CIAO DE LAGO GARDA
Within a few hours we will be leaving Lago Garda. Have been here for a few days. Staying here, walking along this lake each morning, relaxing – yesterday we went exploring Venice… beautiful Venice (and if you have one obligation in this life, it is to visit Venice and to see it with your own eyes). The rest of the tour rumbles on in a few hours, onwards to Rome, along the Tyrrhenian Sea down towards to the Amalfi Coast chasing the sonnets of Byron and Shelley into the sea.
This morning, before the leaving, I wanted one more coffee, one more moment in the streets of Torbole as the world wakes up. I found a café, near the main square, and have come here early each morning. The street cleaners are out early brushing the kerbs, collecting leaves and rubbish; shops are sluicing the pavements with water and the owners scrub them clean. People and traffic are moving. Slowly. Buildings in front of me are painted blue – and either side of them buildings in pastel green. Another in yellow. The closer I look, the more I notice that almost all of the buildings are pastel coloured: blues, greens, pink, yellows, rose. All with wooden shutters – asleep or half awake – all with terracotta roofs. You sit and wonder and imagine who lives there. Coffee arrives. Espresso. No zucchero needed. Small birds hop between saucers and plates, eating the crumbs on the tablecloth.
The waters of Lago Garda are within earshot. The banks of Torbole rise all around. Sunshine pours down over one side of the surrounding mountains and over into the clear, still waters far out in front of me. A gentle breeze blows. Already it’s a warm wind. Ducks float in the quiet shallows; looking, preening feathers, one standing on a large stone near the water’s edge. Rolling waves gently ripple onto a shingled shoreline. A few people are up and about: runners, an old man cleaning the beach with a rake, and a lone yellow canoe gliding in silence across the water’s surface. Over to my right, giant cliffs rise up out of the blue waters and are coloured white as if the rocks are smudged in chalk dust. Tufts of green sprout in many places there, as do the clusters of villages and houses barnacled to the steep slopes. The slow descent of traffic slides down the long mountain road towards the lake; processions of vehicles moving with occasional glints and sparkles of sunlight reflecting from their windows and windscreens. They move towards the waters of Lago Garda like distant shooting stars – burning bright in some far off corner of the heavens for a brevity, then gone.
CIAO DE EMLIA-ROMAGNA
Another hot day. Watching scenery passing by, watching the world from behind a moving window. Passing fields and fields of green, which look like crops growing. The green stretches out on both sides of our bus. Endless grids of green replicate and duplicate, fanning out towards the falling sunshine at the ends of each horizon. We are on a road cutting through. Small, terracotta villages, farms, are dotted about this countryside. We never get close enough to stop, to peer in, to visit. The wheels on the bus keep going round and round. Mountains hint at being there, somewhere, flirting with our attention in the shifting mists low on the horizon. There. Winking. Disappearing. Gone. Then in a few minutes the earth seems to flatten out again and pure sunlight begins to burn the land from directly above. The fields seem to change colour and the green seems more intense, almost iridescent. Two white herons fly overhead. Lucky omens.
The driver of the bus has just announced that we should be in Siena within the hour. Not sure where we’re staying tonight, but think he said it’s close to Rome or Florence. Just looked at the itinerary: Fiuggi. Roger and Margaret are seated in front of me both looking out of the window into the sunlight. It’s their Golden Wedding Anniversary in a few days. Have really enjoyed their company on the bus so far. Have a feeling we’ll be friends for a long time; it’s amazing how friendships can establish when travelling in short spaces of time. Have enjoyed chatting with them – both have a great sense of humour and a meaningful approach to life. ‘Treat everyday as a bonus,’ – he’s said that a few times. He’s cracking jokes now, she’s telling him to lower his voice. There’s another couple on the trip, sat further down the bus, who like to talk about their wealth, what they’ve achieved and who they know; they both actually fell into a gondola at Venice the other day (which some of the other travellers saw). Roger’s laughing to himself and says something which I couldn’t hear – Margaret tells him to ‘shhh’ and opens a magazine to read.
The bus is quiet again.
