England and the English

At first I thought the snotty nose was because of the cats and dogs – and I’m not just talking about the rain.

I’m in England, land of cream teas, cricket and dreadful weather. To be fair, Wimbledon’s on at the moment, and it always rains during Wimbledon, but it’s been beyond a joke so far. I left Sicily in blazing sunshine early on the morning of 27 June. Approaching Paris 24 hours later it was grey and miserable. The rain started in earnest just before we boarded the Eurostar. The people were sunny, though. Considering Eurostar staff spend their time either on a rainy platform or in a tunnel 75 metres below sea level, they smile a lot. It’s nice.

Against all expectations, I arrived in England to glorious sunshine. I should have known by the looks of delighted surprise on everyone’s faces that it wasn’t the usual state of affairs. Sure enough, the next morning it started to rain and hasn’t stopped since. If it’s not raining it’s just about to. To add insult to injury I’ve picked up my first cold in ages and have been blowing my nose constantly for the past three days. I look like a coke addict and sound like a teenage boy going through puberty. Only close family and animals could love me at the moment.

Tiny Cat barrels in through the window with her squeaky mew. Hello! I’m here! She whirls around the table leg, rubbing her head against it and hopping up and down in her excitement. The purr starts as soon as I put a hand down to stroke her and she winds at lightning speed around the chair, the table, me – anything around her – all the while purring and squeaking. She soon gets bored of my languid attention and leaps up to the chair behind me where she continues to purr like a steam engine while chewing the brown, spiky leaves of the dessicated plant that used to live in the pot on the table. I look round at her, which she takes as her cue to leap forward onto the desk and rub up against anything in her way. She crosses back and forwards along the desk under my chin as I work, wrapping her tail around the back of my neck and every so often licking the back of my typing hands. She’s cute, but it’s distracting. When she knocks one of the speakers over, she freezes, denying responsibility, before taking a flying leap off the table and out of the window again. Peace at last.

Realising that the coast is clear, Black Dog tip taps her way in and sits looking up at me. She’s got rings of white hair around her eyes which make her look as if she’s got glasses. She blinks owlishly, then races out of the room after something unheard by human ears. Cows, maybe?

Returning from a party the other day, my ma walked into the house to find 11 cows rampaging through the garden, gouging divots in the lawn and munching their way through the vegetable patch. The dogs were silent – probably they had barked all night with no-one to hear and were by that point either hoarse or bored. As both the wife and mother of farmers, Ma took it in her stride, pausing only to drop her suitcase before heading out to shoo the cows back to where they should have been. And all this alone, before coffee. England: it’s a different country.

Images by juicylucymamma and Green Dinosaur (Creative Commons)

by Kate Bailward Posted on July 5, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac | Tagged | Comments Off on England and the English

Carnival of Europe – 1 July edition

Welcome to the 1 July edition of the Carnival of Europe! We kick off this month with a submission from Zhu, who presents The French And Their Bathrooms posted at Correr Es Mi Destino. She says, “I first noticed the many dif­fer­ences between North Amer­i­can bath­rooms and French bath­rooms a while ago, but I had some­how for­got­ten about it. It all came back to mind today, when I went for a drink …”

Andrea, the blogger behind Destination EU, and the brains behind this blog carnival, gives us a tale of a road trip from Amsterdam to Maastricht posted at Rear View Mirror.

We have two posts from Nicole Jewell at Pass the Ham this month: first, this one about a new gourmet market that has opened up in Madrid, and second Chasing Saints in Sardinia. Nicole has her favourite, as do I, but what do you think?

Tim Leffel gives us current prices for travellers visiting his favourite European city – Budapest. Travel Prices in Budapest, Hungary posted at Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations Blog. It’s somewhere that’s been on my bucket list for a while, and now I have absolutely no excuse not to. Thanks, Tim!

Katie Beck is a journalist, travel writer and blogger based in the south of France. Her blog is a combination of her favourite photos and stories from her travels around the world and she has submitted Planes, trains, and ferryboats for the blog carnival. She can be found at stumblingintoparadise.

