small group coming down, that’s it. He is plainly worried. How do you look for a lost hiker? The ranger is there as well. I know there will be a search that evening.

We drive to our farm. It is getting dark. Road markings here are either very good or very not good. There is no inbetween. We get completely utterly lost.

It is close to 10 and we are driving randomly, up one road, down the next. Houses with tightly closed shutters, no sign of life within, without. How could this happen? I printed directions, bought maps. But it’s no use. Somehow I took a wrong turn early on and everything after was a series of corrections that failed to correct the basic problem of being lost.

I am laughing now. My daughters call it That Nervous Laugh. It verges on hysteria, I suppose. Oh, I know we can find a place to sleep. But hopes of food are fading. And there is, of course, that image of the lovely farmstead, the photos of which I pulled off the Net.

I am driving slowly now, looking for any sing of a farm with rooms to let. I pass a slow moving police car but I do not know how to stop it. Hey, why is there a slow moving police car here in the middle of nowhere? Where the hell are we anyway? Oh, in Sicily, that’s right.

Finally, I see a dirt driveway. It seems to lead to some place deep in a grove of olive trees. I follow it, because in the distance I see car lights. Maybe there will be a farm around the bend? At least we can ask for directions. It’s the first sign of life in these dark deserted roads. Okay, no farmhouse, but a car. I pull up along side. A man rolls down his window. I do as well. I ask in my best Italian – do you know where the Baglio Fontanasalsa is? He stares absolutely incredulously at me, stunned into silence. He gets out of the car, glaring now, then changes his mind, gets back inside, still in utter silence. I am confused. Ed says, quietly: turn around and leave.

It’s a tight spot. The man rolls down the window again, but I am no longer playing this game. I try to move the car in the narrow spot. He turns on the engine and pulls away before me. Eventually I move down the dirt tracks as well. I pull out onto the main road and turn toward the village. In the rear view mirror, I see that another car is now pulling into that same dark path. Seconds, that’s all that separated me from coming upon something that clearly was not intended for public viewing. And I am alive to write a post about it. Amazing.

The day has the stamp of good fortune. The bull did not charge me, the trail did not exhaust me, the Mafia did not shoot me, and eventually a kind soul, out for a breath of night air, directed me to the most beautiful farmstead I have ever seen.

It’s managed by the wife of the man who makes wines and olive oil for a living and is very successful at it. We arrive just as the kitchen is about to close down for the night and several other guests are eating their last crumbs of cake. The wife insists that the cook stay an extra hour and we are served heaven. Pizza breads, pasta, grilled meats and eggplant, cake, accompanied by their wine.



beginning



first course



second course



sweet course


We don’t just eat, we wolf down the food and drain several bottles of wine and water (mostly water, I hope). An older man, sitting with someone whom I am guessing is a distant relative comes over. He hands us a plate of spice cookies and chocolates with a wine-infused ganache. It’s for you, he says. I like watching you eat here. Let me pour you some more wine, on the house. It is my house, my wine.

And he refills our glasses.

That is my last recollection from the day. It appears that sometime after I made my way to bed.



olive grower, wine maker

UPDATE FIRST: Remember yesterday’s post? Lost passport, desperate calls, strategizing, hoping for a way to keep most of the week intact, to not lose days and reservations, to make it all somehow repair itself in the one business hour that we have in Milan before we need to head for the airport.

And it does. Pure magic. I show up at the Consulate in Milan 45 minutes early and join the line waiting for the office to open. An official comes out and asks if there are any Americans in line. I step out. Suddenly there is a long line and there is me. Officials come out, I tell them that in three hours my plane will leave. They rush me through forms, photos, payments and I am out of there with new passport in hand in 61 minutes. [It helped that I had all my other papers with me, not lost or stolen.] Yay staff at American Consulate in Milano. And so truly and terribly sorry for all those who come with visa applications, who are still probably waiting in line.


And finally, Palermo.





In my youth, I had traveled through eastern Sicily, but I never made it to Palermo. Seedy, dirty, colorful, exploding with people, everywhere people: standing in groups in narrow doorways, leaning out windows, together in balconies, watching the world go by and talking. Gesturing, talking, laughing, flirting, kids playing, men, everywhere men in groups. Why is it that our men do not know what to say to each other and here and in France, men cannot stop? Unleashed, they tell endless stories from days that cannot have had so many stories within them?













We walk through the medieval quarter, through endless dark streets, buildings close together, balconies and shutters almost touching. Is Wednesday laundry day?





A cookie stop and then a Palermo aperitif stop (Campari and soda and a Sicilian orange). Ed looks dubiously at me as I stir this bright red drink in a tiny local bar, with the formidable mother-in-law sitting at the side, shouting out observations to the daughter-in-law behind the counter (of the “get them their check!” type).










oasis of calm


Late in the evening we are back at the Inn. A simple good meal of antipasti and perfectly cooked spaghetti, with shrimp and zucchini. I look at the wine list: can you recommend a Sicilian wine? They are all Sicilian, Signora. Of course. And proud of it.



antipasti


spaghetti with shrimp and zucchini

First, why am I on a tiny island in the middle of a large lake (Lago Maggiore) surrounded by hills and mountains?





Because it seemed like an interesting place to pause for a night. Wednesday we fly down to Palermo. Here’s the lucky thing: I do not have to worry about the infamous pickpockets of Palermo. They wont steal my passport. I don’t have my passport. As best as I can figure out, it’s hidden in a little black case, snuggly nestled on the baggage rack of the train that runs between Switzerland and Italy.

I discovered its absence yesterday (Tuesday), during our final hour of train travel. Unfortunately, it was not the same train as the one that is now home to my little navy book that allows me to cross borders.


