The Ferrovia Circumetnea train pulls into the station at Catania Borgo and a surprising number of people spill out, given that it’s only 9.30 in the morning and, depending on where they’ve come from, they could have travelled anything up to three hours already. We tourists on the platform wait for them to get clear and then climb aboard. The carriages are narrow and the seats faux leather bench style, rather than canvas-covered individual ones as is the modern way. Kate and I find a couple of spaces opposite each other and squeeze in like sardines with the rest of the travellers.

I look around me at the other people on the train. The woman next to me is carrying a laptop case and is dressed in a smart suit. When the conductor arrives to check tickets, she produces a laminated season pass – as do a number of others. Sure, there are tourists on here, with cameras around their necks and paper tickets marked either ’60′ or ’110′, according to how many kilometres they’re travelling, but the ratio of visitors to locals is more balanced than I’d expected. I hand over my ’110′ ticket and smile at the conductor. He looks at me with detachment, remembering my face for when he next passes through to check new arrivals. I lean back in my seat and stare out of the window of the train, searching for sightings of Etna.

At first the view is mainly of the scrubby, rubbish filled outskirts of Catania, but every so often I catch a teasing glimpse of her, smoking away in the distance. She’s still snow capped, even if not as much as a couple of months ago, and, as always, makes me catch my breath with her beauty. The day after Kate and I make this journey she’ll erupt, throwing spectacular fountains of bright lava into the air, but for today she’s snoozing like a sleepy dragon, puffs of smoke coming out of her nose as she breathes.

Her shape changes every time you see her. By the time we reach the suburb of Misterbianco she looks like the kind of volcano that a child would draw, with steep, even sides rising to a flat, smoking summit. A proper cone. Above Misterbianco she changes again, becoming wider and flatter. Here also the black smoke from the Valle di Bove side from where she’ll erupt so spectacularly tomorrow is clearer. We may not see any of the fallout in Catania, but I begin to understand, seeing the colour of the cloud, why towns like Giarre, to the east of her, have been covered in ash for so long.

Behind us a chatty man engages the man opposite him in conversation. “You’re going to Randazzo, are you? How long are you staying there?” The answers come through the fuzzy-edged vocal muffle of someone who was born deaf. The man’s inability to hear doesn’t impede the conversation, though; he’s just as talkative as his opposite neighbour. They babble happily back and forth about railways as we rise out of the city into fields of yellow and white wildflowers, punctuated with red poppies and prickly pears. A small bird flies alongside the train, wings a blur of speed as he bobs up and down, swooping and jibbing in our slipstream. Somehow Etna has disappeared – it doesn’t seem possible that such an enormous smoking lump of rock can disappear, but she manages it. I gaze at pale green and white fields, drinking in the open spaces which are missing from my day-to-day city existence.

As we climb through Paternò Etna takes me by surprise by appearing on our left, rather than our right. Given that the circumetnea route goes in a circle, I’d expected only to see her from one side of the train, but it makes sense that occasionally the track has to switch back to be able to climb higher. Proving the truth of this, when Etna appears back on our right hand side the landscape has become scrubbier with more exposed black rock. Here there are fewer open pastures; they’re replaced by terraces planted with orange groves, the trees interspersed with wild prickly pears and occasional blazes of bright red poppies.

The view disappears at Santa Maria di Licodia as we enter a concrete tunnel. The muddy yellow lighting seems sleazy after the bright, warm sunshine above ground. The yellow and black tiles remind me of the Rome metro and it feels old and smokey, despite the only steam trains along the line now being the ones that are planted on station platforms for us camera-toters to take pictures of. I shiver in the dank, cool underground and realise just how hot the sunshine was outside. When we emerge from the tunnel there’s a virtual wall of prickly pears to replace the actual concrete one, but the air is still cooler than it was; we’re now level with the snowline. We’ve climbed nearly 200m between Paternò and Licodia – and we still have over 500m to go before reaching our highest point, 976m above sea level.

A modern road sign shows a steam train at a level crossing and I smile at the way that the image has persisted as shorthand. The engine roars and the carriage sways from side to side as we climb a steep ascent between terraces of houses. Beside us, kitchen tablecloths patterned with bright, yellow and green and orange citrus fruits and vegetables hang from a balcony, fluttery and pretty against the pink stone of the building. On the other side, fat, shaggy-headed yellow roses climb up a wall, defying the diesel fumes of the trains as they wind themselves round railings and send tendrils arching out over the narrow train track.

In stark contrast to this traditional quaintness, up ahead I notice some new structures, which look like station shelters. Their concrete and perspex walls are clean and untouched; not even the amorous teenage graffiti artists have made it here yet with their confessions of undying love. To bring us back to earth, however, there are piles of rusting old rail stacked beside them – and us, on our little two-carriage, narrow-gauge putt-putt train.

Above Adrano we reach olive groves. Etna bulges fatly ahead of us. From further away the snow at her peak seemed smooth and all-encompassing, but from here you can see the reverse snowball trails of black lavic rock peeking through the white, breaking the surface like the lumps of ice that skitter down a mountain face before an avalanche. This is where the moonscape starts and the cultivation finishes. Olives, figs and wildflowers do grow, but they have to be hardy to get by. The ground looks like it’s made up of dried lumps of clay. It isn’t. It’s rock. Like a giant hand has sieved the soil but, rather than discarding the lumps, has tipped over the sieve and dumped them on top.

