Perugia

In the morning I called the airport again. Yesterday evening I only reached an answering machine and hung up in disgust. This time I listened to the whole message as this connection was clearer. In short it said that my backpack had been found and that they would contact me for delivery. But that was only a small relief. It was fairly certain from the beginning that my baggage wasn't lost, only delayed, since they knew it had not shared my flight. So I'm still wondering when they will deliver.

I did my Gubbio excursion yesterday because today is Sunday, and bus services are less frequent. So today I will wander around Perugia, and among other things look for an Internet cafe to catch up with email.

Perugina chocolates come from here. Perugia also stages the annual Jazz in Umbria festival. Jim McLeod, the previous presenter of ABC Jazztrack, was a great promoter of it. I think that's what cemented the name Perugia in my consciousness and made me want to visit it.

This aqueduct no longer carries water, but serves as a pedestrian bridge. I wonder where the water for Perugia comes from. It would have to be a place at higher altitude.

There are many old and abandoned buildings in Perugia. Many of the places and businesses named in my old edition of Lonely Planet do not exist any more. On the other hand, the city's tourist map shows a future feature, a mini-metro linking the lower and upper cities. (Note from the future: It commenced operation in 2008.) 

In the afternoon, when I returned to the hostel, they gave me a phone message. The earliest they can deliver to Perugia is Wednesday or Thursday, because of the lack of couriers over the long weekend. Tuesday is the first of May holiday and many people have taken Monday as a bridge.

While I'm in my dorm trying to plan around this enforced prolongation of my Perugian stay, I was called to the phone. It's the airline representative. He asks if I'll be in Perugia. I say that I want to continue to Bologna. He then offers to deliver it there. It's a larger city and they can deliver on Monday. So I gave him the address of the hostel there. Perhaps he was rostered to work on Sunday, but he could have pushed my case aside until Monday or even Wednesday. Italy is like that, you hit problems but you also experience kindness from Italians who go out of their way to help.

I have not made any bookings for Bologna. Mustafa, a Turkish engineer sharing the dorm, offers to take me to a nearby Internet and phone centre that he knows, to do this. He needs to call his sweetheart anyway. Mustafa has been working in Doha, Qatar, but has quit to study in Perugia. He will be doing research on the hydrogen economy. He thinks it will be important. I hope he's right. He will marry his sweetheart, who works as a nurse to refugees, in September. I see from his collection of travel reading that he has leftist leanings. One of the names, Gramsci, I look up later. (Preview: You will read more about the left when I'm in Bologna.)

We share dinner in a pizza restaurant. I have the pizza funghi. The porcini mushrooms are heavenly. I can understand why they are so highly prized. I have even seen a magazine for mushroom hunters in newstands.

The streets are packed with revelers tonight, the middle of the very long weekend. I think that Italians should have a telefonino permanently welded to their ear. A bluetooth earpiece might be more convenient, but just doesn't have the prestige of having your mobile ring while in company and then taking the call. Jim McLeod once related an episode at an Enrico Rava concert when a mobile phone in the audience rang while Rava was doing introductions at the microphone. Rava spoke into the mike, playing the part of the owner of the phone: Pronto? Pronto? Ah, I'm so sorry, I cannot talk now. I am at a concerto. Ciao!

Gubbio

Muesli with fresh strawberries taste so good after impatiently waiting in bed for the breakfast room to be open for use. Juicy sweet strawberries, not the plastic imposters sold in Australia. Even the coffee from the espresso vending machine is fair. I can hear the sound of beans being ground after putting in 0.50 €. I think the Italians, with their experience of lost empires, faded glories and disorganised public life, understand that the only happiness that matters is a human one.

I can't sit around moping; hostelers must quit the premises during the day so I might as well get some sightseeing done. So the plan is to visit the local covered market and then the open air flea market in the town square. Then to visit Gubbio, another hill town nearby.

The covered market is desultory, but I learn from this sign that Italians are not adverse to eating horse meat.

The flea market is more interesting. I wonder at how many markets this seller has to load and unload the jukebox before it's sold.

It is actually possible to go between the upper and lower city on foot without much fatigue. There is a chain of public escalators inside one side of the hill. About 20 minutes walking finds me down in the bus station.

A couple of hours later I am in Gubbio. The TV series Don Matteo, featuring a priest who is also a sleuth, is set in this parish. This palazzo is instantly recognisable to followers of the series. But the town doesn't seem to cash in on the connection; I saw no Don Matteo memorabilia for sale. Older claims to fame include the annual Corsa dei Ceri in May where statues of saints mounted on huge wooden prisms are raced through the streets by teams of devotees; and the legend of the Wolf of Gubbio, tamed by St. Francis of Assisi. Assisi and Spoleto, which annually hosts a world-renowned cultural festival, are two other hill towns of Umbria that I would have loved to visit had I more time.

