PLUS ÇA CHANGE....

So after visiting the UK for the first time in eight years, what changes did I note? I tend to notice weird, often insignificant things, so here are my weird observations, in no particular order:

• Handbags are still on the small side.
• Eateries are noisier than Italian ones but at least they are free of the ubiquitous televisions you find in the latter.
• Why did I get a separate "glass of ice" every time I asked for ice in my mineral water?
• There is a craze for sweet potato chips.
• Halloween has become a more pleasant festival than I remembered.
• When did people start saying "See you later" to mean "soon/sometime/never"?
• I was interested to see what kind of shops have survived the recession and was surprised to find several novelty shops in the centre of Cardiff still there.
• I was negatively flabbergasted at the cost of public transport and positively so at its efficiency [after 10 years in Modica].
• I was relieved that most people I talked to were more sympathetic to refugees than when I left and than the media would lead one to believe now. I was also relieved that most people I met did not think the UK will leave the EU.

Et plus ça ne change pas.....

As a post scriptum on my trip home, here is a note to Comiso Airport, a clean and efficient facility that we are justly proud of in these parts:  I know Sicilians don't like to be comfortable, but the rest of the world does, so please can we have some seating outside the airport? Weary travellers waiting to be picked up after you close need somewhere to sit!

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

A ONE-TRACK MIND?

Trains are generally held to be unreliable in Sicily and sweeping service cuts by Trenitalia since December have not exactly restored confidence. However, the unitiated might have been impressed by the company's announcement that on the Palermo-Messina line, a train would leave Cefalù at 06.56 and arrive in Castelbuono a mere seven minutes later, while a train running in the opposite direction would leave Castelbuono at 06.53 and arrive in Cefalù at 07.00 precisely.  The only detail the planners had overlooked was the fact that this segment of the line is single-track.

Needless to say, commuters in the area are not happy and I can't help wondering what Mr Tim Parks would make of it!

BOOK REVIEW - "ITALIAN WAYS" BY TIM PARKS

Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo by Tim Parks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are some writers whose style is so pleasant, whose humour is so gentle and to whom you return so often that you feel you know them personally; to sit and spend an hour in the company of one of their books is like chatting to your dearest friend over a cup of tea and they have that rare talent of making you think without distressing you. Among my "comfort writers" I would number Alexander McCall Smith, Maeve Binchy and, when it comes to books about Italy, Tim Parks.

It is difficult to point out the disadvantages of living in an adopted country without causing offence but Tim Parks is one of the writers who has always managed it and he does so again in "Italian Ways". This is not a travel book, though there are elements of travel writing in it, nor is it about life in any one part of Italy: rather, it is about the author's journeys on Italian railways over a period of some thirty years and his encounters with people, conflicting systems and bureaucracy in the process. Through these stories, we also gain a fair knowledge of the history of the Italian railway system and the trains that run on it - a lesson presented in a most entertaining way.

No reader who knows Italy will fail to identify with Parks's dealings with the "pignoli" - whom we would call "Jobsworths" in Britain - of Trenitalia and other operators and I had to smile at his descriptions of southern resignation as he travelled down Italy.

Yes, Mr Parks even made it to Modica by train and, disappointingly, has little to say about the town. True, as he himself has said and as I have said above, this is not a travel book, but I hardly think it is fair that Lecce gets more space than Modica. Of course, I could be biased! Or could it be that Tim Parks, as he travelled deeper and deeper into the South, became more southern himself?

"Don't be concerned that you may have nothing to say about these places. Just be here, on the journey, at every moment of the journey."

- Very southern Italian and not a bad philosophy of life, really!

View all my reviews

This review is also posted on Goodreads.

A PROBLEM FOR THE AIRPORT

Oh, dear - just when it was all going so well for Fontanarossa [Catania] Airport, along comes the EU and cuts off its funding for the next ten years. The airport, the sixth in importance in Italy and among the top ten in the country for traffic, no longer appears in the Core Ten-T and Connecting Europe Facility upper band, having been downgraded because of poor transport links - especially by rail -  with the centre of Catania and the port. It is a ruling which will affect not only Fontanarossa, but the whole Catania area, including the port, the Circumetnea rail service and even the new airport at Comiso [Ragusa]. This means that the area will not feature in the new trans-European network corridors planned by the EU for the future and is a cruel blow for the Sicilian tourist industry.