A low, one room farm store clings in solitary splendour to its terrace. Its corrugated roof is held down with lumps of basalt placed at strategic points around the edges and there’s the classic battered white Fiat parked outside. I’m reminded of an anecdote I once heard of how mules were killed off by the Bee and the Panda in Italy. Bee being ‘ape’, which is the name both for the insect and the three wheeled farm vehicles, little more than a motorcycle with a cabin and and flat bed trailer attached to them that you see puttering about everywhere in southern Italy, and Panda being Fiat’s version of the VW Beetle: big enough to be able to fit a lot inside, but small enough to be able to cope with driving along narrow farm tracks and mule trails. With insects and bears both able to do the same job as the mule but without its legendary stubbornness, it’s no wonder that the poor old beast of burden found itself superceded.

We pause just outside Bronte for the down train to pass. The other train looks to be full of American tourists: their colourful polo shirts, sun visors and gleaming teeth give them away. A man on our train takes advantage of the stop to hop off and grab some pistacchi from a tree, but comes back with rueful empty hands. “No good.” He shrugs and grins at his companions. It was worth a try. We crawl at a snail’s pace towards the station, creeping through the outskirts of the town. Outside, a shirtless man repairs a roof, watched with an eagle eye by his wife. He’s rosy brown and thin. She’s wrapped in black and holding a mug of something. She leans on the doorframe, watchful and guarded. At the station, a group of teenage girls stands on the platform studying the timetable. The leader gesticulates and animates as she makes her point. I can’t hear the words, but her meaning is clear: No, not this train – we need the one going the *other* way. Her acolytes nod.

Above Bronte even the pistacchio trees peter out. Around us there are only rocks and scrub and Etna’s peak. It’s brief, though – once we’ve passed Roccacalanna, our highest point on the journey, we start to drop again and signs of life return. A blackbird perches on top of a solitary scorched tree in the middle of an expanse of green while three shaggy sheep, coats like riced potatoes, charge through the grass as one, heads down bullishly. Further on, a less skittish herd lies on a thick bed of straw in an Alpine-style latticed wooden shelter. Their guardian, a white dog, lifts his head and watches us pass with unconcerned interest as a black cat runs, ears flattened to its skull, to escape from the noisy rattle of the train. The sheep, meanwhile, seem blissfully unaware of our presence.

There are two art students sitting opposite us. They got on at Bronte, both lugging large black portfolios. One of them – thin and baby-faced – fell asleep almost as soon as he sat down, but the other has been gazing out of the window, watching the scenery pass from behind his shoulder-length hair and thick-rimmed glasses. As we approach Randazzo, where this train will stop and go no further, babyface wakes up and bounces into action, clapping his friend heartily on the knee as if their roles had been reversed and glasses boy was the one who needed to be woken. Glasses boy rolls his eyes and turns back to the window, refusing to move until the train has come to a complete standstill. I follow his lead, gathering up my bag and notebook carefully, checking and rechecking to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything while Kate – who’s also been dozing on and off – hops from foot to foot, eager to get off the train.

After our longer-than-planned stop at Randazzo we climb back on board. It’s the same physical setup as before, but the atmosphere is different. The change started in the station waiting room, when someone produced a pack of Scopa cards and a game started up. A round, partridge-like woman with twinkling eyes and a ready laugh joined in the game with a group of teenagers. When the train arrived she darted around from stranger to stranger: “Is this the Giarre train? Does this one go to Giarre?” Nobody on the platform was quite sure and the guard had disappeared, but in a show of solidarity we all got on the train anyway, looking around the carriage with anticipatory glee – would we end up going the wrong way?

Thankfully no. As the train pulls away from the station the portly, sandy-blonde guard with the sunglasses pushed carelessly yet artfully up onto his forehead passes through the carriage laughing and joking with everyone. “Yes, we’re going to Giarre.” He’s unconcerned with seeing tickets, being far more interested in chatting. The tone has been set for this leg of the journey: from Catania to Randazzo it was business; from Randazzo to Giarre it’s pleasure. Everything about this section is relaxed: from the level crossings (there aren’t any – the train merely whistles to announce its presence as it approaches the narrow, one-track roads which cut across the tracks) to the way that an off-duty guard hops off the train to manually operate the signals before giving us a cheery wave and heading home for the day.

At one point we pass an open field where some kids wave at us, all cheeky, grinning faces and mad, semaphoring arms. Behind them, horses gallop along with the train, trying to match its pace. Mainly, though, the countryside here is green and thick with vines, shot through with the occasional defunct lava flow and every so often spotted with individual houses. Outside one of them, a pair of white geese waddle, pigeon-toed, fat bottoms swaying from side to side as they escape as fast as they can away from the rattling train and towards the safety of their pen.

The train slows and draws to a halt. I look out of the window to see where we are, but there’s no station. Instead, there are steps cut into the hillside, with a little old lady waiting at the bottom, laden with plastic shopping bags. She climbs slowly aboard, her brown, wrinkled-apple face beaming at the conductor, and takes a seat at the front, placing her bags with care on the seat beside her. A middle-aged woman hails her from the back of the carriage. “Buona sera!” She moves down to join the new arrival, sitting on the seat behind her and leaning forward for a chat about their respective days.

Partridge woman is flapping again: “Where are we?” The guard stops next to her. “We’re at Piedi.Monte,” – he enunciates carefully – “and we’re going TO Giarre. Va bene, signora?” He raises his eyebrows at her, shifting the sunglasses which have been resting on top of them ever since we got on the train, and laughs. The man next to partridge woman throws up his hands good-naturedly. “That’s what I told her!” She chuckles and pats his arm. “I know. I just wanted to be sure …”

“NEXT stop, GIARRE. STATE TRAIN to Catania.” The guard goes along the carriage announcing in English then makes a point of turning to partridge woman at the front and telling her as well, in both English and Italian. The whole carriage giggles together. When the train arrives at Giarre we all bundle down the steps and stand on the platform blinking shyly at each other, not sure where we’re supposed to go and not quite having the nerve to ask now that we’ve left the camaraderie of the carriage. Volcanic ash – less ash than millions of tiny chips of pumice – crunches underfoot, inches thick. I put up Kate’s umbrella against the early evening drizzle and we start to walk along the road. A flash of red catches my eye; I see a more informed traveller scooting back across the tracks behind our recently vacated train, which is now pulling away from the platform. We stop and wait for it to go past. As it does so, the driver toots the horn and he and the guard give us a cheery wave. I wave back, grinning. Despite the drizzle, despite our plans having gone awry, despite being covered in a thick layer of grit from the volcano, this has been the most wonderful day.