Horoscope in Monday’s newspaper says: You are smart enough to strip away the flattering words and see what is really on offer before you make a choice. When it comes to love, a heart-to-heart chat is the start of good things, creative skills linked to writing or voice-recording opens the way to new successes. The paper has aged during the journey; it feels well-read, dog-eared, folded, thinner but the ink still smudges on your fingertips (the print is still alive).
CIAO DE SIENA
Am sat near the pick up spot, on a wall, close to the Porta San Marco, high up on a vantage point looking out over Toscano. The bus to Rome departs here at 3.15pm. Behind me is a postcard of blue and green. Tufts of shrubs dot about the flat green grass carpeting over the rise and fall of the land. Tall, dark green cypress trees rise up and stand out – many surround the storied boxes of buildings, bunched up in burnt brickworks and sunlit shadows. The sky has a blue so clear and pure that it shines without apology, stretching above and overhead with colour – little wonder Shakespeare’s Hamlet was moved to described it as “this most excellent canopy… this brave o’er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire.” What an unexpected surprise Siena has been. I hope the impression it has made on me never fades – I hope on some dismal, overcast day I will remember to close my eyes and travel back here in my memory and walk these streets and feel this same sense of wonder.
Our day here began here, close to the Porta San Marco. We were all keen to get to the Duomo di Siena and to see the Piazza del Campo. There was enough time to do both before the bus departed. Together, we all walked up a long street, which stretched and twisted, changing its name, changing its course, eeling, merging eventually into the Via Giovanni. It led up into one of the corners of the Piazza. At every step, every pause, every checking of our maps, the Torre del Mangia remained a fixed pole star above the rooftops. That was our destination. Warrens of side streets ran off in haphazard right-angles, leading up, sloping down, offering shade and arches, alleyways and allurement. Scorched old bricks, piled high on top of each other, homes within, parchment plaster peeling and sunburnt, colours singing in the heat. The imagination wandered and dawdled in these old streets, wanting to stay, to conjure scenarios, to create visions of living there. The quiet windows and doorways concealed so much. The heart began to beat that much deeper.
At the Piazza we all went our separate ways. I did a circuit around the surrounding roads and shops. Eventually, I sat and had lunch in the shade, beneath arches, surrounded by voices speaking Italian, German and English (that I could hear). I watched a woman in a purple dress, black shoes, walk across the piazza towards a one-way street. She disappeared into the side entrance of a shop selling paintings. Sunshine reflected on the gold trim of her sunglasses for the briefest of moments before she disappeared. Afterwards, I found my way up to the Duomo and went inside. The air was cooler, a silent refuge from the heat. The air smelt sweeter and the space rose up towards a canopy of golden stars collected from all seven heavens and painted onto the ceiling, hoisted up by giant marble columns hooped in black, white and gold stripes. The floor, where I entered, had a mosaic of Hermes Trismegistus receiving divine gnosis – some of the alleged origins of hermeticism, alchemy and the Arts. And now, sitting on a wall, close to the Porta San Marco, our bus arrives. I see Roger and Margaret – they wave and are smiling; they loved Siena, too. Roger tells me he that he got talking to someone that told him that the Piazza is used for horse racing and a flag throwing parade and that we only just missed the festival by a few days.
ARRIVERDERCI
Over a decade later and I still remember our goodbyes at the end of our bus tour around Italy. There were some wonderful friendships made on that trip, some wonderful moments. Siena had been at the start of the journey; we then ventured on to Rome, then down to the Bay of Naples before driving back up towards Florence, Pisa and then the Alps. In the two weeks that the journey took place, my friendship with Roger and Margaret continued to grow. There were other friendships and one evening we all celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary with a bottle of champagne, but it was Roger and Margaret I ended up keeping in touch with. They were just lovely people who I was lucky enough to cross paths with for a moment in time. As our bus arrived at Dover the coach became edgy, falling silent, everyone looking out of the windows, starting to say goodbyes and swapping addresses. It was sad as you knew you’d all never be in the same place all together again. Maybe never see them again. But everyone had been a part of each other’s journey. Then it was time to go our separate ways. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Keep travelling. Keep looking for what it is you’re searching for. Treat everyday as a bonus. Then the silence. And we began to make our own ways home.
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– Vale: Dedicated to Roger Fox –
siesta del somewhere 