Aug 2006

When I finally got to escape Naples, I took the overnight ferry to Palermo and then got a train right through the heart of Sicily. My first impressions were that Sicily was very, very dry. Not a touch of green to be seen anywhere. I had never expected so many cacti, growing all along the train tracks, let alone that people would grow them commercially (people eat the cacti fruit, they do not have a very strong taste, and have lots of very small and stone-like pips that you have to swallow). At each rural train station we stopped at, there was a little statue of the Virgin Mary and most of the stops didn’t feel like they should be there at all, with small stone farm houses scattered only every few kilometres.

Castelmola

I got off at Taormina which is a very touristy part of the coast, half way between Catania and Messina. There Lisa (high school friend from Gisborne) and her boyfriend Andrea picked me up, and took me to Castelmola, a small village on top of a very high hill over looking the coast with Calabria in the far east, and Mt. Etna to the south. It is named Castelmola, for a very simple reason, it has a Castle on top of a hill that looks like a molar tooth. Castelmola is a strange mix, it’s full of very old houses, tiny narrow cobbled streets, cats dozing in the sun, little old ladies sitting out on their front door steps watching the world go by, and then it’s quite young and contemporary at the same time. At night a lot of the tourists staying in Taormina come up to one of the several restaurants, or go to Bar Turrisi which is four storeys high and bursting full of penile paraphernalia. It’s the kind of place that there is no need for the Internet, or even telephones for that matter. People know who you are, and your life story within minutes of arriving.

Andrea’s Mother, Angela has come to Castelmola each summer for years as their summer house has been in the family for generations. They normally live in Palermo, the capital of Sicily but during summer it is virtually uninhabitable because of the heat. We did not stay with the family however and instead stayed at the house of Carlo, one of Andrea’s friends. Casa Turrisi was right on the main street of the small village, and you could hear all the noises of daily life in Castelmola. From the old man ringing his bells every bloody ten minutes (trying to sell them to tourists) to the old ladies catching up on the latest gossip. Apparently Carlo’s grandmother was none to happy about us staying in the house all together. I think she thought we were there to have raucous sex parties and take crack cocaine.

View from the Piazza towards Calabria

I immediately slotted into the daily routine of Sicilian life, a welcome relief from Rome and Naples. My days consisted of getting up at 11 am, reading for a few hours or going down to the piazza and getting gelato. Then at 2 we would go to Andrea’s family’s house and Nonna would make us a huge lunch. Nonna was 83, and didn’t speak a word of English, so a lot of the time I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about, and was at the mercy of Lisa and Andrea to translate. We’d then go back to Casa Turrisi and have a couple of hour’s siesta. Then get up and go down to one of the cafés or bars and have aperitifs then go out to dinner around 10 or 11 pm. I got to have amazing Gnocchi with Pistachio, Vino and lots of Antipasto. Can’t say I was really overwhelmed with the Pizza though, I think I prefer the bastardized American versions – naughty I know. We would then chill out, maybe sit in the Piazza and watch all the people go by, or hang out with their friends, and then go to bed in the very early hours of the morning.

The heat and humidity was all consuming. The entire time I was there, there was virtually no relief from the heat. Even having a cold shower was not refreshing, as the effort to get dressed again made you hot. You couldn’t see very far out into the distance because the humidity put a thick haze over everything. Sometimes there was a strange hot wind, which had come from Africa and brought sand from the desert with it. Although we had access to a car, it was just too much effort to go down the hill to the beach. The beaches were packed with people, all baking themselves to a crisp. Surprisingly I thought I handled the heat extremely well, it did not get to me, as much as it did to Lisa and Andrea - I think the heat wave in Germany a few weeks before I’d left, had been good training.

View from Mimmi´s country house at Dusk

I got to go out to Mimmi’s country house, he is one of their friends who works at the Pizzeria, and is an incredibly nice guy, who plays the guitar and sings extremely well. So I’d either sit under the hazelnut trees or read my book, eat figs or picked blackberries and looked out to the hills covered in the thick humid fog, as he strummed his guitar and wrote songs with Andrea. One night after some of the locals had finished work for the night, we walked down a dark path covered in cacti to an old church lit up on the side of the hill. They sang songs in Italian and just chilled out for a while, and I couldn’t escape the thought of just how far away from home I was.

