Vicenza

I had considered visiting Venezia again in the day, but after last night's adventure, I decided to pass that up. It's magnificent and everybody should visit it at least once, but it really is a theme park, because it exists purely for arts and tourism. The glory days of La Serenissima were back in history. It's said that many locals have to live outside and commute to work. Instead I decided to visit Vicenza, the city of Palladio.

At the station I found that the trains to Vicenza were actually buses leaving from outside the station. This wasn't apparent in the timetables. And as luck would have it, I got the milk run, which took minor roads and stopped everywhere. Still, I was in no hurry and I got a good tour of the countryside.

At Vicenza, a short walk took me to the gates opening up on Corso Palladio. Even I, with no eye for architecture, could discern that Palladio's buildings are indeed well-proportioned, but unfortunately it was impossible to step far back enough to take undistorted pictures of any but a few, such as the Duomo.

It was an attractive city, but it felt forlorn and not as lively as Padova. That it was Saturday and that the weather was warm might have had something to do with it. Perhaps some people had chosen to shop, and the rest were relaxing at home.

I had a nice asparagus pizza for lunch, washed down with a glass of chardonnay. Now I'm bound to feel drowsy afterwards, I thought, never mind, I can nap in the train. Desert was irresistible cherries.

I ate them in this garden just behind the market.

The train back to Padova was delayed. Why was I not surprised? Back in the hostel, I showered and used up my phone card calling home since I would be leaving Italy the next day.

I went to Brek for the third time, because of the fresh food, the air-conditioning (it was a warm day) and the absence of a cover charge, which many establishments tack on. Then I digested dinner sitting in the piazza. An Italian kid noticed me eating cherries and asked his mother where I had got them.

When it was cooler, I walked to the end of the main street which opened up onto a park. I saw in passing that some wit had altered a street sign from Via Rogati to Via Drogati (I don't know what the Rogati were but Drogati means drug addicts). It really wasn't as dangerous as suggested, but I'm sure that like any city, Padova had some.

From the vans packing up and the detriti on the ground it looked like there had been a market with clothing stalls. In Italy I noticed many clothing shops and stalls run by Chinese. Do Italians really buy that much apparel? Imagine China conquering the world through clothing and variety stores.

There was a fountain and townsfolk out for their passeggiate.

I walked back to the piazza, found myself a gelato desert, and enjoyed the night air until it was late, then called it a night.

Padova and Venezia

I was a little concerned, this being Italy, that the bus might cause me to be late for the train so I left quite a bit of leeway, but as it turned out, I arrived at the station with 25 minutes to spare. It took me a while to find my carriage as it was a 12 car train. Trieste is, after all, the end of the line for this direction so a long distance train such as the one was taking to Padova would have enough cars to pick up many passengers.

The train travelled northwest along the karst giving a good view of the Gulf of Trieste. Eventually we reached the northern end of the gulf where we lost sight of the coast, "rounded the corner" into the "mainland" heading west, and passed Montfalcone. Incidentally Trieste's airport is near Montfalcone due to the lack of land near Trieste. Eventually we arrived at a train junction surrounded by ugly cranes and buildings. This was Mestre, the gateway to Venezia. The train reversed and headed out the other direction to Padova. 20 minutes later we were there.

There was no problem finding the hostel first go, and there were heaps of free beds. I left my backpack and set out to explore the city. Padova claims to be the oldest city in Northern Italy. Certainly it has one of the oldest universities in the West. It's also where, if you recall, Romeo of Verona was exiled to. In the piazza I witnessed an interesting ritual, graduates getting hazed by their friends and family after successfully defending their thesis. A certain amount of physical humiliation (flour, body paint, women's stockings, ski boots, that sort of thing) is involved and the victim is forced to perform outrageous antics such as singing at the top of their voice, bemusing onlookers. 

Posters describing the graduates and their degrees are stuck to the window sills. These posters have a large caricature of the person, their degree, with prose, verse and sketches which are often risque.

One of the graduates had done a thesis on the use of TeX, a computer typesetting system I used to know well. I chatted with him for a short while but he was quite occupied, naturally.

Nearby the Friday markets were in full swing and I enjoyed the variety and colour. I bought some fruit here.

