Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre are five small harbor towns clustered along the Northwestern Italian coast and connected by a footpath. Each town has its own distinct look and feel, but they all share the brightly tackily colored and boxy architecture, that anywhere else would be vomit inducing, but here just seems to work. From the train I got off at the second town from the bottom, Manarola, but was unable to find cheap accomodation. I did, however, find eight or ten hole in the wall joints selling foccacia smothered in olives or cheese or meat or whatever. I am usually good about getting my bags into a room before heading back out to chow, but unable to contain myself, I just flung my bags into a corner of the street and ate my heart out. For the three or four days I was in the Cinque Terre, I don't think I ate a single foccacia unrelated meal.

I was told I could find something cheap in the southernmost town, Riomaggiore, and indeed, as soon as I got off the train, I was stopped by am old woman, who at first glance looked completely insane, but turned out to only be a little batty, and maybe a tiny bit smelly, but a real sweetheart. Her name was Mamma Rozza, and she had a sort of unofficial hostel of questionable habitability, but it was cleanish and cheap and I got my own room, and was able to wash everything I own for free.

During my time in Riomaggiore, I ate foccacia, drank espresso, ate some more foccacia, read, and watched sunsets from the rock formations by the harbor.

One evening I met four fourty something Austrian bikers who bought me a beer and enlightened me on the pleasures of riding unbelievably fast Italian motorcycles on unbelievably windy roads while wearing unbelievably colored jackets. At night I drank at the only bar in town, where an unfriendly bartender became my best friend when I recognized Toots and the Maytals, and then a Clapton cover of a Stevie Ray Vaughn song. He said, 'It's good to meet an American who knows good music and doesn't scream a lot.' I then sat down and chatted with six American college students from North Carolina who asked the owner/bartender if there was a 'real bar' they could go to after and later proceeded to get drunk and scream lots. I guess he had a point. At the bar I made a couple of friends, Gian Lucca and Luigi, who were too cool for me to not go find the next few nights, even though I was supposed to be saving money.

Luigi spoke Spanish, and Gian Lucca kind of spoke English, and this guy took our picture.

The next day I hiked from Riomaggiore to the last town, Monterosso, with a couple of Kiwi sisters I'd met the day before. The walk was stunning and just difficult enough, and in each town we consumed something as if to make the visit official. Gelato here, foccacia there, espresso there, foccacia and gelato there, focaccia and focaccia there.

That night at Mamma Rozza's I met a pair of American girls and struggled to keep interested. (One was about to move to China with her husband to be missionaries, and you can just imagine the plethora of common interests that sprouted from that little factoid, and the other was in her sixth year of undergrad at Eastern Michigan state. Yeah.). I also met a group of Erasmus students, Erasmus being the European student exchange program, who were studying in Bologna. Four Portuguese and a German. I couldn't have had an easier time getting along with them.

We played silly word games for about five hours and talked about whatever. I was impressed by how well the Portuguese spoke English, and found out that they all learn English from a very young age in school. I asked what they thought about that, and one said that he thought that eventually English will be the primary language everywhere, and that it kind of makes sense to have an international standard. I asked how they felt that people from English speaking countries rarely speak another language. They said it's annoying, but they don't mind being taught English. After a while, one, Teresa, said, 'it's nice to finally meet a nice American...' and then added a shrugged 'for once.' I laughed and said I was starting to feel the same way. Teresa then explained that there is an American military base near where she grew up, and most of the Americans she meets aren't great. This I could understand. I would imagine that the troops stationed in Portugal don't have much on their plates, and thus have lots of time to devote to being meatheads.

Later that night, the German guy Nicolas asked if I've felt weird being an American out in the World right now, and it was the first time I'd thought about it since I'd left. The fact is that everyone has been incredibly friendly, and loved hearing that I was from New York. And once I shit on Bush, they let their guard down and open up completely. But even Nicolas, who couldn't have been nicer, said that there really is an anti-American sentiment in Europe, and he wanted to know if I've experienced that. Unfortunately, we are completely underrepresented by friendly open minded travellers, and overrepresented by our military, our President, and tour groups. And none of those makes the best ambassador, it turns out. An individual American is one thing- a welcome thing- America, or AMERICA, is a different thing entirely.

After three days of beautiful weather, fantastic people, and enough bread, olives and cheese to last a lifetime, I set out from Cinque Terre to meet Duncan in Nice and continue on to Spain, for, well, some more bread, olives and cheese.