Original article: Views from a train

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

Fimmina senza amuri è fiore senza oduri
A woman without love is a flower without perfume
- Sicilian proverb

It’s the last class of the evening. We’ve been talking about manners and culture, and we’re all tired. I wind up the last minutes with an open class chat about men and women and what they expect of each other in different cultures. I throw some provocative statements out into the room. ‘Men should always hold doors open for women.’ There’s a mixed reaction to this one. A few say ‘yes’, but most say ‘no, not necessarily’. There’s a brief discussion which ends when one student says, “You hold the door for someone who needs it: it doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman,” and we all nod, satisfied with this sensible conclusion.

I decide to up the stakes a little: ‘Men should always pay for women when out on a date.’ This one gets more ‘yes’ answers. One student ventures the concept of going Dutch, but the men in the class are nonplussed by the idea. They are men: ergo, they pay. I put forward the point of view that, as a woman, being in debt to a man who wants to have sex with you puts you in a position of weakness. They look at me with incomprehension: it’s either not an idea that’s occurred to them or it’s something that isn’t talked about.

Nuddu si pigghia si nun s’assumigghia
Nobody marries who isn’t alike
- Sicilian proverb

We move on and I make a final statement: ‘Men should always see a woman to her door at the end of the night’. There’s a resounding ‘yes’ from the class. They’re confused that I would even question it. When I tell them that I’ve never been seen home after a date they are appalled. One woman, her mouth dropping open in dumbfounded amazement, says, “But we Sicilians always say that Englishmen are so well-mannered. We call them ‘lords’!” I try to explain that London – where I’ve done all my dating – is a law unto itself. When each person has travelled an hour on the tube from opposite sides of the city to the centre to meet, for the man to then take the woman home is impractical. It falls upon deaf ears. “It isn’t safe for a woman to walk on her own,” says Gaetano with finality.

Cù asini caccia e fimmini cridi, faccia di paradisu nun ni vidi
No-one who hunts girls or donkeys will ever get to heaven
- Sicilian proverb

A different night on Via Umberto. It’s late so I’m walking home from work the long way, along better-lit main streets rather than cut-throughs. A man on a bicycle goes past and slows to match my pace. He says something – I miss the words, but when a man on the road stops a woman walking on her own it’s not generally for innocent reasons. I’ve been caught before, thinking that someone wanted information when in fact they wanted me to ‘go for a ride’. I keep my head down and ignore him, pulling my bag closer to my body as I carry on walking. He persists. “No, no! It’s OK! Please!” I stop walking but stay the far side of the pavement from him. “Are you going to Piazza Duomo?” he asks. I wilfully misunderstand and point the way. “It’s down there to the left.” He shakes his head “No! I asked if *you were going* to Piazza Duomo.” I realise that there is no-one else around, and start walking again, anxious to get away from him. “No. I’m not.” I hurry towards the brighter lights and people on Via Etnea, hoping I can get there without incident.

When I reach Via Etnea, where the street is wide and well-lit and other people are walking, I slow my pace a little. I feel safer as I pass Savia and Spinella cafes, with their customers sitting outside eating granita. Then the man on the bicycle appears again. This time his intentions are more than clear. He waves a fistful of money at me. “Are you going to Piazza Duomo? Do you want to spend half an hour with me?” I snap. “Fuck you! I’m going home after a long day at work. Leave me alone!” I carry on walking as fast as I can, head down, cursing my stupidity for having lost my cool and for having told him I was going home. If he follows me I’m screwed: there’s nowhere to divert to. He seems to have got the message, but I don’t feel safe until I’ve got into my building and slammed the heavy outer iron door behind me.

La bona mugghieri è la prima ricchizza di la casa
A good wife is the richest part of the home
- Sicilian proverb

“You remember that husband and wife team?” asks Deanna. “The beginners?” I nod. “Well, he doesn’t come any more – he decided he was too stupid.” I make a sad face as I shove pasta into my mouth. He’d have been fine in a lesson with someone of the same level as him, but his wife had just enough knowledge to make him feel inadequate. Well, that and the fact that she’d sit there looking irritated at having to wait for him and then scold him when he didn’t get things right. Practising negative structures one day I asked him if she was German, expecting to get the reply, ‘no, she’s Italian.’ Instead, he sniggered and wagged his finger like a stern schoolmarm, watching his wife out of the corner of his eye. “Yes, she’s German!” His wife rolled her eyes without rancour: I don’t think this was the first time she’d heard the joke.

Deanna continues. “Anyway, I got one of my other students a job with them. They wanted a man – a *man*, mind you.” Chris raises an eyebrow and Deanna nods. Her voice is light but the sarcasm is impossible to miss. “Yeah – because of course women get pregnant and have periods and stuff.” She laughs: the brittle, resigned kind of laugh that means it isn’t funny at all.