I liked Padova better than Bologna. It's neater and more manageable in size. The student population gives the city a youthful spirit.

Back at the hostel I did my laundry and had a shower while waiting for it to dry. Then I put my evening plan into action. First to have an early dinner at Brek (see photo at right) where I had also lunched. This is a pay-by-weight buffet restaurant that serves delicious and healthy food. Then I hopped into the train to Venezia Santa Lucia (SL). The plan was to take a vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal to Piazza San Marco and take pictures of Venezia by full moon. Brilliant timing, what?

Well, the ride was indeed scenic and I got some good shots, so I'll run with those for a while.

But, as the vaporetto stopped everywhere, it was slow going.

Finally we reached the end of the canal and open water. Piazza San Marco was just around the corner. Oh what a lovely moon.

However, on the basis that it would take me just as much time again to get back to Venezia SL, I had only a few minutes to grab pictures of the piazza.

I fretted all the way back. I raced into the station but my worst fear was true, I had missed the last train that would get me back before the hostel curfew, the 2217, by a few minutes. Bugger, why are Italian trains punctual at departing when you don't want them to be?

Ok, ok, calm down. Next train is the 2257 which is a sleeper, pausing in Padova. I still had the phone card from Perugia with me. I called the hostel and explained why I would be late and the warden said, no problem, I will come around to open the door for you.

There were no seats in the sleeper train so I stood in a corridor while the train gobbled up the kilometres. When a conductor came along and asked me where my compartment was, I explained that I had missed the last train and would get off at Padova. I didn't quite catch what he replied due to the ambient noise, but from the look on his face, it was basically something like ok no worries, but make sure you do get off at Padova. We were there by 2321, but the walk through the city meant that I reached the hostel at 2345. The warden came by and by, and I thanked him profusely, mille grazie. I crept straight into bed after that exciting misadventure.

Villa Opicina

After Miramare I caught the bus into the city. I lunched at a place serving all kinds of pork, in sausages, boiled and so forth. More Austrian than Italian I thought. Good washed down with a beer though a bit pricey.

Then I boarded the Villa Opicina tram service at Piazza Oberdan. This turned out to be a unique ride, the sort train and tram enthusiasts go out of the way to experience. Initially the tram trundled through city streets. Then it entered the steep section. Here the driver backed the carriages into a low stub line onto a odd looking low carriage. This turned out to be a low profile cable tractor which pushes the tram up the slope and assists in braking going downhill, working on funicular principles. This section is steep, it ascends 160 metres with a maximum gradient of 1 in 4. There is a passing loop in the middle. Once up on the karst, the tram decoupled from the tractor and operated normally again.

I didn't go all the way to Villa Opicina, but got off at Obelisco, where there are some woods and walking paths. Those woods were planted by Austrians for timber but now were a recreational area. It was noticeably cooler and breezier there. There were views over the city of Trieste.

Villa Opicina is near the border with Slovenia. It's a village and rail junction, but the rail connection with Trieste docks takes a large detour south due to the karst, as you can see from the maps. It was this large detour that the tramway was built to bypass. All of this part of Italy is near the border, being confined to a narrow coastal strip. Just how close everything is in the region can be seen from the fact that I was perhaps only 25km by road from Divača, where I had visited the Škocjan Caves just over a week ago.

There is a civic museum in Trieste that I had not the nerve to visit. As the Allies had regained Italy starting from Sicily, the northern part of Italy remained in German hands up to the end of WWII. Trieste has the infamy of being the only place on Italian soil to have had a Nazi death camp. In 1944, the Nazis took an abandoned rice mill on the outskirts of the city, the Risiera di San Sabba and murdered Jews, partisans and other victims. It's estimated that 3000-5000 people were gassed, shot, or clubbed here. Thousands more were railroaded on to other death camps in Central Europe. Before they fled, the Nazis attempted to conceal their crimes by dynamiting the cremation oven. The space it used to occupy is visible in photos from the entrance.

I caught the bus back to Miramare but got off at Parco Miramare, which is the entrance to the park from the main road, rather than from the castle. I explored some of the other areas of the park I had left out in the morning. I encountered this friendly cat at a bench. I ate some peaches purchased in a supermarket but they were crunchy, not juicy.

