Trieste

Two German schoolteachers from Westphalia were my dormmates last night. The retired one was walking to Jerusalem in stages, that is, he would begin the summer's walk where he had left off last year. He had been doing this since his wife died in 2002. A form of pilgrimage and meditation I guess. He said that he had once found a strange foxglove and planted its seeds in his garden. He had enjoyed very much walking in the Alps, and not visiting villages. His friend was providing company.

Jan Morris, the renowned travel writer, was the reason I was visiting Trieste. If you recall, I was carrying with me a collection of her pieces: Fifty Years of Europe. James first laid eyes on Trieste when he accompanied the occupying Allied forces into Trieste. After 50 years of reportage and writing, she had returned to the city in a 2001 essay: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. My poor attempt to summarise is that Trieste is an exemplar of a place that has experienced much turbulent history and has settled into a gentle, somewhat melancholy but not unhappy obscurity. Even the name is suggestive, having just one letter more than the word for sad in several Romance languages. However the name derives from the Roman Tergeste.

Trieste's Italian period began with the arrival of the torpedo boat Audace in 1918, to claim the city for Italy after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The pier where the Audace berthed was subsequently renamed the Molo Audace (page in Italian). The pier gradually became inadequate for commercial shipping and today it's just a pleasant civic facility for anglers and sunbathers. A wind rose on a column commemorates the arrival of the Audace. Prior to that Trieste had been a prominent seaport and commercial centre in the Austro-Hungarian empire, fourth in size after Vienna, Budapest and Prague. (Many people know those three, how many are familiar with Trieste?)

It was a lively and cosmopolitan city, and a list of notables associated with it include: James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba. Between the wars, the city continued to prosper from commerce and industry. The rise of Italian Fascism saw many Slovenes driven out of Trieste. After WWII, between 1947 and 1954, it entered a period of limbo as a protectorate of the UN in the Free Territory of Trieste. This ended with the ceding of Trieste in Zone A to Italy, and Zone B, comprising a large portion of Istria, to Yugoslavia, and now split between Slovenia and Croatia. There are still significant traces of minorities as this Serbian Orthodox church shows.

With the end of the Cold War, Trieste has begun to rebuild its stature. It is still a major seaport on the Mediterranean for Italy and central European countries, is a commercial centre of some note, is a major coffee port (40% of Italian coffee passes through here; Illy coffee comes from here, the Illy suggestive of Illyria), and has a university and several illustrious institutes, some of which are near Parco Miramare. It's moderately prosperous and seemed to me pleasant to live in, if it were not for the powerful bora. More about that later.

The buildings surrounding the spacious Piazza Unità d'Italia are well-preserved 19th century buildings. It also contains the elaborate Fountain of the Four Continents, an animal each representing Europe, America, Asia and Africa (Australia had not been discovered by Europeans yet).

There are many older people sitting in cafes. I couldn't be sure if they were residents or visitors. I didn't need much prompting to have a coffee and cake too. A poster on a column advertised a retrospective of the films of the Italian actress Laura Morante. Another was for the Udin&Jazz (sic) Festival (Udine is a nearby city). Cultural tourism seems to be the hot thing now.

Then I walked up the hill towards the Castle of San Giusto through the Park of Remembrance. Along the way were markers commemorating casualties. So many to mourn in Italy: fallen policemen, firemen, orphans, etc. At the top of the hill were Roman columns.

There was a panoramic view to sea, marred somewhat by construction cranes. I decided that the view wouldn't be much better from the castle so I decided not to go higher. In the picture you are looking towards Miramare.

Down at the bottom, I lunched at a German/Austrian place near the Piazza offering a house special. It turned out to be a potpourri of the various cuisines that meet in this part of Europe: Italian, Austrian, Slavic; a mixed grill with onions, mustard and Adjar sauce. This, as far as I can discover, is a sauce made from red peppers. Lunch was a bit pricey, but good.

A bit of walking around the canals and it was time to quit for the day. This is a statue of James Joyce who worked in Trieste off and on for many years.

And this was a water feature at the head of a pedestrian mall where I had an afternoon gelato.

When I got back to the hostel, the Germans told me that they had done 38km of walking that day. Quite remarkable. While I was napping, a heavy downpour started. Well that settled it, no dining out, I had to dine in the hostel's trattoria. The food was fresh and tasty but the portion rather small for the cost.

