Italy

​ITALY
Written in Chisinau,Italy 13th September 2003

So now, for reasons I am not at liberty to divulge (no! really!), I find myself in the middle of Italy for a week. I flew by Ryanair to Trieste (Venice), I get a bus to Padova and then bunk a train to Rome: Not an intentional stop, circumstances force me off the train just as I am about to get caught in a pincer movement from two rotund ticket collectors approaching from opposite ends of the train. I have already got off and back on again at a different point on the train twice already, and I don’t think I am going to get away with it a third time. 
I jump off at some place called Chiusi. Apart from that, I have no idea where I am. It seems I am about 100 kms from Rome. In total skinflint mode I decide to do a little shoplifting. It does seem a little rude to do this in someone else’s country I must confess. I am to get my just desserts though (or not, depending on how you look at it). After wandering into a small supermarket and checking it for security cameras and suchlike, I wander out and come back in again ten minutes later. I stuff a lump of cheese in my pocket and walk out. Realising that some bread might be a good idea, I stash the cheese under a fence and go back to actually buy some bread (not wanting to push my luck). When I come back to get the cheese, it is gone. Sitting there instead are two happy Alsatians licking their lips. Bits of cheese on their muzzles and the plastic wrapper in tatters. It makes me laugh in a way. Serves me right.
I sleep out, first shopping at Lidl’s (very cheap pan-European supermarket) and dining out on cheap ciabatta and tomato paste; a cheap vegan taste of Italia. 

In the morning I walk up the windiest back-road ever through vineyards and orchards of slightly crunchy nectarines and lush olive groves (more free nosh) until I reach a spectacular medieval town that towers up on the ridge of hill. It has crazily high angled walls and mysterious steps that scramble about all over the place. It’s like being in a Breugal painting and the mediaevalness of the place hangs in the air. I walk on down to the nearest town some twenty kilometres away and buy the train fare to Roma.

The city is magnificent.
It’s quite amazing to be at what was at one point the ancient hub of the world. I give myself a couple of days to go see the Colosseum and meander about the streets and sit in the park. The park is a great place to people watch; couples doing the smoochy smoochy, an art class sitting beneath tall sculpturesque trees in dappled Mediterranean sunlight painting the scene of various peoples fit and otherwise huffing and puffing their way round a running track in the middle of the park. I can’t help but imagine that people might have been using this track since the days of the empire. Cor. That’s well old.
I’m on a strictly on-the-cheap outing. I find my accommodation by picking one of the metro train routes at random, getting on it to the end of the line and assuming that there will be somewhere likely to doss down for the night. Much more sensible than being in a big noisy city. Reaching the end of one of the train lines, after a little time I find a field full of tall grass where lights from nearby housing estates and a shopping centre don’t quite reach. This becomes my temporary accommodation. The train doesn’t get ticket checks, so that’s not an issue either. Another free grass motel.
Having nothing better to do, I resign myself to wasting ten euros for the entrance fee to The Vatican Museum. In I trudge, along with a thousand other tourists, all shuffling in like sweaty penguins.

I’m no fan of the Catholic church, and I am expecting golden pompous swank to come learing at me from all directions. What a surprise I get though once I am inside…
The first thing I see is a huge faded tapestry from the sixteenth century. It is a depiction of Christ carrying his cross on the way to his crucifiction. Into the old weaves I find the eyes of Christ and all his onlookers, all bearing expressions of sadness to Christ’s own resignation. I am astonished and really quite moved that somebody, 500 years ago, managed to convey such an emotional scene merely by weaving different coloured threads together. And now here we all are, tourists from all over the world taking in that image and taking it home with us. It is even more incredible in that the tapestry is simply enormous – fifteen foot high and forty foot long. Wonderful.

There are golden rotating globes, quantifying known worlds and guessing at new ones.

There is a calf vellum map here dating from 1510. It is about four foot wide and three foot high. On it is a remarkable inked line, more-or-less mapping the east coast of north America all the way to the tip of Terra Del Fuego and then back up the west coast as far as north as Peru. By this map, the Spanish have yet to encounter the Central Americans and their chocolate, let alone California.
Just this one inked line with its Latin annotations and names alongside it, such a simple mark, is the net result of untold efforts and risks.

Mighty Spanish and Italian trees hewn down and cut and formed into ocean-going ships. Rigged with hemp ropes and sailcloth; small fleets of supply ships loaded with cattle, dry foods, kept women. Crewed by the willing and the hard-pressed. Captained by the ambitious, the vainglorious, the godly and the ungodly, driven by the promise of riches and fame.

Once again I am in awe of what must have been monumental adventures, explorers putting their lives into the hands of wild seas and the deep unknown.

They would land, do whatever they did for however long, and then do it all over again, returning home to Europe loaded to the gunnels with booty and great stories to tell, and most signifcantly, this map that I am looking at right now: the proof and the promise to those that would follow after them.

These maps are part of what made The Americas what they currently are. 

All that in a line of ink.
Back outside again…

In a park in Rome, mysterious middle-aged gentlemen walk past in pairs. Wearing swanky suits and dark sunglasses and often carrying briefcases. Probably full of money or drugs or severed donkey’s heads or something.
A matronly looking woman in a pizza parlour gives me two pieces of pizza for the price of one. I must have ‘penniless’ written all over me.
You are probably by now wondering why I have come to Italy. Well. I would tell you, but it’s personal. So there.
Okay. Here’s the censored version:
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
And then I come back home again.