Governor of Sicily Rosario Crocetta and Mayor of Catania Enzo Bianco have met today to decide upon a strategy and will soon be announcing an initiative, in conjunction with other partners, to support the airport. In some quarters this is being regarded as too little too late and there has been much criticism of local institutions for not putting more pressure on the EU.

The continued development and efficient functioning of Fontanarossa is essential, not only to the economy of this part of Sicily but to the island as a whole. Let us hope.

TAKING THE PISS?

Image: WP Clipart

Italians love their cars and Modicans, I would say, more than most: every one of them will tell you, "We have a transport system that doesn't work" but this doesn't seem to matter because, as a student told me some years ago, "Only old people use it." "Thanks very much", said I.

So frustrated am I by the infrequency of Modica's buses that, whenever I go to Catania, I am like a child let loose in some Christmas wonderland at the sight of buses that actually appear to be going somewhere and bus stops placed in locations where people might want to alight.

Using your car for every journey is all very well but, in these days of the crisi - which is showing few signs of abating in Italy - it is, more than ever, costly. Help, however, may be on hand from our neighbours in Sardinia, where on Tuesday entrepreneur Franco Lisci unveiled a plan to use urine as petrol. This is not a new idea but it is new to Italy and Mr Lisci was very happy to demonstrate the use of a filter made of 100% Sardinian wool to isolate impurities. 

By all accounts the plan could work and help not only the Italian environment but the health and purses of the country's citizens as the use of urine as fuel for cars and for the running of domestic appliances would not only be cheaper but would reduce CO2 emissions.

Two questions come to mind:  firstly I would like to know how long it will take the Italian government to think up a way of taxing the stuff - not long, I suspect - and I have visions of everyone walking about with those pretty revenue stamps of which Italian officials are so fond attached to their private parts. Secondly, from whom is the quantity of urine required to be procured? I do have a suggestion:  Get it from the politicians, Italy.

PAVEMENT PROGRESS

I've written about this road in Modica's Polo Commerciale or Sorda shopping centre before.  It's a fine enough road but has hitherto been pavementless.  

Very few people, it seems, have ever complained about this because the city has very few pedestrians.  Being one of them, though, I can't tell you how many times I have taken my life in my hands to walk to the far end of the Polo [to a pet shop for Simi's food and treats] and received a free but unwanted mud bath from passing cars in the process.  So I nearly whooped for joy when, boldly venturing in that direction again today, I saw that a pavement has at last been laid. What's more, it has been finished!  Yes, a lovely, wide pavement running all the way along to the shops at that end!  

There is still, however, no pathway out at the far end of the row of large stores, leaving pedestrians no choice but to walk the length of the store fronts twice more if they want to exit that way [because they have to go round them], but perhaps even this will come if someone on the planning committee exercises their imagination.  All it takes is for someone to think, "Now, what would it be like to be a pedestrian here?"

Come on, Modica - you can do it!  Build that pathway and, while you're at it, how about a few buses to take people to that end of the Polo?

AN ASTral ANALOGY

As rumours spread that Italy will be the next roof tile to fall off the Eurozone house of cards, in Sicily we are worried about our local and inter-city bus company, AST, which is reported to be in trouble.

AST services, we are told, are currently operating only with the forbearance of the company's creditors and it has become public knowledge that, as in institutions all over Italy from small businesses to government itself, high-ranking officials of the company have been enjoying considerable luxury whilst carrying out their duties.