Because it was so hot, random fires would break out all over the place and it was alarming to me how blasé everyone reacted to them. Most of the time they were just left to burn themselves out, unless they got extremely close to houses, then maybe the fire engines would come. I think every day I was there, I could see a fire somewhere in the distance, some days I was so close to them I could hear the cracking of the dry wood. The fires were so common, that they weren’t even included in most daily conversations.

Piazza

The best part of staying in Castelmola, is that I wasn’t considered a tourist. Because I was with Lisa and Andrea, I was welcomed everywhere I went and treated like royalty. I basically didn’t have to pay for anything, and people were so friendly it was just fantastic. Although don’t get me wrong I still did a few very touristy things. One night we walked through Taormina and I got a caricature drawn of me. It was quite well done, and unfortunately I left it at the train station on the way home. I also got serenaded by three old men at a restaurant singing Italian love songs, and playing on the Accordion, Guitar and Tambourine.

I found that throughout Italy I would be stared at all of the time, and mostly by people who looked like locals. I am not sure if it was their curiosity or if it was just my paranoia but it really became uncomfortable. Most of the time, it was when I was waiting in queues, or on public transport but the bizarre thing was that they made no effort what so ever to hide the fact that they were staring. Often when you catch someone looking at you, they automatically avert their eyes, but here they just kept looking, and looking. It got so bad that I snapped in the line for the café on the Overnight ferry. I just started screaming ‘WHAT????’ at this teenage guy, he got really startled and wouldn’t make eye contact for the rest of the night.

View from Casa Turrisi towards Catania

Reluctantly I left Sicily and headed back up to Rome. I luckily found an Australian woman and we were headed in the same direction. It is funny when you are travelling on your own, and you make ‘day friends’ you become best of friends just for a day and then when its time to leave, nothing is lost – I never even found out her name. When I got to Rome just on Midnight, it was too late to find accommodation, and my transfer to the airport was at 4.30 am so on my last night in Italy I slept in a train station. Yup, I along with about thirty others slept on platform 1 at Termini station. I found a spot slotted between a Muslim who got up at some point to pray, and on my left an older woman (I’d say in her late 50’s) who was glad to be by another woman. All the homeless people get kicked out for the night, and so all the people there were travellers. It was a very surreal environment, people from all walks of life, and all nationalities, had found themselves in the same predicament. I had imagined staying up all night and perhaps writing this very blog in a 24 hour internet café, but it was not to be. Although I probably only got half an hours sleep max, others found no difficulty in sleeping amongst strangers. Even though on reflection, I was in an incredibly vulnerable situation, it did not feel unsafe – definitely dirty, and odd but not unsafe. I couldn’t get over, how normal everyone acted that as a large group of strangers, there was an unwritten rule to not speak to one another, not to move around too much and to respect each others space. So the only noises were those of the night staff. Something I hadn’t counted on was that we were in fact locked in. And at 4.20am all of the night staff and security people had magically disappeared. I was put in a very tricky dilemma, I needed to get out in order to catch my transfer to the airport, but large gates blocked my exit. I didn’t want to throw my backpack over the gate, in case I couldn’t make it over and then we would both be stranded. So I started to scramble over, pack and all, before I was promptly stopped by a security guard who had magically materialised from somewhere – no doubt after a laughing fit from staring at the security monitors. I think my only saving grace was that I was trying to get out, and not in, so he lowered the gates, just in time to see my bus driving off. Thankfully, it had stopped at a red light not to far away and I was able to catch up to it. I got to the airport and boarded the plane, without further incident. Perhaps wearing the St Christopher’s pendant Tube gave me before I left NZ, was not such a bad idea. When I landed in Germany I felt like I was home, and the moment I got in the door I fell asleep for 18 hours straight.

One of the strange things I found about my trip was that when people asked me a question, I would often answer automatically in German, and now that I am back, I answer in Italian - go figure. I think your brain gets screwed up because you know you’re in a foreign country so it just scrambles around trying to find any foreign word.

