away from the internet for days and days...

We have been through so many sensations over recent days, in Modica and Palermo. Requiring essays rather than blog bits.

The journey from Siracusa to Modica was a display of extraordinary productive countryside. A film of that below.

We planned three days in Modica choosing to be in a place out of town, surrounded by space, distinct from our experiences elsewhere of living in ancient city centres. A spectacular place, though I draw attention to any who might follow our example that there were a thousand and more steps from our place to the main street of Modica. Went down twice on foot, came back once on foot, once in taxi. Very beautiful place. 

See little film of the Modica passeggiata.

Killer chocolate. We had looked forward to the Modica chocolate, close to Aztec in tradition. Two (or four, or so) pieces and we neither needed more chocolate for days nor could we eat dinner that day.

Thursday in Modica was a deliciously warm day. See small movie of that.

Friday the weather was vicious but we were collected by wonderful friend Silvia Corsini (whose apartment we had rented in Siracusa) and swept away to very generous lunch at the country home of Claudine and Gio Barone, Gio a sculptor, with lovely group of people including architect, art historian and photographer... but leave aside the professions — it was a lovely group of thinking and somewhat radical-minded people with imaginations, meeting whom gave our travels new dimension. Silvia had wanted me to meet in particular Aldo Palazzolo, who kindly brought along a great portfolio of his work for us to see and discuss especially his experiments with 'liquid light'. 

Saturday was clearer and we enjoyed the run through central Sicily by 'Pullman' as buses are known here.  A film of that below.

Sunday in Palermo we found weather much as Sydney winter and a little film of our walk shows that. We are dealing with the world through unpleasant viruses but that does not entirely account for the sense of treacly-ness about doing things here. Great beauty. Extraordinary history. Vivacity and diversity. But it seems, more than anywhere else, a reminder of how young the state of Italy is. Many we deal with in simple transactions and attempted conversations are themselves wrestling with Italian as a second language, which means that while we have been doing well in Italian it can be a more irritated exchange with people who do not understand clear Italian and speak something impenetrably else. Monday when we went out we went past people who still come to our Piazza Porta Carini in mid-town to carry water home from a tap in big plastic containers. A few steps down the street through the Mercato del Capo where we had bought fresh things for breakfast earlier. Turn left again and enter the precinct of the Ministry of Justice; stop to pay respect to the impressive long wall of monument to Magistrates assassinated while pursuing the Mafia in recent decades. Along streets increasingly rough (and interesting) of restorers and sellers of antiques real and imagined (much as Rome centre and Trastevere in the 1960s. To the Cathedral with its remaining fragments of the Norman Cathedral noting on the door who from Roger II was crowned there. Roger on Christmas Day 1130. The Norman boys who went to England did OK and got to stay; these boys sent off south, to ease land inheritance issues for these Viking families come ashore in the lower Sienne valley did exceptionally well. But a hell of a lot harder to hang onto Sicily than England, Sicily at the centre of the world, England the strategic door to the Faeroes. Walk back home through more narrow streets, as a pedestrian, living and moving safely and swiftly, after the manner of and between the graces of Palermo car drivers. Sicily is a place that fails to make it, to get out of poverty, to get good politics, to offer work to the young. So many of those with whatever have left here, over and over again for centuries; successions of outside powers have invaded. It remains, the people remain, the centre of the world. Religion is deeply ingrained, Catholic imagery seems more serious (more real than imagery) and central to life than elsewhere except say in central America or rural Philippines. 

The flatness of Palermo has an effect, intensifying the enclosure, mercifully in late winter; it must be so much greater in summer. We may get to see the end of a street, the spire of a church, but intense life is in small places.

So here are films:

TRAIN FROM SIRACUSA TO MODICA



THE PASSEGGIATA AT MODICA



MODICA MORNING



PULLMAN TO PALERMO



PALERMO SUNDAY

today to Modica/reflections

We leave Siracusa today for Modica. We head southwest into the Iblean mountains to the Val di Noto, which runs down towards Catania. The Val di Noto was hit by an enormous earthquake in 1693, utterly destroying some towns. Reconstruction was well funded by church and state and with something of a fresh start, some of the finest baroque buildings anywhere were built. So the valley, including Modica, today has World Heritage status.