È bona donna, donna chi nun parra
A good woman is one who doesn’t speak
- Sicilian proverb

Chris waves his fork over the mini arancini left on his plate. “Anyone want one of these?” Deanna gives a filthy chuckle. “Go on, Kate. You know you want a piece of Chris’ balls.” Chris looks across at her. “I’d say Kate’s got plenty of balls already, actually. Not like them.” He flicks his eyes towards the three women on the table next to us. “See those girls? They’ve been sitting there in silence ever since they arrived. It’s the men doing all the talking.” I glance sideways. He’s right. They’re not even talking to each other; instead listening in meek subservience to their menfolk holding court. “Just wait until they marry them, though,” says Chris. “They’re all sweetness and light while they’re reeling them in, but then they get married and turn into proper umbrella breakers.” We laugh at his use of one of our boss’ favourite phrases to describe someone who’s a real martinet. “How does the umbrella break, though?” muses Chris. “I mean – is it like this?” – he mimes stabbing someone – “or like this?” he whacks an imaginary umbrella over someone’s head. He grins appreciatively as he performs the second action. “It’s that one, isn’t it? Has to be!”

Pigghiala bedda e pigghiala pri nienti, ca di la bedda ti nnì fai cuntento
Take her if she’s beautiful – even if she has nothing – because you can be proud of her beauty
- Sicilian proverb

I’m five minutes from home when I feel the first spot of rain. I look up at the sky and quicken my pace. Two minutes from home the spots turn into regular raindrops. “Oh, please.” I mutter a silent prayer to the weather gods. “Just hold off until I get home, will you?” They listen. The rain starts in earnest as I reach the shelter of the doorframe and fumble for my keys. I hear a shout from across the street. “Ombrella? Eyyy, bella! Ombrella?” I look up to see one of the wandering African street sellers grinning and waving at me. He laughs. “Finally you notice me, gorgeous! Need an umbrella?” I laugh and shake my head, pointing out that I’ve got my keys and am going inside. He looks me up and down with an appreciative grin, then waves me goodnight. “Night, beautiful.” It may be all talk, but the open admiration is something that I’m more than happy never to get used to about being a woman here in Italy.

This month’s Italy Blogging Roundtable subject was ‘Being a woman in Italy’. As you can see, I chickened out of the bigger picture, choosing instead to focus on my personal experiences and those of women around me. Do check out how the other ladies have treated the subject, though:

• andiamo – Being a Woman in Italy: It’s Complicated
• ArtTrav – Being a woman in Italy… in the Renaissance
• At Home in Tuscany – (Wonder)Women of Tuscany
• Brigolante – Italy Roundtable: In Memoriam
• Italofile -

Original article: This Woman’s World

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

“Oh my god, Kate! Get down here. You have to see this …”

Kate and I are in Randazzo. We’d only intended to be here for an hour to grab some lunch and then head on, but we got distracted by gelato and missed the train. The last one for four hours. I stomp to the nearest bench and throw myself onto it in a grump. The clouds have come down, it’s spotting with rain, and it’s the dead time in the middle of the day when nothing’s open. I sit and seethe. A small voice sounds from beside me. “Well, I s’pose we could go back into town and have a look at the natural science museum?” I stand up. “Good idea. Right. Let’s go.” I set off at a quick march, shaking myself for being a bitch. It’s not Kate’s fault we missed the train: she might have suggested gelato, but I was more than happy to go along with the idea. We walk in silence.

“There’s a museum of natural science, with lots of fascinating things preserved and on display. If you go and book at this lovely restaurant – wait, I’ll give you a card – *this* lovely restaurant, you can walk back via the municipal buildings, which used to be a convent. Have you seen the Duomo, built entirely of lavic stone? And the Chiesa di San Nicolò and the street of arches? It’s just down there on the right. Oh! And there’s the archaeological museum, where they’ve got a nice display of Sicilian puppets. It used to be a castle and a prison. Here, take this map.”

My bad mood is back. The signs that told us the science museum was THIS way lead nowhere, and the map that we were given by the nice lady in the tourist office (now closed for lunch) isn’t much help, as it doesn’t correspond the carefully numbered dots on the map to the descriptions, and the descriptions don’t give addresses. Kate and I slouch on the steps outside the Chiesa di San Nicolò, glaring with hatred at the fluttering yellow ribbons running between the church door and the lamp-posts. They seemed so pretty when we first passed by. Funny what the prospect of staring at even the sweetest things for three and three quarter hours in the cold can do for perception. Even the church is closed. I wonder out loud what idiot decided to program the tourist train this way, so that people get to Randazzo at the lunchtime break when nothing’s open. As I do so, I realise: it’s not a tourist train at all. It’s a commuter one. It’s programmed that way so that people get home for lunch with their families and can then get back to work in the afternoon. Sure, the route that it takes around the base of Etna affords plenty of spectacular viewpoints of the mountain, but that’s not why it’s there. I shut my mouth.

“Let’s walk along Via Umberto and see if we can find the archaeological museum,” says Kate in a voice that sounds like it’s trying to be decisive but not quite managing it. She stands up and starts to walk – along the wrong road. I fold up my map and follow her. We’ve got three and a half hours to kill. Getting lost might make it go faster and, as the saying goes: bad decisions make good stories.

We come out in a pretty piazza which makes me think of occupied France. It’s the trees that do it. That and the church of San Martino in the centre, which looms over it all with monochrome foreboding. We’ve found the archaeological museum at least, in a crenellated tower which is all that remains of a once much bigger castle – but the door is firmly closed and the sign on it says that it doesn’t open for another hour. We sit on a stone bench and stare at the church. I comment on the Norman arches of the clock tower with their black and white patterned stones. Kate tilts her head to the side. “It’s a bit skewiff, innit?” We sit in silence, leaning in synchronicity, vacant.

