“We actually don’t care if our relatives will pay us a visit and put flowers on our graves. Nature is taking care of this already.”
(Photographed at the cemetery of Bari in Italy.)
The website of the UK Home Office which lists the official government policy on immigration says, on the same page even,
Does that lead to the logical conclusion that it is British government policy to reduce culture and weaken the economy?
As many churches and castles with beautiful towers you may build, one guy is going to dwarf them all by building a huge chimney.
“The Niagara Falls is simply a vast amount of water going the wrong way over some unnecessary rocks,”
wrote Oscar Wilde in 1882.
This morning I had a Russian doll experience. No, not that kind of Russian doll. The matryoshka one.
I received a large envelope and opened it (of course). In it was a second envelope, also large and that one even padded. Upon opening it, I found a third envelope.
That’s when the suspense ended because the third one said whom it was from and what it contained: “Certificate – Do not bend” from the Open University.
This kind of excessive burden on the postal system is caused by my constant moving around. I had my old London address on record with the university (not least because they charge ridiculously high fees if you don’t live in the UK) and had forgotten to tell my flatmate there that I had just moved from Sicily to Bari. I am really lucky that I had flatmates/landlords who are so friendly that they pass on the mail, thus compensating for my lack of organization or foresight. Thanks to Don and Gaetano!
In any case, it seems I am a philosopher now:
To me, travel would only be half as much fun without taking the time to read books. I am even happy about long train rides or ferry passages because they allow me to read for a few extra hours
I should have started this a long time ago, but hey, better late than never: from now on I will compile a reading list for each country that I will live in. Italy will be the first. It will list all the books relating to Italy which I have read and which I am reading. For the books that I’d like to read, please have a look at my wishlist.
I hope that future travellers will find this useful and I look forward to your comments and additional recommendations.
Non-fiction:
For an introduction to Italian history, I read The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour. It’s rich in detail, but never boring. For the wealth of information it contains, it is rather readable and enjoyable. Gilmour focuses on the political development that led to a united Italy, of course, but does not fail to mention geographic, economic and military factors as well as the effects on arts, literature and legislation.
Wishing to find out more about the Allied campaign to liberate Italy in World War II, I turned to The Liberator: one World War II soldier’s 500-day odyssey from the beaches of Sicily to the gates of Dachau by Alex Kershaw, but came away disappointed.
A much better book about World War II was Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre. It’s the true story of a British decoy operation which led Germany to believe that the Allied attack in the Mediterranean would take place on Sardinia, Corsica and in Greece, thus providing cover for the actual attack on Sicily. Written like a novel, but a true story about a dead body that washes ashore in Spain with forged papers.
Only the last chapter of this book takes places in Italy, but the protagonist lives here now: In the Sea there are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda recounts the 6-year journey of a refugee from Afghanistan through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and finally Italy. A moving, heart-breaking, beautiful book written in a youthful tone that reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye. A book I will remember for a long time.
Fiction:
The first example of Sicilian literature I read was Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini and boy, was it boring and bad. Nothing much is happening and the dialogues are even slower than whatever it is that is not happening. A son returns to Sicily after 15 years and visits his mother. Their dialogues are so slow and repetitive that sometimes the same sentence is repeated across half a page. “You cook the best potatoes, Mum.” “I cook the best potatoes, son?” “Yes, you cook the best potatoes.” “Well, if you say so, then I cook the best potatoes.” “Yes, you do, Mum.” Even though it’s only a short novella (130 pages) and I was almost at the end, I gave up. Terrible.
The second example of Sicilian literature was a collection of short stories: The Wine-Dark Sea by Leonardo Sciascia. Wow! Some of these short stories are brilliant. They are witty, smart and fabulously written. The exact opposite of Vittorini. Even if you are not interested in Sicily or Italy, you should read these stories. They are among the best short stories I have ever come across.
I also enjoyed the crime novella Equal Danger by the same author, despite its unsatisfactory ending.
When I read Sciascia’s Day of the Owl years later, it made me miss Sicily again.
I was reminded at times of Sciascia’s style when I read The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri. This first book with Inspector Montalbano laid the groundwork for a whole series of crime novels which more of you might know from TV rather than the original books. Like with Sciascia’s books, you also gain an impression of political and social life in Sicily through these crime stories.
Friedrich Christian Delius makes an attempt at describing Rome during a day in World War II in Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, but fails. An unnecessary, boring book.
In History, Elsa Morante describes the life of a woman in Italy during World War II. To make matters more complicated/dangerous for her, of a partly Jewish family and has to bring up two children by herself, one of whom is the result of being raped by a German soldier. Her older son finds fascination with the Fascists at first. The book offers an interesting contrast between the battles and political developments which are outlined at the beginning of each chapter, and with Ida’s daily struggle to survive and to keep her children alive. Beautiful descriptions of characters, very moving, but I personally stopped reading after two thirds because I found it too slow. Maybe I should have had more patience.
Old cities, whose ruins we visit, wondering how erstwhile grand and important cities could cease to exist:
Aleppo, Syria:
Don’t expect a full report about Bari by night. This is merely the photographic journey along one of my jogging routes, which I preferably run in the evening when both traffic and heat have subsided and then the colors of the illuminated city are playing with the dark blue of the sky.
I live right next to a park at Piazza Garibaldi. With its large water fountain and the palm trees, it is a perfect place to read and to enjoy all kinds of Italian delicacies, from arancini to toscanelli. But it is too small for jogging and one would always stumble across playful dogs or children.
Beyond Piazza Garibaldi I can already see the Old Town with the tall tower of San Sabino Cathedral.
After only a few steps, a striking castle pushes itself into my way: the Norman-Swabian Castle. Yes, everybody has been here already. There was even a time when Bari was a Muslim emirate.
I run past the castle and from then on always along the sea. On one side I have the port, on the other the Old Town of Bari.
Places that are already beautiful during the day appear particularly magical now in the light of the onsetting night.
And thus I run along the coastal promenade for several miles, past fishermen concluding the day with a Peroni beer, young couples who have to meet here because they don’t have a place of their own, large families having their gatherings in public and who can choose from a wealth of offers from the food vendors in their vans. When I am lucky, the wind blows the smell of salt into my nose, giving even a normal run the flavor of a journey afar.
(I took all these photos on 28 April 2014. – Diesen Beitrag gibt es auch auf Deutsch.)
When you read about “frozen assets” in connection with economic sanctions, you may have been wondering how this process actually works.
In February 2013 I could observe it myself in Nida, on the Lithuanian part of the Curonian Spit. There were some ships, against whose owners sanctions had apparently being imposed. I was surprised how literally the term “freezing” of assets is applied.
Of course I tell my clients how to behave in court, what to wear, what to say, what not to say, how to react emotionally and when to start sobbing (if I think that they would be good actors). In some child custody cases where my clients couldn’t be present in person, I even tried to sway the judge by watering up myself. It worked. The courtroom is my stage.
After reading about the trial of Oscar Pistorius in South Africa, I might have to add vomiting in court to the repertoire.
But having a large, green bucket with you makes the whole act look less than spontaneous. If you want it to have any effect, you really need to throw up all over your desk.
The Happy Hermit 