Koper

Breakfast cost 5€ extra, but I didn't mind because it was plentiful and filling, with frankfurters and eggs available. Since the train wasn't due until 1023, I watched a bit of TV and checked my email in the lounge. Even so, I had time to kill at the station. As the line approaches the coast it has to lose a lot of altitude in a short distance. So there is an impressive zigzag section where you can see where the train was a few minutes ago higher up.

The area around Koper's combined train and bus station is flat, boring and treeless industrial land outside the old city. It was several hundred metres walk to the Motel Port and I was glad I had my floppy hat against the midday sun. I eventually found it in the upper floors of a port facility building that housed shipping companies, retailers and such. Nearby, container trucks were noisily arriving at and departing from the docks. That explained the name of the motel/hostel. There was a bar in the next block so it could get noisy at night. But the dorms were airy, bright and clean. I had a whole dorm to myself while I was there.

Even by 1830, it was still too warm for my taste. I was back on the Adriatic coast so skies were clear and the sunshine brilliant. It was close to the peak of summer after all. I found the way into the old city more or less by luck and explored all the squares and narrow streets mentioned in the guide. This is the Praetorian Palace in the principal square.

Koper's other name is Capodistria which reveals its Italian origin when teased apart as Capo d'Istria (Head of Istria). It once had a sizable Italian community but most left when the area was given to Yugoslavia in the aftermath of WWII. I daresay many moved across the border to Trieste which was given to Italy. However the Italian influence lingers in the region in the street language, bilingual signs, and fortunately for me, the cuisine. In 2007 Koper celebrated a 50th anniversary.

I found the La Storia restaurant, where I had the eponymous gnocchi with chicken, rugola and only half a cherry tomato! And tomatoes are a mainstay of Italian cuisine. Were they very expensive in Slovenia? But the dish was good. Like being back in Italy. Service was slow because the place was understaffed but I didn't mind because I had a good view of the marina area.

I got a gelato (what else?) for desert on the Leather Maker's street. It was much cooler on the walk back. There wasn't any truck traffic at that hour but lots of merrymakers at the drinking establishment downstairs.

The RAI3 channel was showing Il Commissario Rex. It was an episode I had seen before. Rex got kidnapped (or should we say, dognapped) by the baddie.

A day in the life of Bologna

A normal working day today so plenty of buses to the city and no need to get out early. Also it's drizzling gently. That's probably why I slept well. It looks like the dramatic rain clouds that overshadowed Firenze when I was passing through have arrived in Emilia Romagna.

Today I will just wander around the city. The shops are full of wonderful produce and foodstuffs. This is indeed a foodie's heaven.

I have a lunch of chicken fillets wrapped in prosciutto at Tamburini, a well-known deli and restaurant. The place is full of workers in their lunch hour. It was very casual self-service, you just pick what you want and pay at the cashier. There are no labels on the dishes, I guess the locals know what's what. It was so hard to decide, everything looked good.

After that a desert of a rum ball from a confectioner for 1€. The Italians can even make a sundae from Maccas taste good. The secret is Baci chocolate sauce. Baci is of course made by Perugina, whom we met back in Perugia. The Maccas is quite tolerant, I'm sitting at an outside table reading The Story of San Michele and writing in my diary and nobody's asked me to move on. San Michele is on Capri way down south near Napoli and the events in that autobiography are a century old. The style of writing is quite idiosyncratic and fanciful in parts but the book is entertaining and was very popular. I visited that villa on my first journey to Europe 25 years ago and I remembered that the setting was as beautiful as Axel Munthe lavishly praised.

Porticos are a feature of buildings here. They extend for long distances out of the city and it is possible to walk kilometers without getting exposed to sun or rain.

Here is one of the old city gates.

From research in book shops and online I have collected enough information to decide that I will take an overnight sleeper south, then stay overnight in the resort town of Trani, which is about 40 km from Bari, before taking the Jadrolinija ferry to Dubrovnik. Trani is more pleasant than Bari and yet is close enough for me to get to the ferry terminal without stress. The ferry goes east on certain days only and I have picked next Wednesday so my touring days in Emilia Romagna are numbered.

I have arranged to meet Davide, from the local Linux users' group, ERLUG, for dinner. He takes me on a walk to a member's home, where Luigi and Lorena live with their two sons, Francesco and Nicolo. Luigi and Lorena are both economists and have trained overseas and speak English quite well. After a few minutes, Davide excuses himself as he has a meeting to attend, leaving me with my hosts. The reason I have been invited to dine with them is because Francesco will be an exchange student in Canberra soon and they are curious about Australia. We exchange a lot of information about Italian and Australian culture. I mention that balsamic vinegar seems plentiful in Emilia Romagna. They say but you know, if it's really top quality stuff, the host will offer you only a teaspoonful, so high is the price. I guess most of us have to make do with the standard quality product.

Luigi has to take the dog, Hugo, for an evening walk so we continue our conversation in the park. Unfortunately Luigi has never quite warmed to Hugo and Hugo knows it. So he refuses to leave the house, perhaps suspecting that Luigi will do away with him or something like that. So Luigi has to get Nicolo to accompany us to placate the dog. Luigi is impressed that I know so much about Italian films. I explain that we get a lot of great world films in our arthouse cinemas, and we also have SBS. When I mention that I admired Nanni Moretti's recent opus La Stanza del Figlio (The Son's Room), Luigi put his hand on his heart and said, that story really gets you here.

We talked late into the evening and Luigi gave me a lift back to the hostel because the buses had stopped running by that time.