“This tower is all that’s left of the castle. During the second world war, Randazzo was a strategic communication point, so it was occupied by the Germans. The Allies therefore bombed it, even after the Germans had left. They thought there were still troops here. There weren’t.”

A scruffy yellow dog passes behind us, claws tapping on the stone as he trots past. He’s long and low like a dachshund but has the bearded, wiry hairiness of a blonde border terrier. He circles around the backs of the intermittent semicircle of stone benches that edge the piazza. I follow him with my eyes. He goes past a man working on his laptop on one of the other benches and disappears behind the church at a fast clip. Two minutes later he appears again from the far side. Round and round he goes, circling the perimeter to make sure all’s well, keeping a beady eye on everyone who comes in and goes out.

“This is the room which used to be the dungeon – the coffin of the living dead, as it’s called. You see that hole up there in the ceiling? They used to drop the prisoners through it with that pulley and leave them here to rot.”

There’s a surprising amount of life in the piazza, given that it’s lunchtime. Apart from us and the man on the laptop, there’s a cafe owner lounging at the door to his premises as he smokes and chats to another man, idling away the time. Two more men appear out of the street we came from, carrying buckets. They put them down, looking a bit lost. One heads into the cafe while the other waits, shifting from foot to foot. A car appears and the man with the buckets greets the driver with effusive relief. The driver unlocks a wooden door into the house next to the museum and they both disappear inside. Seeing this, the other man wanders back from the cafe and follows them. A few minutes later, all reappear, laughing, arms full of boxes which they load into the car. A house move, maybe? A middle-aged woman appears at a balcony and calls something down to them in rapid Sicilian. They nod and wave. The driver climbs back into his car, slams the door and drives off as the other two men walk back the way they came.

“From the most terrible of prisons to the most beautiful room in the museum: in here nowadays we have two ancient Greek amphorae, found near Giardini and reassembled by hand. You know that Giardini Naxos was one of the most important towns of Magna Grecia …?”

The cafe owner greets us like valued regulars when we go in, rather than just two randoms who’ve blown in from the street along with the volcanic ash. He pours Kate’s tea and brews my coffee, smiling with paternal indulgence all the while. After he brings them to our table he disappears down the street, leaving us to it and returning five minutes later with a box of coffee in his arms. Small-town living: the people up here might be more formal than down in big city Catania, but they’re much more open.

“Go on upstairs. When you get up there, straight ahead of you you’ll see our most valuable item: the Vagliasindi oinochoe. It’s so precious that the Baron Vagliasindi wouldn’t let go of it, even when offered substantial sums of money for it. We’ll leave you to it.”

“He told you this used to be a prison, didn’t he? Well, these were some of the cells. Go on – take a look. I’ll just put the lights on for you and you can head on down whenever you’re ready – the puppets are at the bottom.”

“Oh my god!” Kate’s voice has an edge of hysteria to it. “Get down here, Kate. You have to see this. They’re all staring at me …”

Original article: Randazzo, città d’arte

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

Twenty years ago, Ortigia island was the red light district of Siracusa. Look past the cute, chi-chi boutiques and cafes that are there now and you can see why: it’s all narrow, winding streets and dark corners just made for illicit encounters. Plus, it’s only reachable by bridge from the mainland, so all the shadiness was easily contained. Perfect really.

One teensy problem: Siracusa’s cathedral is also housed on Ortigia.

Imagine: you’re wandering through dim, narrow alleys looking for a good time when suddenly – BAM! – you are ejected without warning into a glowing white ball of light. All the surfaces in Piazza Duomo are made from smooth, creamy-white stone and the sun reflects off Every. Single. One. of them. And right at the centre of this exposed, shining spot is a huge baroque cathedral. This is no place for ladies of the night.

Sunglasses firmly on, I head for the cathedral, which stands on the east side of the square and bundles the whole of the island’s archeological history into one building. Built originally by the Greeks as a temple to Athena, the columns were later incorporated into a Byzantine church. Later still, the Normans came along and decided to add internal walls and decorative mosaics. Finally, after the disastrous earthquake of 1693 which destroyed large portions of Sicily, the baroque frontage was added and the cathedral as it appears today was finished.

What results is a triumph of old, older and ancient working together. Walking inside, out of the beating sunlight that reflects off the huge, curlicued baroque frontage, I find the natural, rough-hewn beauty of the Norman interior both unexpected and calming. The edges of the Greek columns are soft and blurry, contrasting with the solid, angular walls that have been built between them. There is only a little evidence left of the Norman mosaics, so all grandeur is left to the baroque elements of the church. True to form, these are an extravaganza of gold leaf, wrought iron and candles. It should be a hot mess of bodged styles, but the contrasts only add to its beauty. Maybe it’s to do with the fact that the new has expanded on, rather than cover over, the old. The baroque altar, for example, was made from a stone which originated in the architrave of the Greek temple, and statues stand in the natural alcoves formed by the blocking in of the spaces in between the Greek columns. Whatever it is, it works. This is a peaceful, beautiful place to be.

After the cool of the cathedral, going back out into the focused heat of Piazza Minerva is a rude shock. I have the uncomfortable awareness of how slugs might have felt when I used to put them on the garden path at my granny’s house and train a magnifying glass on them. Y’know – melty. And blinded. Which is appropriate given that – apart from the cathedral – one of the attractions of this square is the Chiesa di Santa Lucia alla Badia.

Why appropriate? Well, the name Lucia comes from the latin for light. And Santa Lucia met a gruesome end, with some stories saying that her eyes were forcibly removed from her head. With forks. Yes, really. This after being sentenced to be defiled in a brothel for being a Christian, and stabbed through the throat. All things considered, feeling like a dissolving slug seems like the easy option. I brave the beating heat and cross the square towards the church.