The ancient narrow streets of Gubbio are very atmospheric. It's a good place to get a feel for living surrounded by medieval architecture. But the town is also not lacking in modern delights like a pizza parlour where I had a very affordable lunch.

There are also ruins of a Roman amphitheatre outside the city.

On my return to Perugia, I walk through the escalator passage again and there is a Dite Cheese (Say Cheese) festival going. This stall is offering ice cheese, analogous to ice cream. I didn't try it. Maybe I should have.

The streets are full of people enjoying the evening air as it's the second day of a long weekend.

Unfortunately there is no joy for me at the hostel; there is no sign of my backpack. Sob.

My backpack goes missing

The plane touched down just after dawn. Rome's Fiumicino airport has seen better days, but that wasn't the main reason I have disliked it since. When it was clear that no more items would appear on the baggage retrieval carousel, I went over to the service counter. While I was describing my backpack there, an airline employee came over and told me the bad news: my baggage had not followed me but would arrive by the next day's flight. I filled in forms, giving my address in Perugia, and handed over keys to the padlocks on the zippers, so that customs could inspect my belongings.

Bugger, I thought, all the way on the train to Rome Termini station, as the bad news sank in. Well, at least I don't have to lug a backpack for a while. But when would I get my belongings back? It was Friday and maybe they might just deliver it on Saturday? I had only the clothes on my back, one change of clothes from the KLIA stopover shower, and of course money, passport, etc. I had briefly flirted with the idea of staying in Rome until I got my backpack, but had quickly decided that I would continue to Perugia as planned and let them deliver to the hostel where I had a booking.

Rome summons the image of grandeur, but the reality is grubbier. Seen from the train, the Tiber was a dried up stream with weedy banks. What's a little garbage in a city that's eternal, well, over two and a half thousand years old? A mere quotidian concern. Rats yesterday, rats today, rats tomorrow.

To get to Perugia in Umbria, I had to change in Foligno, which is mainly a rail junction, but a pleasant enough town. It has a cathedral with an attractive facade. I had an hour's layover to explore a bit, as it was still morning. I almost missed the continuing train because it was on a spur platform. I quickly informed some other travellers who were also waiting for the same train.

Perugia has several train stations but I didn't know that then and got off at Perugia S. Giovanni by mistake. Oh well, the hostel didn't open until 4 pm so there was no hurry. Might as well explore a bit and have lunch. I spotted this classic Vespa model in a scooter shop. Reminded me of Peter Moore's adventures on a classic Vespa published as Vroom with a View.

Perugia is a hill town and a bus connects the plain with the upper town. The elevation is fortunate because it is cooler up there, and even this early in the season it was starting to get uncomfortably warm in the middle of the day. After checking in I picked up some food for dinner and breakfast at the local coop supermercato and watched the townsfolk on their passeggiatta. The pigeons were unafraid of people. I have a theory that if you find that the cats and dogs run away from you, then you are in a mean neighbourhood and should leave forthwith.

Despite having stayed up late before leaving Sydney in an effort to preadjust to the time difference, I crashed out around 8 pm, and naturally, woke before daybreak. Not much to do that early but to read a book since the breakfast room opened at 7:30 am, and to practice a breathing exercise whenever I felt panic creeping in over my missing luggage.

Off to the Adriatic

After years of dreaming and months of planning, I'm finally going to the Adriatic. The Dalmatian Coast had always held a fascination for me as a destination. Besides its much praised beauty, it always felt exotic to me that a dog breed and a coast would share the same name.

I have worked out that post-Yugoslavia, practically all the places I wanted to visit are in Croatia and Slovenia. I will also take in some regions of Italy I have not explored before such as Umbria, Emilia Romagna, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

I am in a sense also getting a fresh start. In 2006 the start-up I worked for ran into funding problems and stopped employing me full-time, although they called me in occasionally for consultant work. So I went back to being a freelance. Just before I left, they wound up, an outcome that did not surprise me. I felt that I needed a long holiday to put some distance between me and the work life of the past few months and get a fresh perspective.

Listening to Joyce singing L'Étang by Paul Misraki as the plane exits Australian airspace makes me wonder what it is about the melody that sounds so quintessentially French.

In KLIA I have a 3 hour layover so I paid to have a shower in the airside hotel. Later events proved this to be a good decision.