I first met Adam in Umbria, Italy. I believe it was the first time he’d visited the country, but apparently he loved it so much that he headed straight back to Bologna a few weeks later … He’s written about hanging out at the Bologna gay pride. Photos from Bologna Pride 2012 posted at My Gay Travel Guide. Come back soon, Adam – but this time make your way south!

Michael Schuermann presents Bricks Won’t Break Your Bones posted at easy hiker, discussing the use (or lack thereof) of bricks in important architecture around Europe.

ParisBuFF, meanwhile, writes about the Beat Hotel in Paris: The Beat Hotel is a hotel in Paris only a Beatnik could love posted at Paris Movie Walks – 10 Guided Walking Tours.

Laurel at Monkeys and Mountains talked to a Benedictine Monk while in Norcia, Umbria, and now gives us the lowdown. Another Italian one. Hooray! (Not that I’m biaised at all …) Conversations with a Benedict Monk in Norcia, Umbria posted at Monkeys and Mountains.

Rachel Webb goes to Torremolinos for a day to visit a fish festival, and it sounds delicious. Om nom nom. Fish Fest – Dia del Pescaito in Torremolinos posted at Andalucia Explorer.

Kerry Dexter gives us a lovely post about the history and music of Heisgeir. I confess it’s somewhere I’d never heard of, so I was fascinated to find out more about it. music, history, and Heisgeir posted at Music Road.

Kenneth Lange tells us three stories from a small Danish fishing village. Nothing better than a good bit of folklore on a Sunday afternoon, I say … 3 Folksy Stories from a Small Fishing Village posted at Kenneth Lange. He says, “Three small stories about life in a small fishing village. I think they show that all places, regardless of size, are worth visiting.” I couldn’t agree more, Kenneth. Some of the most fascinating stories come from the tiniest beginnings …

Off to Gran Canaria for this next one from Matthew Hirtes: Random Photo of Gran Canaria #14 posted at matthewhirtes.com. A great photo, and an amusing (and informative) narrative to go with it.

Finally, Jai of Savoir There writes about Genoa, a city which she considers to be one of the unsung heroes of Italy and of Europe. A grand claim indeed: what do you think? A weekend in Genoa, the city of hopes and jeans

I hope you enjoy reading all the submissions as much as I did. Please do take the time to comment and let the participants know what you think, either here or, even better, on their own blogs.

Looking forward to seeing you all at another blog carnival soon …

Image by Domen Jakus (Creative Commons)

by Kate Bailward Posted on July 1, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac | Tagged | 9 Comments

Return to Calabria

Bloody hell but it’s hot. The coach was air-conditioned, but stepping off it at just after 3pm on a June afternoon in Calabria is like being wrapped in a suffocating pillow of heat. Within a minute the sweat is pouring and it’s hard to take a breath in. I slow my pace and cross to the other side of the road, where there’s more shade.

I used to walk along this road a lot last summer, on my way to and from choir rehearsals or the supermarket. It’s good to be back. There’s the same stinky bin blocking the pavement, meaning you have to either step out into the traffic or be knocked out by the smell. San Francesco still stands, in statue form, at the top of the hill looking out over the bay, arms outstretched, friendly bird perched on his shoulder for all eternity. The view from here is gorgeous on a clear day, but today the heat is hazing and Sicily and Stromboli have disappeared from view as sea and sky blur together in a closer horizon than usual.

The arrangement with my host for the weekend, Meg, was that I’d call her when I reached Palmi, but my phone battery is dying. It’s my own fault: I couldn’t resist taking pictures of the sea as we drove along the coast road. Never mind. I head past Piazza Matteotti and the old folks sitting on benches, past Oscar Bar, resisting the lure of gelato, and on into school, reasoning that’s probably where everyone will be.

They are. Nothing changes.

Well, maybe some things. Meg’s 7 months pregnant and I’m half the size I was when I left. We joke about sharing out the weight. Apart from that, though, Liv’s hair is longer but her grin’s still the same, as is Carly’s dirty laugh, and the school is as busy as ever. Sam, the boss, comes round the corner and is about to pass by with a quick ‘hi’ when she stops herself with a chuckle. ‘I almost forgot you didn’t work here any more.’ There’s a flurry of conversation interrupted by students coming in to collect exam certificates. We promise to catch up properly later at the end-of-term party.