The sea surrounding Miramare is a marine sanctuary and shags were sunning themselves on the rocks as I passed.

Back at the hostel, I found that I had two new roommates, English backpackers. They were looking for ferry options to Croatia. It seems that they were in Trieste due to the cheap Ryanair tickets. But why didn't they go straight to Zadar, which Ryanair also serves? Seems some people don't research the geography of their destinations.

At one point an intemperate older German hosteller came around to complain about our room door slamming because of the spring closer. Sigh, if he had wanted quiet, he should not have come to a hostel, especially one with dozens of schoolkids running around.

At about 2000 I walked back along the Viale Miramare looking for an eatery. Eventually I settled on a seafood place where I had a gnocchi with scampi and tartufo nero. Tartufo is truffle and is more affordable in this part of Europe. It gave the dish a complex earthy taste. I could understand why some people rave about truffle. It's not something I would like to have every day though. A family at a nearby table had an angelic looking child. I told the mother so: un angelo piccolo. She was quite chuffed by the compliment. The proprietor of the restaurant was very friendly. A most satisfactory meal before walking home in moonlight along the lungomare.

Miramare

Miramare is just 5 minutes walk up the road from the hostel. Normally I'm not very interested in museums, but the fairy-tale like castle and the story behind it was fascinating, and, a little sad.

When I was a kid, the plot of one spaghetti western I saw featured the capture and execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. That didn't make sense to me. I thought Mexico never had any royalty. Later on I found that the fact was more fascinating than any fiction. Summarised, it goes like this:

In 1863 monarchists in Mexico invited Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria to be their emperor. His brother was the future Franz Josef I. Up to that that time in his life Ferdinand had served in the Navy and as a Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, then under Austrian rule. From accounts his political views and policies were liberal. Franz Josef dismissed him from his post in 1859 because of them. Shortly afterwards Austria lost most of her Italian possessions. Ferdinand then retired to Trieste and began planning his castle, Miramare. He was a man with scientific interests and had taken part in a botanical expedition in Brazil.

It is believed by some that his wife Charlotte of Belgium, who was also his second cousin, being an ambitious woman, prevailed upon her husband to accept the monarchists' invitation. They sailed for Mexico in 1864 and took up residence in Mexico City. However the country was in the throes of a civil war between monarchists, propped up by Napoleon III of France, and the republicans, supplied with arms by the US after the end of their Civil War. (This is where the spaghetti western connection comes in.) By 1866, France had withdrawn her support and Ferdinand was under pressure to abdicate. Charlotte returned to Europe to try to gather support for Ferdinand, but to no avail. In 1867, the republicans were victorious and Ferdinand's contingent was captured at Santiago de Querétaro, and he was executed by firing squad. Although the powers of Europe pleaded for his life, Benito Juárez felt that he had to send a message to Europe not to interfere in Mexican affairs, despite his liking Ferdinand at a personal level.

Charlotte had a mental breakdown and lived first at Miramare for a short time, then the rest of her life back home in Belguim. She died in 1927, aged 86.

Miramare has extensive gardens, reflecting Ferdinand's love of botany. But he never lived to see his finished castle as he left before completion. The inside of the museum, where I was not allowed to take pictures, is furnished as it was in that era. It is a well-preserved glimpse into that period. There are also exhibits from when it was the residence of the Duke Amedeo of Aosta. During the Allied occupation of Trieste until 1954, it was military headquarters. It was turned into a public museum in 1955.

The castle stands on a tip of land and has splendid views up and down the coast. Ferdinand had good taste, if not good political judgement.

On the Trieste buses I had noticed anti-suicide campaign posters giving a host of reasons why not. One of them was: because chocolate tastes good. I also noticed that notices at bus stops state that services may be disrupted by bad weather. Those must refer to the bora, a fierce katabatic wind that rushes down the karst mostly in winter and makes life miserable for people in this part of the world. It accounts for measures such as closely clustered houses, stones on roof tiles to weigh them down, and chains along sidewalks for pedestrians unlucky enough to be caught by a gust, to grab onto.

(The remainder of the day will be in another post.)

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.