You're Breakin My Heart

On the train from Napoli to Palermo I shared a sleeping cabin with a friendly middle aged Italian couple who didn't speak a word of English and didn't understand any Spanish, much like most of the Italians I would meet. This seemed amazing to me, considering I could indeed understand some Italian- at first I thought that they knew they couldn't speak the language they were hearing, so they wouldn't even dare to try. But then I realized it was because they just preferred to do all the talking. Despite my minimal comprehension and puzzled looks, these two people did not stop trying to talk to me while we were awake. This reduced, all too incompletely, the awkwardness of sharing a room with a married couple who would have otherwise been alone.

When I got to Palermo, I scoured the platform for any backpackers who might know of a place to stay. I saw one girl with a backpack who walked up to the coffee stand and tried ordering. She pointed to a sign that advertised a price for a coffee, a juice and a brioche. They guy pointed at the rack of pastries in front of him and responded with, 'brioche alla marmelada?' She looked stunned. She stared, he stared back. She threw up her hands into an exasperated shrug and said, 'sure, whatever,' as if communication was impossible. He did not understand 'sure, whatever.' Half not believing her lak of ability/attempt to comprehend, but delighted, as this was my in, I said, 'he wants to know if you want one with marmelade on the inside.' She said, 'oh, okay, thanks' and nodded yes to him. After the standard introductions I found out that her hotel's manager was coming to pick her up, and she didn't mind if I waited to see if they had anything left. She asked, 'so how did you learn Italian?' I said, 'well, I don't, I just...understood... that... uh... that happened to me yesterday.' When her hotel guy arrived, he said he was totally full but he sort of pointed me towards a place that might be cheap. They were full. The place I found after that was 40 Euros per night, way too much. The full/expensive pattern repeated about twelve times. I found a place about three hours later, sweaty as could be, and it was about as nice as the place in Napoli, but sans syringe drawings, and it was cheap enough, I guess.

That morning I found Palermo to be empty, and relatively drab, but mostly because of the weather. After a snack of a few Arancini, breaded and fried balls of rice and meat and peas and sauce, mmmmmm, I happened upon a large photographic exhibit called The Earth From Above, probably the single best photographic display I've ever seen. The project's focus is sustainable development, and its subjects range from natural and man made wonders, to methods of agriculture across the world, to endangered animal species, to industrial products and by-products. Incorporating informative paragraphs describing each photo, it demonstrates the way humans interact with the environment in both positive and negative ways, and without beating you over the head with its point, shows you what incredible things we are doing and what we need to change. I highly recommend a visit to the website, though the photos are much more impressive when in a huge display instead of a screen. You could still kill a whole work day here: http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com/index_new.htm
I like the Worker Resting on Bales of Cotton from the Cote d'Ivoire.
As I wandered through the exhibits the any Palermitans, as well as the sun, slowly crept out and by late afternoon the squqare was filled with people and shine, and the city began to reveal its beauty.

I found the Sicilians to be attractive, warm, and less prone to stupid haircuts, a relief. However, their bag ladies, and the marketing of their political candidates are puzzling.

For those of you who don't read Italian, the caption says, 'one confused frowning man for Sicily, two microphones for Guido Loporto.'

The city was active and vibrant, but not bustly, and as I continued to walk, stopping at the Quattro Canti, (Due of which I bothered to photograph)

and the Fontana Pretoria

I felt like I could stay for a month. Unfortunately I had dwelled a little too long at the photos and just barely caught the very end of Easter mass at the huge Cathedral, which is supposedly a prime example of Sicily's unique Arab-Norman architecture.

I never thought I'd lament missing church, but, there you have it.

From Palermo I decided to head to a tiny town called Pollina, which had been recommended to me by the Italian girl I'd met on the boat in Turkey. Along the way, the train stopped in Cefalu, a tourist town I'd read about that sounded quite nice, and as the train lingered about thirty seconds longer than expected at the station, I grabbed my bags and hopped off. That was dumb. Cefalu was really nice, but all of the available rooms were way out of my budget. After about two hours of wandering/schlepping, I ate a calzone and walked back to the train station.

Luckily the train came pretty soon, and Pollina was only about fifteen minutes along the coast. Here I learned that on the older, local Italian trains, the doors don't open automatically- you have to push a button. Or, in my case, you have to stand behind a middle aged German couple while they search and push everything circular they see for the first fifteen of the thirty seconds that the train will wait before starting again, while you stand, positive you could figure it out if you could just get in there, cause how many passenger pushable buttons can there be?, and you try to squeeze in but these are some thick, stout Germans, so you back away again and watch as the station starts to move, then you account for the relativity of visual perspective, and the conductor arrives to tell you, Gunther, Ilse, to get off at the next stop and come back on the next train, which will arrive, according to the schedule he produces, in twenty minutes at 14:36, but he neglects to inform you that this is not the holiday schedule, of which you are completely unaware, both the it still being a holiday and the existence of a distinct schedule, which is concerned about as little with your awareness as it is with a 14:36 train; after the conductor condescendingly pushes the button you get off, and sit here:

reading Atlas Shrugged for two hours, while the Germans, after the first train does not arrive as scheduled, set off to walk the supposedly 6km back to Pollina, which you are just not about to carry your bags across, as neither Gunther nor Ilse appears equipped to manufacture English sentences, hefeweizen, or sauerbraten, the only bait within your estimate of their productive capability that might be worth biting, other than a lovely blonde blue eyed Freulein, but that immediately goes back to the productive capability issue, and its theoretical irreconcilability with anything remotely lovely, given the independent but would in this case be combined genes that produced four 16 pound black forest hams for calf muscles that carry these two brick walls posing as friendly humans away, so you wave, and sit, until some friendly Italians arrive to talk loudly, wave their hands about, and inform you of the holiday schedule, but that the train would be coming soon, and yes, Pollina has hotels. In short, you must push the button to open the doors.