Meg appears back at the house just after seven. ‘We’ve got half an hour. Sam’s stressed and we need to be at Tahiti at quarter to eight. Chop chop, Katie!’ We race through showers and make it out of the house just after we’re supposed to be at Tahiti, which is a 10 minute drive away. Oh, and we still have to pick Liv and Carly up. They climb noisily into the car, making rude comments about us being late. ‘Have you got your bikini? We’re going swimming later. Yes, we bloody are. Oh, and I need cigs. Can we stop at the shop?’

There are lots of lidos at Tonnara, the beach town below Palmi, but Tahiti is the ‘cool’ one: all white-painted boardwalks, trestle tables and billowing sails. During the day the bar is full of people drinking beers and eating pizza. Now, however, at eight in the evening, the beach-goers have been turfed out and the Brits are taking over. I look across and see what looks like a load of Union Jack bikinis in Carly’s hand. Has Sam really gone that far?! No, it’s just a pack of bunting. Phew.

As could have been predicted, nobody arrives much before 8.45. We’re in Italy, after all. We have plenty of time to decorate the place and have a few cheeky glasses of prosecco before the students start to arrive. None of my teenagers will come tonight – it’s far below their level of street cred – but a lot of my adults appear. It’s so lovely to see them all. Chat segues into food and drink. A plate of fritti misti the size of my head arrives. I assume that’s the meal and happily stuff it all down. But no – now there’s pizza arriving as well. And it just keeps coming. I remember why I was twice the size I am now when I lived here last year. The pizza’s so good, though! I take another piece.

The meal’s finally finished and I’m lining up a camera shot of the bunting. There’s a welcome breeze blowing through the lido this evening after the still humidity of the day, but it doesn’t half make taking photos difficult. As I wrestle with f-stops versus shutter speed someone comes up behind me and kisses my shoulder. I turn round to see Domenico, one of my best friends here. We both yell and throw our arms around each other. Ti voglio bene! Come stai?! It’s so good to see him. He’s only here briefly at this point but says he’ll get Emmanuel – another one of my good friends here – and come back later on.  I return to my fight with the camera.

Later, having had a good go at drinking the bar dry, Liv and Carly decide they want to sing. Giuseppe, one of the students at the school, is a fantastic pianist, and a plot is hatched for him to accompany them in a rousing round of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. The band is ousted from their spot and the girls take over. Somehow evenings out with the Stamford teachers always ends this way. Everyone cheers them on. Then the call goes out for me to sing, too. I’m a little bit too tipsy to do this, and I haven’t sung in public for a good year, but my protestations go unheard. Giuseppe drops the opening chords of ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ into a moment’s silence and I start to sing. He couldn’t have chosen a better song. Domenico, my staunchest supporter, appears out of nowhere and sits in the front row grinning up at me. Emmanuel’s here now as well, standing behind him, and as I look around the room I see familiar faces everywhere.

It’s good to be back.

Image: Hey Mr Tambourine Man

by Kate Bailward Posted on June 25, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Gallipoli revisited

One from the archives today. It seems serendipitous after visiting (and loving) Ortigia last week that almost exactly two years ago I was on another tiny southern Italian island connected to the mainland by a bridge, walking around and drinking in the tiny details. Gallipoli was one of my favourite places when I lived in the Salento, and with summer most definitely here, I feel it’s time to go back.

The plan was to potter along the Ionian coast and explore, but when we reached Gallipoli we realised that was where we actually wanted to be. So there we stayed. Gelato first – almond and fig flavour, I can confirm, is delicious, but makes a hell of a mess when dripped down the front of a white linen dress. Luckily there are water fountains all along the sea front, and a quick scrub with a clean wet handkerchief results in the damage being mostly repaired. Except that white linen, when wet, goes terribly see-through. Oh dear. Lu sule and lu ientu soon dry it out, though, which is good for the sake of my modesty.