Few outside Italy know that parliamentarians, for instance, enjoy privileges unheard of in other countries, from free rail tickets for personal travel to ridiculously cheap meals whilst working and these are among anomalies that the Monti government has been doing its best to correct.  But ask the man in the street what else the Monti government is doing and he will answer, "Taxation" for the popular perception is that everyone is being taxed out of existence and there is little to cheer them up whilst this is happening. Tax evasion on an enormous scale has long been a way of life in Italy and now, rightly, you may imagine, everyone is afraid of a raid by the Financial Police.  However, the average Italian businessman will say that he has to pay so many taxes - and not just once a year - that he hardly deems the effort of continuing worthwhile.

I am the last person who should advise anyone on handling money, let alone a whole country, but what Italy needs is [a] liberalisation of its economy and [b] cheering up.  I personally had much hope of the Monti government but take one look at the sombre faces of its ministers and you would not be inclined to think that they were about to brighten your day. As I remarked when the government took office, the trouble with a government of "experts" is that experts tend to have comfortable, upper middle class lives so they cannot really imagine what it is like to be totally dependent on a meagre wage which is often simply NOT PAID.  Yes, in Italy it is quite common for an employer, even a public one, to pay late or not at all and it is considered,  if not exactly OK, perfectly normal.

And here we come to another "barrier" to a mobile economy:  it is the Italians' ability to tolerate the intolerable.  Is it because almost everyone has a family to help out with the bills when salaries are not paid that they put up with such nonsense from employers?  To go back to our beloved AST, is it because everyone has a car or, if they are elderly, has a relative with a car that they put up with an abysmal local service, at least in Modica?  Why, I have often wondered, does no one complain?

"Only old people use the buses", a student of mine informed me when I first arrived here.

"Thanks very much", said I.

This brings me to another element which I observe creeping into the situation, not just in Italy but all over Europe:  it is an idea that in order to stimulate the economy for the young, something must be taken away from the old.  This idea is dangerous and pernicious and I would hate to see Italy, where the elderly are certainly more respected and better looked after by their families than in the UK, embrace it.  Dear ministers, dear youth, dear friends, old people need to live too and your own old age will be upon you quite suddenly one day and you won't know where it came from.

Of course, that old Italian paradox also comes into play in this crisis:  the very characteristics that I have mentioned above and those that the rest of the world criticises in Italians are those that we most love in them in better times:  their tolerance, their ability to throw their hands up in the air and say, "That's how life is", their determination to spend time with their families and enjoy the sun while the world crumbles around them....  Let us hope, then, that the situation brings out the best in them for no one can better Italy at its best.

Thus it is that Modica's inner city AST buses do not run on time and your driver may well stop off en route to purchase a sack of potatoes or take refreshment.  But let us be tolerant - the potatoes were a bargain and the vegetable seller will go home at 1.30 pm.  On top of that, it's bloody hot today!  Besides, such antics brighten your day in a way that politicians will never be able to do. Let us also cross our fingers - for I am sick of the expression "crosshairs" -  for Sicily's AST company.  After all, as another student of mine charmingly said last year,

"I'm so proud of those buses.  They're almost punctual."

A FIRST FOR TRAPANI

Aeroporto di Trapani-Birgi
Image:  Wikimedia Commons

Sicily's Trapani-Birgi [Vincenzo Florio] Airport has this weekend been named the world's top airport for increased passenger use in the World Airport Traffic Report 2010 published by ACI  [Airports Council International]. It was ranked 406th airport overall in the study of data from 900 airports worldwide.

This is indeed good news for the airport that is the "gateway to western Sicily" and it could certainly do with some for, being a civil airport that is sometimes used for military purposes, Trapani-Birgi has found itself involved in the Libyan crisis, with NATO planes having taken off from there on missions to the country. This has sadly caused a 50% decrease in the airport's civil traffic in 2011.

Salvatore Ombra, president of the airport's management company Airgest, is, however, optimistic:  he says that, provided the Italian government lifts limitations on the use of the airport for civil flights from October 1st, as promised, the airport's apron is reassigned to civil aircraft and that the government pays the airport the €10 million due to it in compensation for disruption to civil flights, Trapani-Birgi will again be able to operate at full capacity, maintaining current routes and introducing new ones.