Mt Etna

I enjoyed my trip to Italy. Although I didn’t particularly like Rome or Naples, I still want to go back to Italy and travel the rest of it. I strongly recommend taking a guidebook, and buying it in your home country, at least to give you some idea of how to get around there and what to see. Unfortunately I didn’t have that luxury as it’s not that easy to find English guidebooks for Italy in Germany. And when in Italy it’s not that easy to find good guidebooks for the whole country, they only sell books for each region or town. Keep your wits about you, and try to look as less like a tourist as much as possible. Try to learn as much of the language as you can, because a lot of the time no one around will speak any English. Always make it known your not American, a lot of the time people didn’t give me the time of day, until I said I was a New Zealander, then they warm up instantly. Unlike home, people wont help you at all if you can’t speak a little of the language. Don’t look like a victim, when in Naples, I made sure at all times I had a ‘Don’t mess with me look’ and I was luckily left alone for a lot of the time.

Italy is not always beautiful; it is quite poor in a lot of areas and is actually incredibly ugly in some parts. It can be congested, polluted, dirty, smelly, scary and noisy and some of the people are simply not very nice. But on the other hand, you can be overwhelmed with its beauty, embrace its simplicity, marvel at its ingenuity and feel incredible hospitability all in the same breath.

Ok where to start? I have finally made it to Italy and although I have not been here even five days, I have to say I'm pretty disappointed. It’s polluted, swelteringly hot, unorganised, crowded, smelly and it is the most unsafe I have ever felt in my life. It’s not all bad though, and it’s my own fault for coming here in the middle of the high season! I landed in Rome, and immediately got on the bus to hell. Remind me NEVER to drive in Italy; it would freak me out for life. Lanes mean nothing, stop signs mean nothing, and pedestrian crossings definitely mean nothing. You just have to start walking in to the middle of the traffic and hope to survive.

My first hostel in Rome was really dodgy, and didn’t even have a sign. First I had to walk with my huge backpack, past homeless people sleeping in shop doorways and then couldn't find the blimmen building. It just had a tiny piece of paper on the buzzer, and you had to go in the dodgiest elevator to the 5th floor. As I got there pretty late, I just crashed straight away. The next day I meet some Americans at breakfast, (if you could even call it that; juice and a small bun) and they took me under their wings. So I went with them to the Pantheon, Coliseum, Roman Forum and out to dinner in a nice Piazza across the other side of the river.

Jill and Mike, the Americans in front of the Pantheon

Jill and Mike, were lovely and didn’t make me feel like a third wheel at all. I got to see a lot more of the city than I probably would have if I was just by my self. I was a little worried that they thought they were stuck with me, but they assured me that it was nice to have some different company as they had been travelling together for the last two months. So if you're reading this you two... thank you very much for all of your kindness and I wish you all the very best for the upcoming nuptials!!

My hostel in Naples was more of a hotel and was fantastic. Although it was in a dodgy area, I ended up having the whole room to myself on my first night which was sooo good to actually get some sleep. As I hardly got any sleep in Rome. I visited Pompeii, a historic Roman city being excavated and Sorrento an unabashedly tourist town on the side of some cliffs. Sorrento was really nice, it was good to get out of the doom and gloom of Naples. A bit expensive - but nice views and pleasant atmosphere.

I have come to loathe Naples with a passion. While in the trains people walk through the carriages playing the accordion, and thrusting their children at you (some only look 18 months old) who are clutching plastic cups for you to give them money. When I was in McDs (the only place I could find actually open on the National holiday) a girl came right up to me and was begging for my food. I felt positively awful, I didn't know whether to ignore her or be a 'stupid tourist'. Then some man started shouting at me in Italian through the window, I think he was angry that I was even in the building, let alone also eating. On my second night in Naples I meet an Australian and a Venezuelan. We were all solo female travellers and so we went out to dinner. The Australian could talk Portuguese, and so she could somehow communicate with the girl from Venezuela who spoke Spanish and a little Italian, and basic English. At the restaurant we drew a bit of attention from the locals and so they joined in and the process of translation was hilarious. In order for the waiter to communicate to me, he first had to talk to the Venezuelan, then she talked to the Australian then the Australian told me what the question was, and to answer it was the reverse. The locals then got in to a very loud argument about which wine we should have, as they had conflicting opinions over which was the best.