The hostel seemed to be trying to be green. There's a motion activated light in the bathroom. Unfortunately it meant that I had to wave my arms every so often while showering or it would go dark. Quite comical actually.

I move on to Trieste

A moderate breeze was blowing as I left the room, dropped the keys in the mailbox of the travel agency attached to a note with one word: Hvala! (Thanks!), and got my cross-border ticket at the bus station. On the bus I met an English couple who had stopped in Slovenia to change their Tolars, the old currency before the Euro, from a previous trip. In answer to my question about the border formalities they said that officials would board the bus. And so it was, once for leaving Slovenia and once for entering Italy.

I thought about this border. It had once been the frontier between Italy and Yugoslavia. Even though Yugoslavia was not as deep behind the Iron Curtain as some eastern European countries, still there must have been a fair amount of crossing by Slovenians to buy western goods in Trieste.

Despite meandering through some villages on the Slovenian side, it only took 20 minutes from Koper to the frontier, but after that, an hour to negotiate the traffic in Trieste and reach the bus station. I found the tourist office where they gave me directions to the bus service for the hostel, which is several km out of the city, on the coast. But first to get lunch. I found a pizzeria and had a simple but tasty melanzane (eggplant) and pepperoni pizza.

The hostel is at 331 Viale Miramare. After 320 there was a long stretch without any numbers, then the bus headed up an incline and Parco Miramare appeared. That can't be right, I thought, the hostel is on the coast, so I got off and walked back until I spotted the familiar HI logo. It turned out that Viale Miramare peels off from the main road which ascends the hill.

It was only 1330, too early to check in, so I sat on a bench, read some and napped some. There was a strong breeze, whipping up the waves. Very pleasant after several stuffy days in Piran.

A group of youngsters arrived so I let the crowd check in first. Management assigned me to a 6-bed dorm in the basement, which is actually at street level. I could hear the roar of the waves from there. I was the first occupant. I showered and slept until evening. The hostel is the building in the middle of the picture.

In the evening I debated whether to take the 9€50 meal deal offered by the hostel in conjunction with a local restaurant. I decided to look for dinner myself instead. Despite having already had pizza for lunch, I persuaded myself to have another for dinner because they were offering some 100 varieties at a restaurant. I had the mediterraneo (anchovies, tomatoes and a soft cheese). It was a bit soggy because of the tomatoes, but it was all edible, a great improvement over Croatian pizza. The brand of mineral water I had was Kaiserwasser, a bit of Austrian nostalgia.

Walking back along the lungomare I, and other spectators, watched this boat practice some rescue maneuvers in the choppy water.

Trieste seems to have a more diverse population. I didn't attract as much attention as in the Balkans. It's a somewhat forgotten city. A lot of people people think that Italy ends at Venice on the eastern border but Trieste is further out, on a limb of Italian territory, surrounded by Slovenia in three directions. Even a large proportion of Italians did not recognise Trieste as an Italian city in a survey. After the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire and WWII it has settled into a gentle old age on the periphery.

So with the anticipation of exploration the next day, I walked back in the moonlight.

The end of slavicity

I think that's the right word: slavicity. I would be leaving the Balkans and going from a Slavic culture to a Latin one. Before crossing the border into Trieste, Italy, I had put away my Slovenian guide book and taken out the Italian one. In the bus I changed memory cards to the Italian one (I wanted to group pictures by country). The last picture on it was taken in Trani, in Apuglia, just under 7 weeks ago. What a great time it had been. But on reflection I probably could have done Croatia in about 3 weeks and Slovenia in 10-12 days. Or I could have covered more ground in the time I had. I just couldn't predict ahead of time how much of interest there was to me. Ironically a car would have been useful in Slovenia, a small country, because the small population meant that transport services were sparse.


In fact, I already had a foretaste of Italian culture in Istria, which retained considerable Italian influence. I had noticed how people in the street would say ciao ciao. But I would probably not notice much Slavic influence in Trieste. If anything, the minor influence would be Austrian, for historical reasons.


Slovenia was 16 yesterday. I had expected fireworks or something in Piran to celebrate. Perhaps it was only in Ljubljana. They got their independence cheaply compared to the other unfortunate former Yugoslavian states. Now they were in the EU and making up for lost time. And today marked 2 months into my trip. Yes, I admit it, I was starting to get homesick. I missed familiar food, I missed my music. But there were still a few more Italian cities to intrigue me yet.