Our group’s time in Taormina was the end of our trip. We soon had to take heartfelt leave of each other and head off at 3:00 AM to catch our plane from Catania. This time though, I was sincerely sorry to part from everyone. It had been a remarkably interesting, enlightened, and friendly group. I had been able to circulate around and chat with everyone a little – and I was amazed by the breadth of all these people’s interests and accomplishments. We had quite a few published authors in the group – quite a few active home renovators – quite a few seasoned travelers who had interesting things to say about the places they’d been.
As is customary on these trips, a hotel breakfast buffet was included every day, and those were often the best times to socialize. The topics touched on at these get-togethers truly “covered the waterfront.” One man was a life-long yachtsman and had published several books on boat maintenance, how to navigate in storms, etc. I have never been sailing, but he made his subject really absorbing.
Then there was Gabriella, a woman campaigning to become the first female ordained Catholic Priest. She was finding it an uphill battle and thought it unlikely that there would be any woman ordained in her lifetime. But she said she had a “calling” and would persist.
Then I got into a jovial, almost giddy giggling conversation with two Taiwanese women who were on the tour. They happened to mention the Chinese Horoscope, just as a set of fun-facts, not as one of their implicit beliefs. As most people probably know from Chinese restaurant placemats - the Chinese astrology involves repeated 12-year cycles. Each year is correlated with an animal or beast. There’s the year of the horse, the dragon, the rabbit, etc. When the subject came up, I chimed in that I was a pig. I laughed how I was pointedly confronted with that fact every time I sat down to a meal at a Chinese restaurant and was getting ready to order “the works.” We all laughed.
One of the Taiwanese women said, “My mother is a rat. Actually my father is a rat too. Both my parents are rats.”
Another member of our tour group was a psychologist and happened to be passing our table just in time to hear the tail-end of this conversation. She heard me declare myself a pig, and she heard the other woman declare both her parents rats. I could see the psychologist’s eyes light up. She no doubt perceived a whole smorgasbord of family dysfunction among us – perhaps something she could “help” us with later.
All-in-all, we were such a convivial group, I was sincerely sorry when the tour was over and we seemed destined to go our separate ways. I felt as if I had a lot more to learn from all the group members. I hope we get to travel together again someday.
Well, that was more about my Sicilian adventure than you wanted to know, I’m sure. You only asked, “How was your trip?” LOL.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Sicily X - Cruising the Mediterranean
I would have liked our tour to spend a much greater proportion of its time in Palermo. But scheduling oddities breezed us out of there and put us in Taormina for days on end. I had hoped to hook up with “mutual acquaintances” in Taormina, but that never materialized. So it was up the hill in the funicular to shop there every day. However one member of our tour group was especially resourceful and negotiated an unplanned boat ride for all of us. She struck up a conversation with an independent boatman who hawked his services along the beautiful beaches of Taormina. And for a very reasonable price, we all got to get aboard one or the other of his boats (like a very enlarged, partially motorized gondola), and glided off into the Bay of Taormina.
The waters of the Mediterranean were startlingly clear. I saw no signs of pollution or litter anywhere in the water or along the bright beaches. As I stared over the side of the boat, down about nine feet, I could see to the bottom as clearly as if I was looking through glass. I could see the multi-colored rocks and coral and the sea urchins clinging to them. I saw none of the red algae that I’d read was choking the Mediterranean.
We cruised around the Bay and into several of the caves that puncture the cliffs there. One cave was a mini Blue Grotto. Peaceful blue water was gently splashing in there – nature’s own Valium. We didn’t see any dolphins out in the water that day, but our boatman said that wealthy people often booked him to take them out dolphin-watching. He said he had conducted Bill Gates’ party out there recently, and that Bill Gates had acted like just a nice average guy, not like a “big-shot.”
Other than those picturesquely weathered men you see around Sicily, there seemed to be only handsome men. But there were two kinds of handsome. There were the well-chiseled men who looked like Marcello Mastroianni. Our tour bus driver, Giero, had that kind of face. Then there were those men who were handsome in a stockier, more rugged way. Our boatman was this latter type. He spoke enough broken English to narrate our trip for us, and he generally seemed an amiable, down-to-earth fellow. But he said two strange things, both of which struck me as being gratuitous lies.
One member of our group was very worried about getting caught in a “high tide.” She had been eager to get off the beach earlier, “before it hit.” I didn’t want to come off as sounding pedantic, but I had tried to ease her worries on this score. I briefly quoted the exchange I’d had with my German cousin when I’d thought there must be significant tides on the Great Lakes. He had written back to me, countering my assumption with two pages of calculations proving that the tides in the Great Lakes are less than a quarter of an inch. So quickly extrapolating from that, I guessed that the tides in the Mediterranean couldn’t be any more than a foot – except maybe in places where the water got funneled through some straits. (My subsequent research online proved me to be right on target. A number of sites on tides all said that water levels in the Mediterranean fluctuate less than a foot, except at the Straits of Gibraltar.)