Gallipoli old town is an island, which means that you can walk right around it in a circle without ever leaving the seafront. Blissful. When we arrive, just before 3pm, it’s quiet and we have the place to ourselves. Within an hour, though, the Italians are returning from their lunch break and everything begins to perk up again.

An old man sits on a stool in the shade just inside the doorway to his house, holding a plate of chocolate cake. With shaky hands he carves a piece from the side and brings it slowly to his mouth with an expression of glee. Shining white Broderie Anglaise curtains flutter at every doorway, keeping out the heat and the mosquitoes. A girl and her grandfather zoom past on a moped. She is too small to sit on the back and therefore stands on the footplate in front of her grandfather, grinning fit to burst as her hair flutters in the wind.

Spying a group of majorettes and a marching band, we move closer to find out what’s going on. It looks like they’re about to head off, with great pomp and ceremony, but in true southern Italian fashion they stay milling around and chatting for another half an hour. We decide to wander on further while they think about what they’re going to do, and cut down a side street which we haven’t been along before.

It’s a residential street, and there is washing draped from every window, or on clothes horses in the street. In one case, with cheerful disregard for public property, someone has even strung a clothes line between two road signs. Gallipoli has a much more relaxed air than Otranto, its cousin on the opposite coast. It may not be as beautiful, but it’s just as charming, if not more so.

Up ahead we hear the crackle and pop of a ropey sound system, and loud cheers. Rounding the corner, the street in front of the Duomo is chock-full of people waving balloons proclaiming ‘I <3 gelato’ or ‘I love cookies’. A woman with garish clown face-paint and a sparkly silver hat dances through the crowd handing out yet more balloons with a grin.

A man’s voice comes over the sound system calling for us all to make way – the majorettes are coming through! It’s a team of maybe 15 girls and one small boy banging a drum. The lead majorette is a very serious-looking girl with glasses and a whistle. She marches along the centre of the street, waving regally and exhorting her team to do the same. The older girls copy her, but the littlest girl at the back, only about five years old, is otherwise occupied, gleefully fending off all the grannies and aunts pinching her cheeks and cooing over her.

The boys in the marching band are also enjoying themselves. They’re much older than the majorettes, being mostly late teenagers. They all wear large plastic sunglasses and grin their way along the street, eyeing up the pretty girls from behind their protective shades and acting like kings for the day.

I assume, given our location outside the duomo, and the fact that the majorettes were led up the street by the priest, that the show is due to some saint or another.  Alex is more astute than me and thinks to read the sign hanging next to us: today is the opening of a new gelateria. Any excuse for a party. It’s a perfect day for ice cream and we hang around for a while hoping that there might be some freebies being handed out. Sadly it seems that we’ve missed that bit of it. There’s only one thing for it: back to the seafront for more aperitivi and sunshine. Bliss.

Images by Kate Bailward

 

july carnival of europe

Have you got a good European travel story? Why not submit it for inclusion in July’s Carnival?

On 1 July I’m hosting the event, set up by Andrea of Destination Europe. Details of how to submit your entries can be found here, and you can also follow Andrea on Facebook to be kept updated on all future Carnival news.

I look forward to hearing from you!

by Kate Bailward Posted on June 20, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A walk around Ortigia

Bright pink flowers spill down the wall onto a whitewashed deck. At night it’s a bar, but this afternoon it’s just another of Ortigia’s many beautiful courtyards. They’re hidden around every corner. Sometimes there are dogs in them, sometimes cats, sometimes old men on benches; they’re always interesting and there are plenty of them to see.

We wander through narrow streets. There’s a ‘pow! pow!’ from over our heads. A small boy peers down at us through the rails of a first floor balcony. Seeing that he’s got our attention he giggles in delight, and resumes his mock shooting. He grabs a tee-shirt, hung over the balcony to dry, and before we can draw breath to stop him, flings it at us with a triumphant yell. His mum comes out onto the balcony, phone clamped to her ear, to see what the noise is about, and sees us gaping up at her, clutching the offending clothing. Her hand flies to her mouth in embarrassment. Her offspring, meanwhile, is leaping around in an excited war dance at her feet. Looking down at him she starts to laugh. It’s hard to do anything else when confronted with such glee. Still on the phone, she gestures that we should throw the tee-shirt back up to her. We ball it up and try. She fails to catch it and we scramble to stop it from hitting the street. On the next try she manages to grab hold of it before it falls, and gives us a grin. We wave goodbye to her son, who goes back to shooting at us with a wicked glint in his eye.