Next day I headed to the port, and got my tickets to get out of Naples ASAP. Short and brief blog I know, but just wait till you hit the epic blog for Sicily.

This week I took the boys to Bavaria, to see their Grandparents. Oma and Opa live about an hour away from Munich, in a small village called ‘Burgau’. Thank god the navigator is back up and running otherwise I would have had a hell of a time trying to figure everything out. As I mentioned in the previous blog, I am getting quite used to driving on the Autobahn, and now feel completely normal driving on the wrong/right side of the road. I think my average speed is around 150 to 160 km/h and Mum before you freak out there are people going much much faster!

About 15 minutes away from Burgau is Legoland Deutschland. So of course Oma and I took the boys along for the day. Now I have been to Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, but the queues for Legoland were just ridiculous. Apparently it’s in the middle of most peoples journeys to other places, so every man and his dog comes for a day. Luckily it was slightly overcast the whole day so it wasn’t too hot, but there really was no chance of going on many rides. Most of it was pretty well done and actually kind of interesting, if you were a kid you’d be in heaven.

Mike and Max at Legoland

I got a little nostalgic; especially when in the Duplo section as I used to have some of the books as well as all the bricks. You could probably spend several days there, but one was more than enough for me. That night before sunset, I took a walk out in to the country, past mostly fields of maize and listened to the glorious sound of nothing – reminded me of home until I turned a corner and saw Europe’s (and possibly the Worlds) biggest Nuclear Power plant. Ahhh bliss.

Guarding the castle gates, in Legoland

The next day the weather really turned bad, you would never believe it was the middle of summer. I took the boys to an indoor play centre, and then Opa took us on a drive out into the country and we had a tour through some caves. The region is famous for uncovering lots of dinosaur fossils and also bones of Neanderthals and Mammoths. The caves were ok, but as the tour was in German I switched off. I kept on thinking of comparisons to NZ. Although I haven’t been in the Waitomo caves, (so I may need to be corrected) I don’t think New Zealanders would actually intentionally destroy a naturally phenomenon like stagnites and stallites just to put some lights up would we? I am sure the caves I have been in before, you either individually carry torches, or the leader carries a big gas lantern thingee. Well in the cave I went to, they had strung lights up everywhere, and you could quite clearly see where they’d knocked things down, and then put putty like substance over cables to attempt hiding them. And sadly no glow worms.

On the way back Opa took me to some Bavarian churches in the Baroque style, which are quite different from other parts of Germany. Every village, no matter how small has a huge church – usually smack bang in the middle. It is incredible to think that most of these churches were built in the 17th Century and at the time there were probably at most only 200 people living in the actual village. The churches are massive, and because most of them are Catholic they are lavishly decorated inside, and would have been phenomenally expensive and time consuming to build. I left the boys in Bavaria, where their parents will join them tomorrow and then they’ll all head to Austria.

Well I now have two whole glorious weeks to spend as I please, so I am off to Italy - who knows what adventures await me.

P.s. For more images, check out my Image Gallery which should be accessible on your top right, under the authour section - click on my name and it should take you there or at least mention something about a photo gallery.

I have been quite busy lately so bare with me. First off, last Saturday night I went out for Cocktails and Tapas with Stefan, a guy I meet a few weeks ago from the English speaking group’s BBQ. The building was called the ‘Heiliggeist’ which I think translates into the Holy Ghost and turned out to be a 16th Century hospital.

It was pretty cool inside, but the toilets were really random with weird bird noises coming from the speakers, and doors you could see through. The next day I had to get up nice and early, and drive for three hours to a medieval town with Stefan. After swearing black and blue, that I was in fact cursed when it came to cars, and crossing three states of Germany, we finally found the small town. Of course by then I was famished and we stopped at the first restaurant we could find that wasn’t in a 70’s time warp and got Schnitzel!! And damn it was good. I never even attempted to make it back home, but it is soo good, they don’t use the same type of breadcrumbs we do.