Good luck, Trapani-Birgi!

TRAPPED - IN 40 C

Some very unhappy passengers who disembarked from the Rome - Palermo express today may take Trenitalia to court for "illegal confinement of the person", reports La Sicilia Online.

When the train entered the ferry for the jourmey across the Strait of Messina, passengers in one carriage found that they could not open the doors.  They therefore had to remain shut in the carriage for the entire crossing:  it was dark, the air conditioning had stopped working, there was no signal for them to make mobile phone calls and the temperature had reached 40 C.

The doors connecting the affected carriage to others in the train had also somehow self-locked and a doctor travelling in it pointed out that, earlier in the trip, he had had to go to another carriage to help a passenger who had had a heart attack. What, he asked, would have happened if the doors had been blocked then?

I'll bet those passengers needed their iced tea with granita upon arrival in Palermo!

ALMOST THERE

"I'm so proud of our AST buses", remarked a student of mine tonight, referring to the inter-city coaches of the Azienda Siciliana Trasporti:  "They're almost punctual."

And so they are.

A CHEER FOR FONTANAROSSA!

I can remember a time when travelling via Catania's Fontanarossa Airport was not a pleasant experience:   sparse information was displayed in the terminal, , access to its few shops was awkward, there was nowhere to sit once you had gone through security and passengers were packed into gate areas like sardines.  To be fair, I should add that even in those days you could get a good meal there and I never found the staff unhelpful.  

Over the years things have been improving, culminating in a relocation and full refurbishment in 2007.  Now Fontanarossa can compete with the best and figures released today confirm it as the number one airport in the South of Italy and as the third most important of Italy's regional airports after Venice and Bergamo.

Over six million passengers passed through Fontanarossa last year and most said that they used it four times a year.  Baggage checks at Fontanarossa are quicker than the national average in Italy and just 0.2 luggage items per 1,000 checked in there go missing, as against the national average of 2 per 1,000.

The president of Sac [Società Aeroporto Catania] puts the airport's recent success down to good marketing, restructuring and renovation.  

Now we are all waiting to see how Fontanarossa and the long-awaited rebuilt airport at Comiso [Ragusa] will work together.  I must say that the Modicani are rather less optimistic about Comiso than the Transport Minister, Altero Matteoli, who, visiting the new airport's infrastructure on Monday, promised to return with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the opening before the summer.  The Modicani, when asked about an opening date, just shrug their shoulders and laugh.

But meanwhile, let's hear it for Fontanarossa!

"CHE SI FA PER UN MOMENTO DI GLORIA"

"Che si fa per un momento di gloria" ["What we do for a moment of glory"], observed my poet friend and travelling companion, Antonio Lonardo, as we stood on a windy platform at Firenze Campo di Marte Station [where the staff had helpfully closed the loos] awaiting our 22.52 train home to Sicily on Sunday. At that moment, I couldn't have agreed more with him.

The epic journey had begun with the 14.30 Modica - Catania bus on Saturday and from Catania we took the overnight train direct to Florence via Messina. I had seen Messina and the Stretto before, but this was to be my first experience of crossing the Strait, as I had always flown to the mainland previously.

Our compartment of four couchettes was comfortable and clean enough but I do have to say that the train's sanitary facilities were inadequate. [What's new about that, in Italy? I cannot for the life of me work out why a nation obsessed with cleanliness fails to provide decent public toilets and washing facilities in places where they are obviously going to be needed.] After only about half an hour the compartment's three occupants were deep in philosophical conversation - no burying your head in your newspaper or book and being left to it here! - and when a fourth intrepid traveller joined us at Messina it took him just five minutes to pick up the thread. It all got a bit heated when his political views turned out to be contrary to the Italian Constitution and at that point your normally equally intrepid blogger decided to keep her mouth shut! At around midnight we all tucked ourselves into our couchettes and I had quite a good night's sleep [unsurprisingly, as I can sleep anywhere!]