In another courtyard, grapevines wind over our heads, shading us from the sun as we stuff ourselves with seafood. The owners of the restaurant have twin babies in a pushchair. There’s a muslin cloth draped over the top to protect them from the sun, still strong despite the shade of the vines. All that can be seen of the babies is four chubby legs, arranged in identical formation. One of the twins wriggles briefly, before falling asleep again. Five minutes later he wakes up properly and starts to grizzle. Mamma picks him up and dandles him on her knee as she chats to a customer. ‘You’re very cheeky, aren’t you? Yes, you are!’ The customer smiles indulgently, holding out a finger for the baby to grab. When baby boy has stopped crying Mamma puts him back in the pushchair and goes to take an order from a table of customers. His sister now wakes up, however, and kicks out at him. A middle-aged woman gets up from a table at the other side of the courtyard and comes over to pacify the sibling rivalry. She doesn’t seem to be part of the family, but this is Italy, where babies are universally adored. It’s said it takes a village to raise a child, but an Italian restaurant is probably even better.

As we digest our lunch with gelato, perched on the steps of the church of Santa Lucia, an old man drops himself down next to us and starts to chat. ‘English, are you? I learnt English at school. Forgotten everything now, though! Oh, but we used to terrorise the teacher …’ We laugh together, him reliving and us experiencing new his memories. Another man from the group comes over and grins at us, twirling his finger around his temple in friendly mockery. ‘Hope he hasn’t bothered you. He’s a bit pazzo this one!’ Old man springs to his feet, feigning a box to his companion’s ear. ‘Why you …!’ They make their parting salutations and move away, chuckling, to rejoin their group.

We follow the sound of a clarinet floating along the street. It’s coming from what looks like a derelict building. It’s not, of course, but like so many of the buildings on the island this one has seen better days. The sign tells us it’s a music school and as if to prove that fact a second clarinet joins the first. We stand on the dusty street, leaning against the sun-warmed stone of the building, and listen to the strains of a Mozart duet, and the swish of water against the sea wall below us.

july carnival of europe

Have you got a good European travel story? Why not submit it for inclusion in July’s Carnival?

On 1 July I’m hosting the event, set up by Andrea of Destination Europe. Details of how to submit your entries can be found here, and you can also follow Andrea on Facebook to be kept updated on all future Carnival news.

I look forward to hearing from you!

by Kate Bailward Posted on June 15, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac, Travelling Like a Maniac | Tagged , | Comments Off on A walk around Ortigia

The Four Fs

I’m woken from my nap by a group of boys yelling as they race into the water. They splash around, pulling macho poses and making showy, unnecessary dives – the water’s only a foot deep and as smooth as oil. One of them, however, hesitates at the water’s edge. He’s paler than the rest of them, with the whiteness that comes from being out of the sunshine for a very long time. Even this redheaded English girl is browner than he is. He’s got a shaved head and wears baggy turquoise shorts, emphasising the thinness of his legs and the whiteness of his skin. Around his neck hangs a rosary. It’s made from fluorescent plastic. I look across at the other boys in the group. They’re all wearing them, too.

Further down the beach two men play beach tennis at the shoreline. They look to be in their early to mid-20s, fit and healthy. One of them, in turquoise speedoes, sports a traditional wooden rosary. They count as they bat the ball back and forth. … sette … otto … nove … ottanta! They don’t reach 81, as turquoise speedo guy is distracted by a small boy tripping over and takes his eye off the game for a moment. The ball drops into the water and the little boy darts into the sea with a gleeful shout. Turquoise speedo guy catches his arm to stop him from going too deep and chastises him gently. Little brother or son? Either way there’s a family bond.