A section of the Alt Stadt's defence wall, with Klingen Tower in the background.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is quite a touristy little town, and we were in hysterics throughout the English tour of the Alt Stadt (Old town) listening to all the crazy questions they were asking the tour guide. Although we could have done the tour ourselves, I think it’s usually nicer to go with a guide, because usually they’re locals and have random stories that you could never get from the brochures i.e. you get to find out the real reason the castle was destroyed and not by an Earthquake, as mentioned in the brochures – and if the tour is boring, at least the others in the tour provide some entertainment. The old town was pretty well preserved, even after numerous attacks and being bombed in WWII. The town is surrounded by high walls and all the streets are narrow and cobbled. All the shops have iron signs; even McDs has to have an iron cast sign. It was pretty impressive thinking how the hell did these people live back then, as there would have been animals everywhere, and sewage just thrown out on to the streets. The people had to store food for up to two years, at all times in case there was a siege. So you would have to be fairly creative as to avoid rats. We even got to see a cage used to torture bakers if they made their loaves of bread to small or to big, something to do with ripping people off and affecting the competition.

We went to (from what I gather) Germanys biggest open year-round Christmas store. I am sure they even put spices in the air conditioner to make you feel festive. Of course I couldn’t be considered a true tourist unless I purchased a little ornament or two. I definitely didn’t go crazy like the couple in front of us. The old dear brought €350 of goodies which works out to be $NZ700, and from what I saw they only walked out with a small box. Stefan told me that most Germans buy new decorations each year, which must work out to be enormously expensive. And Christmas usually goes for three days, and is much more of a traditional holiday than our good old NZ variety.

Of course no town is complete without its terrifically expensive church. St Jakobs Church (Lutheran) is a little quirky as its unique architectural feature is that it is built over a lane, so you can actually drive right through the church so to speak. I won’t bore you with the details, churches are one of those things that interest a lot of people, but they all merge in to each other for me. However, I must note most of them have been pretty impressive so far.

Driving on the Autobahn is not that exciting really, yes we went over 200 km/h but I didn’t even notice until I was told. It doesn’t feel unsafe, and as the people in the slow lane were probably going 160 anyway, we didn’t feel like we were jetting past. There roads aren’t even that good really, when I am driving I keep thinking I have a flat tyre because the car is juddering so much, but it’s just the condition of the roads. So a lot of the time you can’t even go fast on the autobahn because there are roadworks.

Look out for the next instalment… my quick trip to Bavaria.

P.s. The real reason the castle was destroyed is because the villagers started to steal all of the stones for their own houses, and had to tell the Emperor something. Hence the excuse of the ‘earthquake’ - just seems a little strange when nothing else in the town was destroyed ;o)

Well I have finally managed to post this weeks blog – my internet has been down for two weeks. As the blimmen connection has been checked and fixed so many times I’m giving up hope that it will ever work. So anyway back to my life as I know it … last weekend I packed an overnight bag and headed to Heidelberg which is supposed to be one of Europe’s most historic and romantic cities and is Germany’s oldest University town. The city is split in two – the old and the new and is divided by the River Neckar. So naturally I focused on the old. The old part is dominated by the Heidelberg Castle (or otherwise known as the Heidelberger Schloss) which sits on top of a hill and for those of you into a bit of history (skip to the next paragraph if you’re not) is over five centuries old. Although a lot of it is in ruins, there is still some of the interior preserved; the ruins actually became a symbol of the entire era of German Romanticism. Over the centuries, many rulers made extensions to the castle, so that it now shows evidence of all style periods between the 13th and 17th centuries.

Seeing the Castle lit up at night is a sight I will not forget easily - simply breathtaking. As it was a warm summer night, everyone was out and I walked along the cobbled streets, watching as musicians played, fire eaters and mime artists entertained and drew crowds - all while locals and tourists alike ate their dinner at tables in the middle of the cobbled Market square with the formidable sight of the biggest church I’ve ever seen, looming above them. I walked up on to the old bridge built in the 1780’s and looked back on to the old city. Even though it really wasn’t that wide, there were theatre performances happening right in the middle of the bridge, and although there were quite a few people around it definitely wasn’t crowded. Somehow I had forgotten my camera, and in a way I am glad – the pictures could not have really captured it all. (Note: I thought I had to leave you with something, so the above photo is nicked from Google images.)

