MISSING THE BUS

Public transport, as Modicans would be the first to admit, does not work well in this town and I have often lamented the fact that, whilst I can get a bus from Modica Bassa to Catania and arrive with no trouble in less than two hours, it sometimes takes almost as long to get from the Sorda district of Modica where I live to Modica Bassa in the first place.

Therefore, whenever I go to Catania, I feel as if I'm in paradise as soon as I see a city bus. It feels normal! But oh, dear, what is going on? It seems that the Catania bus company is not doing well, the reason being that over 60% of its passengers do not bother to purchase tickets and a further 30% of those who are fined for this omission do not pay that, either.  The problem, it is reported, is widespread in southern Italy but less so in the north, where only 30% of passengers habitually travel without tickets. This, we are told, is not because northern Italians are more honest, but is due to a basic mistrust of bus services among southerners, dating back to a time when the service offered was, indeed, poor, even in large cities like Catania.

In order to combat the problem, more ticket inspections are promised in Catania from April but I would like to suggest another solution: make the system for buying tickets easier! Granted, it is mostly local people who use the city's buses but a stranger or a tourist is likely to be very perplexed at the lack of information about where to buy tickets and it is not obvious to someone from another country that you can buy them in most bars and tobacconists.

Once I found myself stranded on the outskirts of Catania and needed to get into the city at a time of day when everything was closed. I boarded a hopeful-looking bus but, being British, became so terrified of an imminent ticket inspection [despite the driver's assurances that the inspectors don't work between 1 and 4 pm] that I got off three miles from my destination and walked.

Make the ticket-purchasing points more obvious, Catania - and it would help enormously if they were actually open as well!

The Hollies - Bus Stop

"SE VIENE, ARRIVA"

A superb example of Modican pazienza as I arrived at the bus stop for Modica Bassa this morning: When I asked an elderly gentleman if the bus was due, he made the hands in the air gesture and replied,

"Se viene, arriva"  -"If it's coming, it will arrive".

MANUEL AND ME

This post of Ellee's yesterday reminded me of what happened when I went from Modica to Siracusa [Syracuse] by bus - a journey of about two hours - during my first visit to Sicily in 1992. I was being rather British, minding my own business and gazing out of the window, for the scenery was all new to me then, when a small, fairly scruffy man got on and sat next to me, a little too close I thought. He resembled no one as much as Manuel from Fawlty Towers! After a few minutes, he uttered the conversation opener that someone of obvious Anglo-Saxon appearance gets used to here:

Lei non è di qua? ["You're not from here, are you?"]

Me: Non - thinking that a curt reply would silence him, as by now it was becoming rather obvious that he was not over-attentive to his personal hygiene. And that would probably have worked in Britain. However, he was not going to be so easily put off and before we reached Ispica [the next town] I knew that he was a widower not averse to the idea of marrying again and a blond foreigner, he thought, would do very nicely , provided she could cook and would tend to his chickens! I kept my replies as monosyllabic as possible but he kept on asking loud, quite intrusive questions [which is not, to be fair, as rude as it sounds as Italians will ask you about matters which are taboo to the introverted British, such as how much you earn, your age and how much rent you pay, very early in a first conversation] . In Britain you would get up and move to another seat [but they were all taken anyway] or someone would notice that he was edging up to you too cosily and ask if you were all right, but here if I'd told anyone the man was bothering me it would probably have provoked laughter and hands flung up in the air. Not until the first stop in Siracusa did he leave the bus and after I'd breathed a huge sigh of relief, I reflected upon the fact that Shirley Valentine immediately makes the acquaintance of a waiter in the form of Tom Conti abroad, whilst it was my luck to meet Manuel! [I do not judge by looks, by the way, reader, but hygiene and conversational skills do matter to me, yes! And I'd never have been any good at feeding chickens!]

Siracusa is a city that means a lot to me, not only because of its beauty, and if you have not been following the blog for long, you can read why here if you wish.