The noisy boys in the water galumph out onto the shore, bantering and pushing each other as they do so. They charge back to their chosen spot on the beach, where a lone girl sits with a cool bag. It looks like she’s the girlfriend of the loudest, brashest boy. He’s wearing white speedoes and has a shaved head and a big, lolling grin on his face. He reaches for the girl’s hand as he approaches her, but she’s looking the other way and doesn’t notice him do it. Bravado punctured, his face falls and his arm drops to his side before he plucks up the courage to try again. This time she takes it gently, smiling at him as he strokes her hair. A moment later he’s back to being one of the lads, delving into the cool bag and grabbing the biggest sandwich with a triumphant cry. He peels back the endless layers of cling film, paper napkins and tin foil that some devoted Sicilian mamma has wrapped around her carefully crafted panino and then passes it to thin boy.

They look like brothers, with the same wide-mouthed grin and shaved heads. Looking closer, though, the thin boy’s head isn’t shaved, it’s bald. His sunken eyes have neither brows nor lashes to frame them and his skinny legs are equally hairless. The matching rosaries begin to make sense. It’s not unusual to see people wearing wooden ones but these fluorescent plastic ones seem to indicate a less deep-seated religion. The kind that may have been resurrected after many years of neglect when a friend or family member falls seriously ill.

There’s a wail from further along the beach. The little boy from earlier is being dunked in the sea to get rid of sand and he’s not at all happy about it. Turquoise speedo guy – who it would seem is the little boy’s dad – is abject with apology. Little boy’s mamma, pregnant with another one, blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, disappears back up the beach leaving dad and son to it. Dad gently rinses every vestige of sand from little boy’s skin, even dipping his hands into the water and wiping around his son’s ears. The wails intensify. Mamma! Mamma! Dad looks stricken, but continues his fatherly duties. Mamma reappears holding a Spongebob towel; the kind with a hood that is perfect for wrapping little kids in after a day at the seaside. Dad hauls his son, still wailing for Mamma, out of the water. Mamma, in a practised move, gathers the sides of the towel and drops it neatly over her son’s head before reaching her arms out to take him. Now that he’s no longer being splashed with cold water, however, little boy decides that Papa is all right again and snuggles into his shoulder with one last Mamma. Dad grins down at him, rubbing his hair gently dry with the hood as he walks back up the beach.

The noisy boys are still eating. Every so often there’s a roar from one or other of them, caused by the thin boy. He’s dancing around kicking sand at the rest of the group while tearing off great chunks of panino with his teeth. He ducks as his brother hurls a napkin at his head and laughs uproariously as his rosary swings around his ears. The four Fs of life in Sicily – Family, Friends, Food and Faith – encapsulated.

Images by omnia_mutantur, Kate Bailward and bass_n_roll

JULY CARNIVAL OF EUROPE

Have you got a good European travel story? Why not submit it for inclusion in July’s Carnival?

On 1 July I’m hosting the event, set up by Andrea of Destination Europe. Details of how to submit your entries can be found here, and you can also follow Andrea on Facebook to be kept updated on all future Carnival news.

I look forward to hearing from you!

by Kate Bailward Posted on June 10, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Umbertata 2012

Even in a big multicultural city like Catania you can find events celebrating the micro-culture of the region. And so it was on a sunny Sunday evening at the end of May, with Umbertata. Local craftsmen rubbed shoulders with stiltwalkers, dancers and puppets, in the closest approximation to an English village fete that I’ve seen in a long while. All that was missing was a cream tea.

Click on the images to see them full size, and for the story behind each one.

JULY CARNIVAL of EUROPE

Have you got a good European travel story? Why not submit it for inclusion in July’s Carnival?

On 1 July I’m hosting the event, set up by Andrea of Destination Europe. Details of how to submit your entries can be found here, and you can also follow Andrea on Facebook to be kept updated on all future Carnival news.

I look forward to reading your entries!

by Kate Bailward Posted on June 5, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Puppet on a String

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘puppet’? A quick straw poll on Twitter reveals that the muppets are likely to feature highly. My generation might well also think of Sooty and Sweep. However, it’s another type of puppetry that I’ve got in mind today: marionette shows. Yes, while the rest of Europe was watching Eurovision the other night, I was watching some rather different puppets on strings.