Like the cathedral, the frontage is baroque and glowing white in the sun. Also like the cathedral, the most interesting part is inside. Quite unexpectedly, there’s a Caravaggio in there. I know! Not only is there dodgy human and varied archeological history, but there’s fine art, too. Ortigia’s got it all.

Caravaggio was something of a naughty boy. He even managed to garner a death sentence from the Pope. As you would if that happened to you, he went on the run from Rome and ended up in Malta. He clearly didn’t find it exciting enough there, and ended up getting into a brawl which resulted in him having to leave Malta as well. Where to go now? Well, turns out he had a mate in Siracusa, so off he galloped, and proceeded to spend some time in exile on Ortigia, and gallivanting around Sicily generally. He may have been a bad boy, but he was an extremely talented one, so the Siracusani decided to make use of the fact that he was there and commissioned him to do an altar painting to honour their patron Saint, Lucia.

The focus in the church is the painting, which hangs centre back, above the altar, taking up most of the width of the building. This is less a church than an art gallery, and it’s a crumbling one at that. Paint peels from the walls and there are holes in the plaster. At some point in recent history plug sockets and light switches have been chased haphazardly into the walls. They stick out as oddities in what is still – just about – a sacred place. Cameras? Heaven forfend! Even the merest hint of some sneaky photography and the wardens swoop on the offender, scolding and reprimanding. Shorts and strappy vests are fine, though, despite being officially forbidden according to the signs outside.

From the viewer’s perspective, not being allowed to take photos is a good thing. Why? Because it forces you to take notice of the picture. To really look at it and notice the details. Rather than choose to paint her death, as many other painters had done already, Caravaggio decided to depict Santa Lucia’s burial. Who is most interesting at a burial? It’s not the dead body – which, after all, isn’t going anywhere – it’s the living people charged with caring for that body. The focus of the painting is therefore Lucia’s two gravediggers, who stand out at the front of the picture. Caravaggio has painted them larger and in paler colours than the crowd behind them, who disappear back into darkness in his signature chiaroscuro style. Lucia, meanwhile, slumps at the bottom of the picture, as the church dedicated to her memory crumbles around her. Moral of the story? Saintliness is laudable, but being bad’s where the money’s at.

Original article: Sinners and Saints in Siracusa

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

I left Sicily just before Easter, when there were stalls on every corner selling plaited palm fronds ready for Palm Sunday. At first I was sad to be missing Easter in Italy – it’s much more of a big deal here than in England – but it’s best shared with friends or family and most of my friends here are just as displaced as I am. Going to England and celebrating my niece’s birthday along with doing a traditional Easter egg hunt (it’s what Jesus would have wanted) was, on balance, a more than fine substitute for eating roast lamb in the mountains and wearing meat hats.

At the train station, a toddler stands up on a metal bench and waves at the man sitting with his back to her. “Ciao!” He smiles but doesn’t turn around. She tries again and this time he grins and responds. They ‘ciao’ back and forth for a minute until her grandmother gets back from having a cigarette outside. She pulls fearsome faces and hectors her granddaughter over nothing in particular, in that way that many older Italians do with small children. The toddler’s father picks his daughter up and takes her for a walk, away from la nonna. The girl grizzles.

As little as three years ago, when I travelled by sleeper train from Puglia to the UK, a guard used to come around and put down the beds for you. Not any more – it’s all self-service nowadays. There’s one guard and he’s run ragged checking everyone’s tickets and handing out blankets and drinks. There wouldn’t be time to put down the beds as well.

Tonight the guard is short and round with steel grey curls and half-moon glasses. I momentarily nonplus him by showing him an e-ticket on my phone, rather than a printed document and he looks over his specs at me. “Ooh, hang on. Have you got a piece of paper?” I shake my head, thinking he’s going to scold me, but instead he bundles out of the cabin. “You don’t? Not to worry; I’ll get one.” He marches off down the corridor and returns a moment later brandishing paper and pen. I start to dictate the ticket code. “WB2 …” He protests, laughing, at the speed. “Hang on a mo!” I slow down and he winks in appreciation before asking me for my seat number. When I tell him, my pronunciation goes screwy and he repeats it back with a twinkle. I say it again – correctly this time – and he grins, then holds out his hand. “Documenti?” I hand over my passport. He settles in for a chat. “So you’re going to Rome, hey? What wonderful things are you doing there?” I tell him I’m going to England to visit my family and he gives me a cheeky look over his glasses. “Better here, if you ask me. Warmer!”

7.30 the next morning. It’s Monday, it’s raining and there’s a camp as a row of tents cashier at the coach transfer office in Rome. He tuts and gives me attitude over the fact that I haven’t printed my ticket out. “There are internet points ALL OVER Rome.” I retort that I’m from Catania. “Non importa,” he volleys back, with an eyeroll. The sass is just for show: he checks my name on the computer and hands over my boarding pass. Having seen my name, though, he switches to English to give me lip. “My manager isn’t here but next time you’ll have to buy a new ticket.” I match him eyeroll for eyeroll, saying “Grazie” with worldweary ennui as I turn away. He gets the last word with a singsong ‘prego’, but I feel I acquitted myself well given the hour and that I haven’t yet had coffee.

******

A man in swimming trunks, with the taut muscles and deep tan that come from being out on the beach at half past seven every morning, stands on the beach. Unaware or uncaring of the train going past he basks in the early morning sunlight, drinking in its warmth like a lizard. Nearby, folded blue and white beach umbrellas flanked with white plastic sun-loungers wait for less iron-like customers to arrive and open them up to the sunshine.