Finally, we arrive in Stresa – the place from which we take a ferry to the tiny island, where a tiny and empty at this time of the year hotel is holding a room for us. A room with a view.





Paco, owner of the hotel, is at the desk. Paco is the single most helpful individual on the planet.

No problems getting here?
Actually, a monster of a problem.
I tell him of my sudden realization that I am without passport.

And thus I enter into the labyrinthine bureaucracy of passport replacement. With very little time before a plane is to fly us down to Palermo (Wednesday, noon).

For passpost replacement, you need to take eight steps (the consulate recording tells me).
First, do not come to the consulate without an official police report (so inviting).

Paco, I need a police report.
Ah. You go to the carabinieri on the mainland, you will be there three, four hours. You will miss the last ferry to the island. I call for you to ask if they will see you. When you go, do not tell them where you are staying, okay? Do not use my name there at all (why? I wonder…). Allora, they say they will see you in half an hour.

Paco, maybe we should go back to Milan tonight. I need to make a personal appearance at the Consulate first thing tomorrow.
No. Milano hotels are all bad, all expensive. Let me find a room for you at a hotel here, on the mainland, close to the train. You can take the first train out tomorrow.
Can we find someone to take us to the mainland tomorrow before dawn? We’d like to stay here, at your hotel.
Bene! Giancarlo will come in his boat. He will take you tomorrow before the sun comes up. He will help you.

At the carabinieri, things are calm. Children play in the courtyard, my officer fills out a form, precisely, with care. My college days Italian suffices. We make it through every irrelevant question. We shake hands, he stamps a piece of paper, I leave.



across the street from the carabinieri


At a grand hotel by the lake Ed buys me an expensive drink. And another. And expensive internet so that I can finally email my completed questions for the law school exam. And do a blog post. Running, I just make it for the last ferry that makes a last run to the island.

A moment of calm. The island has no cars, no commerce at this time of the year. But it has the views, and the sound of water, and alley cats, moving around, eyeing us suspiciously. Did you forget to return to the mainland? No, we’re not day trippers. We’re here for the night.




Someone in the kitchen of our little hotel with the wonderful view cooks up a wonderful meal. They open a bubbly prosecco – on the house, for all your worries. We eat gnocchi with saffron, radicchio and tomatoes, grilled fish from the lake, cakes too – you must have all three, for all your worries. And we packed you a bag of food for your journey tomorrow. It’s not much – cakes, yogurts, juice, maybe you can have it with an espresso on the train.













At 6 in the morning, Giancarlo pulls up his boat, we climb in, cross to the mainland. He gives us a ride to the railway station.
Paco wants you to email him when all is resolved, so he knows you’re okay.

A small island with the most wonderful view, and food, and people who take away the worry with cakes and prosecco and kind hearts.

Leaving Groningen. Mission accomplished. A series of good meetings.

[Thank you letter to my hosts will include this: I apologize that I was wearing a sweatshirt and pants. I had a professional outfit all packed and ready but it was too damn cold to wear it.]

Many nice memories of a town and a canal.



doing laundry on a boat


I forgive Groningen the Internet issues, the weather even. You could get a good cup of coffee just about anywhere and with it, a tasty little applenoot cake. I love that name! I want to be called an applenoot from hereon.



Before boarding the all-nighter, we shop for dinner: bread and cheese, tomatoes, lots of chocolate and a bottle of Italian wine. To celebrate the southern skies. You know, the ones with sunshine and real spring.


it's what's for dinner

Night train to Italy, with a pre-dawn change in Switzerland. Seats that sort of lean back. Ed and I, we are the oldest twosome in the car. Young kids with dreadlocks and long wisps of hair falling into the aisle as they sleep. Me, I am writing a blog.

The final six hours are through the Alps. The Swiss, they are so jaded. Another mountain. Yawn. Nose in newspaper, wake me up if something really interesting happens.



he reads, she dreams

I can never get tired of train travel in Europe. Go to sleep by the North Sea, pass by vineyard and mountains, wake up in the Italian boot that kicks around the waters of the Mediterranean. A food trolley rolls through your car early; the man sells coffee and croissants, you buy some, reach in for more chocolate and the left over grapes and do nothing if that is your will, but look outside and wonder what a day is like for the person walking along the path, up, up to his house at the edge of a village, with the colors of spring Alpine flowers and grasses filling your head and his. Winter’s all forgotten, done with.

UPDATE: tune in tomorrow to find out what happens to complicated travel plans when Nina leaves behind her passport on train.

Sunday. Three trains later we are in Groningen (home of a beautiful old university -- one with which we have an exchange progam, hence my visit here).

How about that weather! Tonight’s low is the average low for midwinter: 1 degree C!
Thanks, young taxi driver, for the message of gloom.

I am reminded of any small Dutch city. There’s a canal. There are barges. There are ornamented buildings. There are bicycles. There is no decent place to get something to eat after 9:30 at night.





But I was promised Internet at the hotel and that has not happened either. No matter, I am busy working all night Sunday and meeting with people all morning Monday. Later this evening I have an overnight train to catch for Italy. Sitting up and working this night as well. I can put aside blogging for a day, can’t I?

It appears that I cannot. And so I sit at a public library, work through their Internet technical difficulties and post.

As for food last night – I am going to mark the day off as irregular on account of the Queen’s birthday. Who feels like paying attention to cooking on such a special day. Still, I find Dutch menus hard, mostly because I do not understand what is meant by quintessentially Dutch food. Last night, I was stumped yet again and so I opted for the “Flemish special”: when in doubt, get fish and chips. Of course, because this is not Belgium, the chips (aka fries) weren’t extraordinary. But good enough.

Back to work headaches. They will disappear once I leave these northern dark skies and cross the border into Italy. Certo.