However my reassurances didn’t register on this woman at all. When we got out on the water, she nervously looked around and said, “Wow, I’ll bet the tides are really high here! How high are they?”
I trusted the boatman would set her straight and vindicate me. Instead, he confirmed her worse fears. Without hesitation, he said “Yes, three meters!”
I gasped to myself. Three meters! That’s about nine feet! It couldn’t be! The man said that he had been fishing and conducting tours on these waters for over fifty years. How could he be so wrong!
Then, a little later, apropos of nothing (well, he was giving us a thumbnail autobiography), he said that he had been married for thirty-five years, and had never once cheated on his wife – or even thought of it. I don’t know if he threw that tidbit of information about himself in, hoping to get a bigger tip from us for being such a good husband, but I hardly think that could be the reason. None of us tipped him – there was no tipping in these situations in Sicily.
At any rate, we all applauded him – literally. It would have been nice if his declaration were true. But after that whopper of a misstatement he came up with about the tides, I began to think he was just picking remarks out of the air.
Come to think of it, maybe there was no Bill Gates either.
The waters of the Mediterranean were startlingly clear. I saw no signs of pollution or litter anywhere in the water or along the bright beaches. As I stared over the side of the boat, down about nine feet, I could see to the bottom as clearly as if I was looking through glass. I could see the multi-colored rocks and coral and the sea urchins clinging to them. I saw none of the red algae that I’d read was choking the Mediterranean.
We cruised around the Bay and into several of the caves that puncture the cliffs there. One cave was a mini Blue Grotto. Peaceful blue water was gently splashing in there – nature’s own Valium. We didn’t see any dolphins out in the water that day, but our boatman said that wealthy people often booked him to take them out dolphin-watching. He said he had conducted Bill Gates’ party out there recently, and that Bill Gates had acted like just a nice average guy, not like a “big-shot.”
Other than those picturesquely weathered men you see around Sicily, there seemed to be only handsome men. But there were two kinds of handsome. There were the well-chiseled men who looked like Marcello Mastroianni. Our tour bus driver, Giero, had that kind of face. Then there were those men who were handsome in a stockier, more rugged way. Our boatman was this latter type. He spoke enough broken English to narrate our trip for us, and he generally seemed an amiable, down-to-earth fellow. But he said two strange things, both of which struck me as being gratuitous lies.
One member of our group was very worried about getting caught in a “high tide.” She had been eager to get off the beach earlier, “before it hit.” I didn’t want to come off as sounding pedantic, but I had tried to ease her worries on this score. I briefly quoted the exchange I’d had with my German cousin when I’d thought there must be significant tides on the Great Lakes. He had written back to me, countering my assumption with two pages of calculations proving that the tides in the Great Lakes are less than a quarter of an inch. So quickly extrapolating from that, I guessed that the tides in the Mediterranean couldn’t be any more than a foot – except maybe in places where the water got funneled through some straits. (My subsequent research online proved me to be right on target. A number of sites on tides all said that water levels in the Mediterranean fluctuate less than a foot, except at the Straits of Gibraltar.)
However my reassurances didn’t register on this woman at all. When we got out on the water, she nervously looked around and said, “Wow, I’ll bet the tides are really high here! How high are they?”
I trusted the boatman would set her straight and vindicate me. Instead, he confirmed her worse fears. Without hesitation, he said “Yes, three meters!”
I gasped to myself. Three meters! That’s about nine feet! It couldn’t be! The man said that he had been fishing and conducting tours on these waters for over fifty years. How could he be so wrong!
Then, a little later, apropos of nothing (well, he was giving us a thumbnail autobiography), he said that he had been married for thirty-five years, and had never once cheated on his wife – or even thought of it. I don’t know if he threw that tidbit of information about himself in, hoping to get a bigger tip from us for being such a good husband, but I hardly think that could be the reason. None of us tipped him – there was no tipping in these situations in Sicily.
At any rate, we all applauded him – literally. It would have been nice if his declaration were true. But after that whopper of a misstatement he came up with about the tides, I began to think he was just picking remarks out of the air.
Come to think of it, maybe there was no Bill Gates either.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Sicily IX - Dual Dueling Governments
As I say, I hadn’t really planned my trip. At the last minute on the plane to Sicily though, I decided I should perhaps scope out at least one aspect of Palermo that wasn’t on our cut-and-dried itinerary – at least one sight that wasn’t a cathedral or an ancient ruin. And I saw on a map of Palermo that had been sent to us in advance that our hotel was just two blocks away from a large prison. Ah, that looked like just the thing.
