The train compartment was warm and humid when I entered as it had been a hot day in Bologna. A fellow passenger opened the window a crack to let cool air in and the temperature dropped agreeably over the night. I awoke around 0430, and did my ablutions before anyone else then watched the scenery slide past as the day dawned. The Apuglian landscape was visibly different from Emilia Romagna's. Where the vegetation had been pastel greens, they were now saturated colours. They appeared spikier and more robust. The land was harder, and walls of stone formed boundaries. The light was brighter and harsher. Occasionally we passed prosperous housing estates, and billboards like Ikea's showed that some people at least, were plugged into the consumer society.
Around 0630 we arrived at Bari. I had a coffee in the station bar then rested in the waiting room, listening to the Powaqaatsi soundtrack, until it was time to find the ferry agent office. The manager, who was the first arrival, let me in to await the clerk handling the Croazia bookings. I wondered what business was like years ago when the Balkan wars were raging, and cross-Adriatic services were suspended. I suppose there were still the services with Greece.
Ticket secured, I caught the train back to Trani, nominally 45 minutes north by train. Only it was 55 minutes because it was the milk run. The hotel had received my Internet reservation and I had a long-overdue shower and nap.
Trani is a smaller and more picturesque place than Bari, which is a working city and port, at one end of the Greece-Italy route. Visitors usually just pass through to points west and north. Trani attracts pleasure craft and holiday-makers.
For lunch I chose an alfresco restaurant offering a fish menu. Looking at people at the other tables it seemed that the chef was giving each customer a slightly different variation for the primo piatto. I got pasta shells and shellfish. When the bill was settled, they were 2€ short of change so they knocked that amount off the bill. Just like that.
In the evening, after a siesta, I joined the populace in the evening passeggiata, exploring the port fortifications. I got noticed more here than up north I think because foreign visitors are rarer.
I took this picture by propping my camera against the wall of a B&B place in the port. The owner had a look at what I had captured and approved. We then got into a conversation, the usual where are you from, where are you going and so forth. Why didn't you stay at my place, he asked, as I was leaving. Perhaps next time, I said, laughing.
At the gelateria a couple insisted when it was my turn. Polite people here.
It's my first hotel room since the beginning of the journey and it came with a TV, of course. After midnight, a public station put on a, um, saucy movie from the US, dubbed. I had read about this sort of programming and now I was witnessing it. It was bizarre in that it seemed to be a mashup of two movies and the storyline made absolutely no sense as a result. Not that these movies have much of a storyline to start with. The other fascinating thing was that the commercial breaks advertised mundane things like household goods. Maybe Italian couples need all the encouragement they can get to do something about the plummeting birth rate, close to the lowest in the West. If so I don't think it helps. The reasons are not hard to discover and have to do with women being in the workforce, housework, and willingness or not of the partners to share chores.
Ticket secured, I caught the train back to Trani, nominally 45 minutes north by train. Only it was 55 minutes because it was the milk run. The hotel had received my Internet reservation and I had a long-overdue shower and nap.
At the gelateria a couple insisted when it was my turn. Polite people here.
It's my first hotel room since the beginning of the journey and it came with a TV, of course. After midnight, a public station put on a, um, saucy movie from the US, dubbed. I had read about this sort of programming and now I was witnessing it. It was bizarre in that it seemed to be a mashup of two movies and the storyline made absolutely no sense as a result. Not that these movies have much of a storyline to start with. The other fascinating thing was that the commercial breaks advertised mundane things like household goods. Maybe Italian couples need all the encouragement they can get to do something about the plummeting birth rate, close to the lowest in the West. If so I don't think it helps. The reasons are not hard to discover and have to do with women being in the workforce, housework, and willingness or not of the partners to share chores.