Modica is also a place of traditional (including Aztec traditional) chocolate making, so we will investigate and report.

We reflect on walking around the battlements of the Castello Maniace yesterday. At the entrance to one of the finest harbours of the Mediterranean. But not industrialised inside the harbour. After defeating Athens in this harbour in 419BC, Siracusa found itself in the beginning of what would be a hundred year war with Carthage - Carthage on the site of the modern Tunis. "Out there is Tunisia and Carthage," said one of the custodians of the Castello to me. When you look at the map below, you see that Carthage is in fact to the west, its Phoenicians having come from what is now Lebanon. Look east from here and you could sail straight past the Peloponnese - the southern water washed portions of Greece - and up to Athens. The 100 year war ended when a Siracusan army of 14000 went to Carthage and won on land. Then in the 200s BC it was Rome's time, and the command of the Mediterranean and the achievement of colonies in Africa meant war with Siracusa and Sicily. It began the usual way: Roman settlers in Sicily appealed to both Rome and Carthage for protection against bullying from all these Greeks here. Schoolyards were ever such.

Here is a nice quote from Robert Kaplan's wonderful Mediterranean Winter Vintage Books 2004, pp 40-41

Phoenicians carving out a great sovereign state on Berber soil while fending off desert tribesmen: all so that Phoenician Carthage could be culturally infiltrated by the Greeks, and then obliterated by the Romans, whose own imperial longevity would lead to decline and conquest by Vandals... The beach at Carthage taught a lesson [to Kaplan, visiting in the 1970s] in the impermanence of empires at a time when the Cold War, and the hegemonic struggle it represented, seemed likely to go on forever.... [snip]


Later that afternoon I visited the American War Cemetery in Carthage which holds the remains of 2,841 American soldiers killed in the Allied campaigns in North Africa. In November 1942, American troops landed in Morocco to begin the rollback of the Axis powers in the Mediterranean. The allies retraced the path of the Vandals across north Africa with similar lightning speed...


A long historical perspective and avoidance of chauvinist blindness are relevant. I do not recall to which visitor he was replying, but Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, asked in the early 1970s what he thought of the outcome of the French revolution, reportedly replied: "It's too soon to tell."

Three nights now in Modica and then to Palermo. Click the map to enlarge.

the choice to saunter

Ortigia is such a luscious and interesting and small place. Though from across the bridge and off beyond the station, major major walk away, the 15,000 seat Greek theatre beckons. As do so many other things wave and invite. Around the corner, less than 100 metres away, the Palazzo Bellomo invites us in, to see the regional museum of contemporary and medieval art.

But no, we pitched for a saunter and the sun, going 250 metres to the promontory at mouth of the Porto Grande, to visit the Castello Maniace. Photos of geometrical and architectural form, in the main. See how sunny. We had our wonderings about walking in the footsteps of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, or...

On the way home for siesta, we chose an extraordinary place to eat, owned by he who turned out to be the sculptor with his studio below us here. Wonderful food in imaginative setting.

This photo below shows very elegant and clever modern drainage - these in terracotta but the same unit construction different scale used for example to carry waste to the ground from multilevel building works

and here to enter the restaurant, carved waiter holding embroidered menus

wattle is in bloom

A film of where we are

Here is a little film made yesterday at lunchtime. My voice and brain creaky with a cold.

Ortigia, we are told, was almost deserted in the end of the 1980s into the 90s, at one time population around 12,000, but in that period reduced to 1-2000 and a dangerous place for being so deserted. The population moved off the island into other areas of Siracusa and beyond in search of work. The island is now well on its way to recovery with investment from abroad, Rome and north Italy.  The relatively empty look of the streets contributed to also by the fact that this is late winter, well away from the tourist season. We had to travel at this time for practical reasons and with a preference for cool weather. So we experience these weeks at 17 to 20 degrees celsius in Sicily, to arrive in Rome in the best of times, March.

Anyway, here below is the movie we made yesterday... click on the little four arrow thing in the bottom right to see it full screen. Let me add these points to the commentary.