As soon as we linked up with our tour guide at the Hotel, I asked about the possibility of taking a tour of the Ucciardone Prison. (Well, it could happen. I’ve been on tours of Chicago/Illinois prisons.) That request took our guide aback. I think she immediately pegged me as something of a loose cannon in the group. She said no one had ever inquired about touring the Prison before. It was the largest, most notoriously brutal prison in Sicily. She said that was where convicted Mafiosi were incarcerated. (I would have thought that would make it the most luxurious, most benign of prisons, since I’d expect Mafia members to get special privileges behind bars – but maybe that’s not how things work in Sicily.) At any rate, our guide said she’d look into the possibility of a tour, but she very much doubted that any were given.
I don’t think she ever followed through on my request. I never heard back from her about it. But I thought since the place was so close, I’d walk over there myself. Only a few pictures of the place had been available on-line, where it had shown up as a concrete fortress. But as close as it was, I never got there. I was so exhausted after having walked in the other direction during my one free day in Palermo (going to the Marionette Museum and through the vast outdoor Conservatory), I just couldn’t make it the two blocks to the Prison in the late afternoon. So I’ll never know.
Our guide naturally did make reference to Mafia activities in the course of our touring. Sicily, and Palermo in particular, is the epicenter of Mafia operations. Our guide said that nothing got built in Sicily, no business opened, no government project went forward – without the proper Mafia figures being paid off. As our innocent little bus went jouncing through the countryside – on our way to a luncheon at a Duchess’ farm estate – on our way from one town to another – our tour guide pointed out some of the consequences of this conflicting, multi-layer power structure in Sicily. She pointed out numerous stalled building projects, projects that might remain stalled forever. Unlike the Greek and Roman theaters, they wouldn’t become ruins; they were starting life as ruins.
There was a half-finished hospital on a mountain overlook. Construction on it had perhaps been started with a Mafia OK, which had then been overruled by the legitimate government - or else it was the other way around - the government had started the project, but insufficient numbers of Mafiosi had been paid off to allow completion of the building. We passed any number of apartment complexes in the same state of indefinite suspension. Technically, there are large scenic parts of the countryside where new construction is not allowed. But someone gets a Mafia go-ahead and starts. Then the government rallies the strength to step in and assert itself and stop the building. And so all these shells of buildings can be seen, testament to some failed negotiation between Mafia and government and public.
Trials of Mafia figures are on-going in Sicily. But for every high-level figure convicted, another springs up to take his place. It’s life immemorial on the Island.
As soon as we linked up with our tour guide at the Hotel, I asked about the possibility of taking a tour of the Ucciardone Prison. (Well, it could happen. I’ve been on tours of Chicago/Illinois prisons.) That request took our guide aback. I think she immediately pegged me as something of a loose cannon in the group. She said no one had ever inquired about touring the Prison before. It was the largest, most notoriously brutal prison in Sicily. She said that was where convicted Mafiosi were incarcerated. (I would have thought that would make it the most luxurious, most benign of prisons, since I’d expect Mafia members to get special privileges behind bars – but maybe that’s not how things work in Sicily.) At any rate, our guide said she’d look into the possibility of a tour, but she very much doubted that any were given.
I don’t think she ever followed through on my request. I never heard back from her about it. But I thought since the place was so close, I’d walk over there myself. Only a few pictures of the place had been available on-line, where it had shown up as a concrete fortress. But as close as it was, I never got there. I was so exhausted after having walked in the other direction during my one free day in Palermo (going to the Marionette Museum and through the vast outdoor Conservatory), I just couldn’t make it the two blocks to the Prison in the late afternoon. So I’ll never know.
Our guide naturally did make reference to Mafia activities in the course of our touring. Sicily, and Palermo in particular, is the epicenter of Mafia operations. Our guide said that nothing got built in Sicily, no business opened, no government project went forward – without the proper Mafia figures being paid off. As our innocent little bus went jouncing through the countryside – on our way to a luncheon at a Duchess’ farm estate – on our way from one town to another – our tour guide pointed out some of the consequences of this conflicting, multi-layer power structure in Sicily. She pointed out numerous stalled building projects, projects that might remain stalled forever. Unlike the Greek and Roman theaters, they wouldn’t become ruins; they were starting life as ruins.
There was a half-finished hospital on a mountain overlook. Construction on it had perhaps been started with a Mafia OK, which had then been overruled by the legitimate government - or else it was the other way around - the government had started the project, but insufficient numbers of Mafiosi had been paid off to allow completion of the building. We passed any number of apartment complexes in the same state of indefinite suspension. Technically, there are large scenic parts of the countryside where new construction is not allowed. But someone gets a Mafia go-ahead and starts. Then the government rallies the strength to step in and assert itself and stop the building. And so all these shells of buildings can be seen, testament to some failed negotiation between Mafia and government and public.
Trials of Mafia figures are on-going in Sicily. But for every high-level figure convicted, another springs up to take his place. It’s life immemorial on the Island.
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