We were woken by a lively school party at 6 am and arrived in Florence on time, at 09.10. I can't begin to tell you what that lovely city means to me: When I first saw it, many years ago, its beauty literally took my breath away. [The only place that has done so since is Agrigento.] That first time, quite alone, I walked its streets day after day until I had ticked every paragraph in my guidebook and felt as if I were meeting in person the writers I had studied for so long. And I began to truly understand the miracle of the Renaissance. I stood transfixed in front of the Primavera in the Uffizi and cried when it was time to leave . I felt ambiguous, and still do, about the Nascita di Venere, for that figure has a lot to answer for, representing, as she does, the modern ideal of feminine beauty. Some years later, I revisited the city with a man I nearly married and later still, I returned in the hope of healing a broken heart - and I did, or rather, that wonderful city and the kindness of the Italian people healed me. And every now and then, whenever I could, I would go back to make sure that my bellissima città was still there...



And she was still there, in all her Renaissance magnificence, last Sunday morning. My dear facebook friend, Luciano, met us at the station and took us straight to Piazzale Michelangelo, whence I gazed once again at loveliness, at perfection, at what man can achieve. I don't suppose there will ever, again, be a "Renaissance man" because it is impossible, now, to be an expert in every known cultural field, so much has available knowledge increased. Thus I believe that what I looked upon that morning was the culmination [rather than the beginning] of a unique, marvellous "moment" in the history of our species.

One more loving glance, then round the corner for a delicious ice cream and on to the Ponte Vecchio, passing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's beloved Casa Guidi on the way. So crowded was this favourite haunt of mine that we didn't have time to go all the way across but at least I said "Buongiorno" to it and the ghost of Dante [although that was, of course, a different bridge]. Yes, I know it was all for the sake of allegory but the romantic in me likes to imagine his first sight of Beatrice Portinari as a thirteenth century "brief encounter" and that the bridge, without the tourists, looked much as it does today.



Suddenly it was nearly one o'clock and we were whisked away to the Tuscan hills where Luciano's wife had prepared a lovely "light lunch" of salmon mousse, lasagne and strawberries so sweet that they needed no accompaniment, to follow.

Time to put our glad rags on and it was off to Buggiano for the poetry prize ceremony, Luciano and his wife having arranged to take us there [much to my relief as I had been dreading negotiating the train - the steps are very high - in those heels!]

Many excellent poems were read out and Antonio was one of the prize-winners, for Esistenziale Itinerario [which will appear on this blog shortly]. Here Antonio is onstage while his prize-winning poem is read by an actress:



There was a very emotional moment when the overall winner, Floredana De Felicibus [for Tu Sei Memoria] dedicated her success to the people affected by the earthquake in her region of Abruzzo.

Later I was called up to the stage and interviewed about translation. Antonio came onstage with me afterwards and read his Il Poeta in Italian and then I read it in English. I was delighted when Romano Battaglia said I had preserved the musicality in the translation and delighted and surprised when organiser Sileno Lavorini presented me with an engraved plaque, which I shall always treasure:








Antonio started to cry from the emotion of it all and of course, that started me off, too!

Here is Antonio at the end of the ceremony with fellow-prize-winners Aikaterini Tzouvadaki, from Greece, and Alessandro Bertolino from Turin [and me]:



Our friends kindly took us back to Campo di Marte [which I shall always remember as a looless station] our train arrived and we quickly settled into our couchettes. By morning the train loos were disgusting and yet another philosophical colloquy commenced.

Here the ferry is leaving a rainy Calabria. [The first shot is from the window, then I risked life, limb and hairdo on the slippery deck to get the others!]




As you see, I bought the T-shirt:



I started to cry again as we arrived at Messina!





The train was delayed for an hour at Messina as tomatoes were loaded. Nevertheless, we made good time and caught the 13.30 bus from Catania, arriving back in Modica at 15.15. And then - would you believe it? - a 90-minute wait to get a local bus home! Pazienza!

The Sicilian countryside from the train:



I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Antonio Lonardo for offering me the opportunity to translate his work and Sileno Lavorini for inviting me to the ceremony and honouring me with an award.