• When the camera looks down at the papyrus you are looking into a spring which was there when the Greeks arrived in 800BC, and at the plant that was there in the spring when they arrived... hence the question, who brought the papyrus, which one might expect to see in Egypt. That is also the level of the ground at the time of the Greek arrival.
• There is no getting away from the depth of history. While most of the great buildings are just 300-500 years old, the harbour we look out on in the movie was the scene of the second battle of Siracusa in August 413BC, when the Athenian fleet was trapped in the harbour by the Siracusa fleet, a battle between 160 triremes. An act of subterfuge enabled the Romans to get inside the walls in 212BC and contrary to the directions of the Roman commander Marcellus, five times Consul of the Roman Republic, a Roman soldier killed the head of defence science in Siracusa, Archimedes. Montgomery's Eighth Army took Siracusa on the first day of the invasion of Sicily by allied forces in July 1943. 

Now to watch...

Siracusa

Eccoci, a Siracusa, finalemente, recuperandoci dopo uno lungo viaggio. Here we are at last, recovering after a long trip. Il nostro apartamento our apartment a via Roma 152, Ortigia, Siracusa, is a few doors from the sea and the most wonderful 8am sitting place.

Siamo fuori a quest'ora della nostra prima mattina perche il mercato a Ortigia si apri alle 7 ogni giorno.

We are out at this early hour on our first morning because the market in Ortigia opens at 7 every day.

Raggiungere il mercato abbiamo usato il Lungomare. Qui, di sotto - le scale? Archimede le ha usato? 

Here we look back at the peninsula forming the mouth of the harbour on the other side, a small harbour in which 2425 years ago, Siracusa destroyed the armed might of Athens in a battle involving 162 triremes.

There are some modern decorations along the way, variation from the dominant Baroque this quarter of the city.

We were able to buy the utterly fresh at the market.

and have a tableload of food at home

Research reading

Yes, we are organised, all proceeding to plan. The time for planning has allowed me time to do a lot of reading (Helen is jealous: fiendishly preoccupied with office work, lobbying for things, in advance of ten weeks long service leave. But much focused on learning Italian.)

For this entry, not in Italian, breaking my principle announced with last entry...   But this is reflective and full of ideas, which you need real skill to translate.

My favourite bookstore, www.betterworldbooks.com, as usual delivers the goods. (No profit for me in saying so, no clink of money on using that link, c.f. Amazon links.) It has been great this year for sending modest-priced second hand text books to friends in Uganda, now has sent me a variety of books on Sicilian and Neapolitan history. Turning my perspective around in several directions.

At light level, to discover that Archimedes came from Siracusa. Archimedes killed by the Romans after they broke into Siracusa on a dirty ruse, after months of siege in the wars with Carthage. Archimedes had been the director-general of defence science, his devices punishingly keeping the Romans out.

Two hundred years before, they had kept out the Athenians out (I have to read Thucydides next) when the Athenians were jealous of Siracusa, a Greek city, having the reputation of largest and most impressive city of the (European) world 4-500BC.  Sadly, Dennis (Dionysius) of Siracusa became the exemplar of tyranny, breaking away from Greek manners of democracy. He asked for body guards, they gave him 500, he doubled that, game end.

I have read again of the Normans in Sicily, briefly possessing, from Palermo, the most fabled multicultural state in much of European history in the 1200s, swiftly undone, a little more swiftly perhaps, than the United States in the 1900s and 2000s... but largely by the same process, overextension and preoccupation with guns.

And then there is the history of Naples, fabulous among European capitals for several hundred years, then berefted with the unification of Italy and thus loss of taxes and service industry employment - which had supported an indolent court-based, not industry-based, capital to which those of manners flocked.

...Perhaps good for comparative reading in Australian educational programs pondering the (no, no, impossible, impossible, farfetched, as Naples advisors also found) end of the flood of money to government from the resource sector. We are somewhat more progressive to be sure, but there are lessons to be seen. In other current language, Naples was steamrollered by a level playing field.