Sleepy tourists in brightly coloured non-iron clothes drag wheeled suitcases through the tiny town square as the sun turns the oil-smooth sea behind them to gleaming gold. A woman in a red top shakes out a dull green sheet and hangs it over the balcony rail to dry in the early morning sunshine. A mountain of black rubbish bags sits in the parking area of the apartment block below. Not by the bins, but right in the centre. Is it rubbish day or a protest? If the second, it’s a very orderly one, with each fat bag tied at its neck and piled neatly on top of others fastened the same.

Elegant white-blossomed almond trees rise above punchy lemons with shiny green leaves and bright yellow fruits. Surrounding both there are squat, silvery-grey olive trees, and in the olive grove there’s a baby-blue mini-castle, complete with pastel yellow crenellations. It’s one storey high, and only looks big enough to have a single room inside, but a Sicilian farmer’s cantina is his castello, as the saying doesn’t go.

Nearby, the olives and lemons split to form another grove, empty except for a carpet of calla lilies growing in the shade of a single pine tree. On the other side of the tracks, in somebody’s garden, a naked plastic doll with sun-bleached curls hangs by a rope from an iron pole, like some kind of macabre voodoo scarecrow.

Etna Etna Etna. All along this coast you can see her, although she looks different depending on where you are. From the north-east she seems longer and lower, with her vents clearly defined, like a collection of separate hills rather than one volcano. As you get closer to Catania she comes together and grows upwards, showing off her true height. Wherever you see her from, though, her head is wreathed in a halo of puffy cloud and her shoulders are covered in a light dusting of white snow.

Most of all, for me, seeing her tells me that I’m home again.

Original article: There and back again

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

Sorry for the delayed posting this week, but it’s for a good reason, honest. Let me explain …

Over the past two years I’ve read with interest as the five ladies of the Italy Blogging Roundtable have shared their stories about Italy. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all their writing, and even contributed a couple of posts myself back in April last year. I was therefore delighted when Jessica emailed me to ask if I would like to become the sixth member of the group.

I said yes without hesitation. Hooray!

I’ve also recently become a member of the Charming Italy stable of writers. Double hooray! However, these two things together mean that I’m shorter of time than I once was. I’m therefore going to make a change to DLaM, and the regular posting day going forward will be Wednesday, rather than Monday.

Still, as you’ve all subscribed (you have, haven’t you?), the good news is that the only change you’ll notice is that posts will come through in the middle of the week, rather than the beginning. And Hump Wednesday could do with a lift anyway, so I’m doing you all a favour, really, right?

Without further ado, therefore, I give you my first post as an official Italy Blogging Roundtable member. 

Enjoy!

Spring is springing, but it’s taking its time. A good sign that it’s on its way is that there’s a crow sitting on the roof of the stable block with a large stick in his beak. Much like the Italians, who judge the cambio di stagione by the date, not the weather, the birds are busy with springtime nest building despite the cold.

It’s the beginning of April, and Spring has officially been announced on the calendar, but the weather in the UK doesn’t seem to have got the memo. We veer from bright sunshine to grey clouds and snow flurries, and back to sun again. A friend of mine turns up at the house, shivering in ballet pumps and leggings. “I dressed for the weather I could see outside the window …” We hunt out thick socks and an oversized jumper, and drink restorative English tea while we gossip and dream about Sicilian sunshine.

In Sicily, before I came back to England for Easter, the weather was warm, verging on hot. In England the weather gods are still sending howling winds from the North, which whistle down the chimney and mean I go to bed every night dressed in socks and dressing gown over my pyjamas, and with a hot water bottle tucked over my toes. In Sicily I don’t even own a dressing gown, and hadn’t needed a hot water bottle for a month or so.

What I *do* need in Catania, though, is a few springs with lower-case esses. It might be warm enough in Sicily not to have to go to bed in all my clothes, but at least in Somerset I don’t wake up creaking like an old woman after sleeping in something that’s more like a lumpy board than a lovely, comfy bed. If I could combine the springs in my Somerset bed with Catania’s springtime temperatures, I’d spring into action with a spring in my step in the morning.

Is it any wonder that the English language is such a springboard for confusion?

Don’t forget to check out the other Roundtable posts:

• andiamo – A Room Full of Botticellis
• ArtTrav – It’s finally Spring in Tuscany
• At Home in Tuscany – Hot Springs in Southern Tuscany
• Brigolante – Italy Roundtable: Spring in My Step
• Italofile – The Roman Spring of Tennessee Williams

Original article: Italy Blogging Roundtable: Springing to Confusion

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

UK readers who grew up watching the BBC in the 60s, 70s and 80s will recognise this picture and understand what it means. For the benefit of my overseas and younger readers, however, it’s called Test Card ‘F’ and was used to indicate that the channel was functioning but that there wasn’t a programme on right at that moment.

Much like the blog today, in fact.

By which I mean that, if you’re here looking for the usual Monday post, you’re out of luck. Sorry about that! Normal (if slightly delayed) service will be resumed on Wednesday, though, so please do stay tuned.

This seems like a great time to nudge those of you who haven’t yet subscribed to DLaM to do so. It’s simple to do – click on the orange ‘follow me on RSS’ button over there in the top of the right hand column and follow the instructions. And, hey, while you’re at it, why not click ‘Like’ on Facebook and follow me on Twitter and Google+?

Go on – I’ll wait. (And if you’ve already done it, why not check out this story from Molly Beer over at Vela? It’s great.)