View of the Alt Stadt – the Heiliggesitkirche built in 1398 dominant in the centre.

I ended up staying in a hostel, and luckily got one of the last beds left. It wasn’t too bad, but the weird thing is that the girls in the dorm I was in, left the lights on all night. I was already in bed by the time they’d settled in and I was on a top bunk – so I didn’t think they were expecting me to turn it off, so it just stayed on. They fell asleep immediately of course, but I lay there for hours thinking of ways to ignore the light. It is only now as I type this – in which I think why didn’t I just climb down and turn off the bloody light?! But I am irrational at the best of times, I didn’t want to wake them up and I didn’t want to piss them off etc. I really want to know why I am such a mental case when it comes to sleeping, what the hell happened in my childhood to put the fear of God into me about waking people up? It drives me nuts, especially when others so blatantly, couldn’t give a damn. Like you even wanted to know all that! Anyway I eventually dragged my self out of bed, and got in the shower. I’d only just gotten my kit off when there was banging on the door, asking how much longer I was going to be in there. I didn’t even bother to wash my hair, so you’ll have to excuse my scummy hair in the photos - which brings me to another point actually. Kj rang me on Sunday night – bless her soul, and said that it had only really hit her I was on the other side of the world when she saw the picture of me ‘singing in the rain’ in last weeks blog. Until now it hadn’t really sunk in for her that I was anywhere different, and I hadn’t even noticed myself that that photo was the first one with me actually in it. So just for Kj, here’s another wee pic of me.

Me on top of Königstuhl Mountain

This may not be entirely true, as I haven’t actually been that far but I have observed that Germany is not really that tourist friendly in regards to signage. You will see a sign randomly once pointing you somewhere, but then it will never show up again. So you end up going down really weird narrow roads with no way of being able to turn around so you just have to keep driving then get completely lost, because you are no longer on any maps. Then the further you get, the less people you see and the less your chances are that you’ll find somebody who speaks English. Also like I have mentioned previously the road signs aren’t always what they look like they are, and you can very easily get yourself in tricky situations. But I have been informed that Germany has some of the best signage in Europe compared to France and Italy – yay for me.

Me in front of some of the interior ruins of the Heidelberg Castle

Ok back to Heidelberg, got a little sidetracked…when I finally got to the car park for the Castle I took the 100 year old wooden tram which brings you creaking and rumbling to the very top of the Königstuhl Mountain (550m above sea level). Then on the way back down I had a tour in English through the interior of the Castle. Well worth doing, and a bit awe-inspiring. The cool thing about the castle is that you can actually go into some of the rooms, and it’s not all roped off and untouchable. I think the guide said that they open up several rooms, and then rotate them around so that things are not as likely to get worn down so fast. I was there in total about four hours and as the heat was starting to make me melt I headed back slowly to Wiesbaden. Although it wasn’t action packed, it was a great weekend away, and Heidelberg was well worth a visit.

Just for something a little kooky - I was watching some TV here, and I saw Lionel from Shortland Street talking in GERMAN!! Well he wasn’t actually, someone was speaking over him but jeez it was funny. I’d flicked through some channels and came across an American movie, with the guy from ‘Dharma and Greg’, which was dubbed over in German. After watching it for a bit, I started to get the feeling all was not quiet right. I got the weird feeling that I’d been to the places they were at and it turned out the whole thing was filmed in Auckland. I saw the Auckland Museum, and what’s that park called in Greenlane? Cornwall? Ahh you know the one. Then suddenly Lionel pops up out of nowhere, then all the old Shorty crew came out – basically every actor in NZ was on it. Old Tandy Wright, and Lionel’s evil lady friend Mackenzie, I think there was also the guy who played the nurse ‘Cameron’ and ‘? Thornton’ you get the jist.

Something else random that’s popped up unexpectedly with NZ in it, is this months edition of the German Playboy magazine (Nicole gets them from work, because her company’s got advertising in them) had a picture of the 1904 All Black Rugby team! This is weird for several reasons – most Germans do not know about Rugby, and a lot of Germans do not even know where NZ is! I think they were trying to sell Canterbury jerseys but I can’t be sure.

Till next time … tschüs!