Noting also that the present scourge of the Camorra arose from the 1300s on, with unemployment and dispossession in a society where divisions between rich and poor. And that pattern also, of course, relates to the rise of so-called terrorism, dependent on dispossession as it is. The ordinariness of violence in these earlier historical periods contributes also long term attitudes. Liddell Hart attributed the violence of the Spanish Civil War to the violence of the Peninsular War against Napoleon (wherein the term guerrilla began), as he also attributed the rise of middle east terrorism (B L H died in 1970) to the good work of Lawrence of Arabia... which latter in particular points to the core principle in modern warfare, seldom seen by statesmen, that it is not your motives and objectives but your manners that impact on the host country (and I add, flood back into your own)... We still struggle with domestic violence (the arrogation of righteousness and application of it by rough means) when we cannot see that this is what our self-righteous goverments do routinely in the use of violence. Sigh...

I much prefer travel with wider insight to travel with gawk, but enough for now...

THE PLAN!

We plan to go to Italy from Australia, via Vancouver and Seattle, a natural thing to plan when you have family in Seattle. And surprisingly the flights to and from  Rome via Vancouver are only marginally longer  in total than more conventional routes via Asia and perhaps London. The stop in north America will break travel all into comfortable legs. From Vancouver to Seattle we use ferry or train or Amtrak coach (three or four hours). The customs and immigration processes are said to be considerably less hectic than travelling via LA.

We will be away from home 3 February to 16 April 2011.

Arriving Rome 8 February, we depart next day by train (all day, the train crosses the straits of Messina at lunchtime) for Siracusa in Sicily. Go south for warmth in February, be back in Rome for spring! Two week-long bookings are in place in Sicily, another three day booking to come. Then by ferry overnight from Palermo to Naples. After a week in Naples (who was it who said "see Naples and die"..? Aha, here is the interesting answer) we take the short train trip to Rome where we will be based from 6 March to 7 April. Some lovely places to stay at quite reasonable prices for holiday rentals... four and a half weeks in a romantic hideaway right in the centre of Rome, tre passi dalla Piazza Navona  ---- around $2000 Australian. Suddenly, writing 'tre passi" [three steps] I am reminded of my stunned youthfulness, or youthful stunnedness, 42 years ago, first weeks in Rome, going to see Tre Passi Nel Delirio with very little Italian.

After this first entry we will try to write in Italian first...

Andiamo in Italia provenienti dall Australia, passando Vancouver e Seattle, e be - una cosa naturale  quando si ha famiglia a Seattle. E scopriamo che i voli da e per Roma via Vancouver sono solo marginalmente pui lunghi delle rotte convenzionali attraverso l'Asia. Fermarci in Nord America e confortevole. Da Vancouver a Seattle usiamo traghetto o in treno o in pullman Amtrak (tre o quattro ore). I processi di immigrazione e doganali sono detto di essere molto meno frenetico rispetto al viaggio via Los Angeles.

Saremo fuori da casa 3 febbraio - 16 Aprile 2011.

Arriviamo a Roma 8 febbraio. Il giorno dopo partiamo con il treno (tutto il giorno, il treno attraversa lo stretto di Messina a mezzogiorno) per Siracusa in Sicilia. Andiama al sud per il calore nel mese di febbraio, torniamo a Roma per la primavera! Abbiamo due prenotazioni di una settimana in atto in Sicilia, cerciamo un posto per un altro tre giorni. Poi un notte in traghetto da Palermo a Napoli. Dopo una settimana a Napoli (chi ha detto "vedi Napoli e muori "..?  Aou, ecco l'informazione - interressante) prendiamo il breve viaggio in treno a Roma, dove saremo dal 6 marzo al 7 aprile. Bel posti a prezzi abbastanza ragionevoli per affitti vacanze ... quattro settimane e mezzo in un rifugio romantico proprio nel centro di Roma, tre passi dalla Piazza Navona ---- circa 2.000 dollari australiani. Improvvisamente, la scrittura 'tre passi' mi viene in mente la mia gioventù della stordito, o 'sturditamente' giovane, 42 anni fa, settimane prima a Roma, andare a vedere Tre Passi nel Delirio con molto poco italiano.

...E dopo questo primo post di blog, proveremo scrivere per prima in Italiano.