Bravi! Now you’re all subscribed and up to date. Roll on Wednesday, eh? And as a bonus for being so patient, there’ll be a big announcement: hang onto your hats, Maniacs; the times they are a’changing …

Original article: Stay Tuned …

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

The sun’s out and the clocks have gone forward, so everyone’s a bit discombobulated. Outside, Fat Cat leaps out of a flowerbed and into the air, then scoots across the lawn. Halfway over she freezes in a crouch and stares back at the house, eyes wide and ears flattened against her head. I’m not sure if it’s me she’s looking at, or a ghostly reflection on the glass of the long, low garden room window; either way she unnerves me. I break the staring deadlock. When I look back, she’s galumphed into the opposite flowerbed and is sniffing about, checking out the ground.

Black Dog huffs and sighs on the battered, wing-backed armchair from which she usually keeps an eagle eye on whatever food is on the table. She looks like she’s got a very full stomach – no doubt after eating something she shouldn’t have done – and is lying flat out on her side, eyes closed. With the sun coming through the garden room windows and warming her tummy she’s happy to snooze and let her digestive system do the work. Dad is at the table unpicking a curtain header so that it can be reattached to a theatre backdrop. He flips the material, which makes a sharp noise as the metal eyelets clatter onto the wooden table. Black Dog jumps and raises her head automatically, but knows that it’s nothing worth her time and effort barking at. She rolls onto her back and stretches, then settles back onto her side, licking her chops at the memory of her last meal.

Stinker wriggles on her beanbag, causing a sound like crashing waves. She leaps from it and onto the wooden floor, tip tapping her way across the room to have a drink from the plant pot base. Something about the algae supplement that Mum puts into the plants’ water drives the animals wild. They love it. Drinking from their own water bowl or the stream in the garden just isn’t the same.

The dishwasher hums and sloshes in the background.

Tiny Cat sits at the glass door, staring out into the sunshine. The light picks up her whiskers and the fluffy hairs on her chest, turning her into a sparking ball of light. Her ears twitch as Black Dog barks in the corridor, and she jumps up onto a chair. Black Dog comes back into the room and makes the mistake of getting too close to Tiny Cat’s chair. Tiny Cat, in retaliation, reaches down and bops her on the nose. Black Dog looks up reproachfully and settles herself down in a shaft of sunlight.

I fall into a doze.

Original article: Easter Day

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

By the time you read this I’ll be in Rome airport, most likely, having spent a night on the train. I’d tell you the story of the women with whom I shared my carriage, but I don’t know it yet. It’s all to be discovered. I feel like I’m in that Pulp song. Not that I can name it right now, or even think of the lyrics, because Zucchero is playing on the radio and my flatmate is singing along as she mops the kitchen floor, but you know the one.

Right now I’m sitting at my desk in Catania. Or am I? If we’re talking about right now as the point that you read this piece, I could be anywhere: Rome; London; Somerset; somewhere in the sky overhead. Wherever I am as you read, as I write I’m thinking about where I was this time three years ago and smiling at how much has changed – and, conversely, stayed the same. I’m not a full-time teacher any more, but I still played Fruit Salad when I did some substitute work recently, just as I did three years ago. And I still spend my whole time telling stories, whether it’s to students like last year, or on this blog, or over at my cookery blog. Most of all, though, I’m content just going with the flow and seeing what happens. Those are the best days.

Original article: The Ghosts of Marches Past

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.

There’s a flurry of Sicilian from the top of the steps and Marco laughs. “You’re in trouble!”

In the car on the way over he’d told me with a certain amount of glee that not only was it unlikely that most of the people at the house party we were going to would speak English, but a fair few of them might not even speak Italian. “It’s a small town, you know.” As he wanted me to, I threw up my hands in horror when he told me, but I was grinning inside at the thought of getting away from being expected to be an English teacher for the night.

As it turns out, his predictions are wrong. Not only do a fair few of the guests speak both Italian and English, but the host of the party is a London boy from Whitechapel. He’s half-Sicilian and he moved out here a year ago. He’s also missing English company. We leap up and down to old rave tracks and new R&B ones, laughing about Only Fools and Horses, while the Sicilians stand around the edges of the room shifting from foot to foot in time to the music and eating the mountains of food that have been produced by the host’s girlfriend. Everyone has fun; it’s just in different ways.

The next night I knock back Irish coffees and dance the tarantella to a soundtrack of Irish folk music in a room that has the feel of a hippy squat. I’m at a St Patrick’s Day party being thrown by Officina Rebelde, who I’m told are a left-leaning political community group “… or something like that”. I talk to the girl who runs it, trying to find out more, and she tells me that I should come along to the journalism course that they’re running on Monday and Thursday evenings. I file it in my whisky-addled brain as a possible and let the caffeine coursing through my system do its work as I continue jigging to the music.

Diego appears out of nowhere. He’s been in Brazil and I haven’t seen him for months. Every time I turn round I bump into people that I know and hadn’t expected to see. I’m reminded of the steampunk parties that I used to go to in London. Grand old houses with peeling walls and chipped marble floors taken over for the evening by revellers with painted faces, drinking out of plastic beakers and having an evening away from real life. Lucy spots someone over my shoulder. “I know you! You’re – er – Agatino, right?” He comes over, laughing. “You deleted me from Facebook, didn’t you?” Lucy giggles, twisting her sleeves over her hands and turning pink. “No! No, I don’t think so. You just haven’t come up in my Newsfeed recently …” He teases her, chuckling and prodding at her discomfort. She gives up trying to defend herself and surrenders to the ribbing. “Are you still in importising? Importatising?” She purses her lips and opens her blue eyes wide, trying to hold back hysteria. “Am I even speaking English?!” Agatino grabs my arm and the three of us fall about laughing. “Imports, Lucy, imports!” He turns to join the whirling crowd of Irish-linedancing Sicilians. “Add me on Facebook!” He disappears.

Original article: Cultural Contrasts

©2013 Driving Like a Maniac. All Rights Reserved.