taxi bus donkey

November days in northern Italy are normally punctuated by rain, not a dark depressing or torrential kind of rain, but a steady drizzle broken up by moments of clear skies and crisp air. As November moved into December the days grew noticeably shorter and the temperature of the night air often dropped suddenly. I hadn’t yet experienced a real winter and the little glimpses i got of one during my travels in Europe during 2003 made me realise how hopeless an Australian male with a backpack full of summer clothes was when faced with the brutality of nature’s not so motherly ways.

On this late November night, returning home from yet another evening in one of the local small town watering holes the rain fell more heavily than what I had now been led to believe was normal for this time of year. Tonight like most nights over the last 10 days or so I was walking Mieke back to her apartment, we were drinking beer, smoking unreasonable numbers of cigarettes and no doubt amusing ourselves with the habits of the locals. (more…)

Very few people reading this will remember Ildiko, life has taken many turns since we were together and even the friends of friends have fallen off the radar.

She’s been reappearing in my thoughts a lot lately, not unusual for a retrospective kind of bloke like me. But even though it’s been 5 years since I saw her and 6 since we had anything that could have been described as a relationship, I think I am understanding what went wrong and why it was mostly my fault. (more…)

Having settled into village life, I found my way to Kastoria and even located comfortable albeit not super economical Internet access I was silly enough to think that I could switch off the parts of my brain that i had become accustomed to using to absorb and analyse events, people, places spaces etc and just relax for a while. But the big guy who pulls the levers of life figured one more “point of interest” on the calendar of my travels wouldn’t be inappropriate as it would make me realise that even in relatively small towns, shit doth happen and it happens fast. (more…)

Feeling at leat a little better and with the “you are in Italy” meter ticking ever louder I decided to indulge in that great tourist with a plan activity “the day trip”. (more…)

Alfredo sits in one of the narrow laneways that extend from his humble hotel, he sleeps in a deckchair, his beer gradually gets warmer, his grey chest hair billows forth from the area which would normally be covered by a shirt.

Alfredo is a wise man, modern wise, not Michelangelo wise. Knowing that family is a good source of free and reasonably reliable, but more importantly free labour played his part in the production of child. His son, now approximately 30 years old… maybe more.. maybe less, is regularly seen around Lucca steering one of the various forms of hotel “Le Torre” branded means of transportation betwixt the various areas of lodging they manage. (more…)

True to form after 3 days in a town the local bums and regular faces started saying hello to me, and me in my effort to be conspicuous placed myself in one of the main town squares and happily “buona sera”d passers by.

After a while a local gent came and sat on the wall near me, didnt say hello, but sat so close to me that it would have been rude of me not to make the initial effort…. “sssseeeera” i said… dying to be taken for a local. “Sei straniero?” was his reponse,.. hmm.. guess that pretend to be a local approach lasted an entire 0.0 seconds.. but he seemed to be ok with the idea of me not being frrom these parts and so i gave him my abbreviated life story. (more…)

It usually takes around 3 days for the town drunks to start to speak to me. This formula held true in bologna. (more…)

Caught the train from Venice to Bologna on Saturday morning thinking wow what a great little trip to bologna this is going to be… peaceful, i dont even have to put my pack up on the rack, calm, tranquil,.. i can even hear the birds in the trees as we pass them by… and as we approached mestre,.. i could spend a few seconds trying to recognise the strange noise which was getting louder it sounds like… hmm.. i dont know… oh yes i do.

It sounds like about 1,000 soccer fans making the trip to bologna for the last of the serie A games for the season, 1,000 hot and sweaty, smoking, horn blowing fans, most of which chose my carriage from which to abuse the anti smoking policy that the Italian train system had in place.. (more…)

All i wanted to do was get lost in venice, it didn’t take long, in fact i am typing this right now thinking hey its dark out… how the hell am i going to get back to my 189 euro a night cupboard for a nap?

But what better city to get lost in (more…)

In rome, watched an impromptu latin jazz ensemble perform at a piazza along side the tiber in trastevere, they played for an hour on the steps of a fountain, there were at least 15 of them, just the old classics but each had their go at a solo which was special… and no hat being passed around either… they were probably famous.

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