Sicilian puppetry has a long history dating back to the 1800, and Fratelli Napoli, the company that I watched, remain the most significant performers of the Catanese style of puppetry. The company was started in 1921 by Don Gaetano Napoli, and, four generations later, remains completely family-run. Everything, from the making of the puppets, to the construction of the set, to the direction and performance, is done by the Napoli family.

The shows usually feature stories of love and betrayal, with knights and fools and beautiful girls. The two main schools of puppetry in Sicily are Palermitano (from Palermo) and Catanese (from Catania). However, each region’s puppetry is slightly different, with puppets of different sizes and dialects. In Catanese shows, for instance, the Fool is called Peppininu, and he speaks in the dialect specific to Catania. Other characters in the show speak a more general Sicilian, while yet others – the Knights – speak Italian.

The language that’s being spoken, however, is almost irrelevant. It’s amazing how expressive a piece of painted wood can be without any words at all. Every puppet is carved and painted and has a character of its own, which is then heightened by each puppeteer. Their muscles flex and their faces snarl or laugh in conjunction with the character that they’re controlling. There’s a real symbiosis at work. This is all the more interesting given that the voices of the puppets are supplied by a third person: the parruturi. Every character is a combination of puppet, puppeteer and voice artist, and all three elements are visible on stage. A character walks past another character in a complex process involving a change of puppeteer so that the two characters’ strings don’t get entangled. Three characters appear on stage, but there are only two voice artists, so two characters are voiced by one man. Were it not for the fact that you can see it in plain view you’d never know. That transparency and simplicity are part of what makes the show. You can, quite literally, see the strings, and it’s fascinating.

The show that I’m watching features Fratelli Napoli’s smaller puppets – up to 80cm tall. However, when the company first started, their puppets were up to 1m30 tall and weighed up to 35kg. Suddenly the traditional English Punch and Judy shows seem somewhat tame. Originally, also, the puppet shows took place in a permanent theatre. In the 70s, however, things changed. The public were no longer interested in coming to the theatre, so the company decided that they would, instead, take the shows to the public. To this end, in 1973 the puppets were reduced in size to their current dimensions and they took to the road, gaining a new audience and continuing the Catanese puppetry tradition.

In between each scene Alessandro Napoli talks the audience through some of the history of both the show and the company. There’s a sense of reverence in his voice as he introduces his aunt, Italia Chiesa Napoli. She’s nearly 90, apparently, and has been voicing the female characters since forever. She totters to the side of the stage, needing help to get into position, and looking far too frail to be able to cope with any of this. Contrary to appearances, though, her voice is strong and her projection fantastic. She’s amazing!

She’s also miked.

She’s deafening the audience and drowning out the other voice artist – Fiorenzo Napoli, who also happens to be her son. With hysteria in his eyes, Davide Napoli, her grandson, gently takes hold of the microphone that she clutches to her mouth and tries to pull it back an inch or so. She’s having none of it. As the microphone moves away, her head follows after it. Maybe she’s deaf, maybe she’s stubborn, maybe she’s just a diva at heart; we’re going to hear her, and we’re going to hear her loud.

You can’t keep an old actress down.

by Kate Bailward Posted on May 31, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac, Reviewing Like a Maniac | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Infiorata di Noto 2012


I’m standing at the top of a belltower looking into a TV camera and speaking into a microphone about flowers. In Italian. This is one of the more bizarre experiences of my three years in Italy.

I’m at Infiorata di Noto, a festival which has been taking over this pretty Sicilian town for the last 33 years. The centrepiece is a street paved entirely with flowers. But not just petals strewn willy-nilly. No, there are 16 individual works of art here. On the third weekend in May the artists responsible for each piece work through Thursday night to create their designs, ready for the tourists to arrive on Friday. The flowers then stay in place for three days and three nights before the mosaics are destroyed by local children on Monday.

In addition to the floral main attraction, there is plenty going on in the town, from music, to exhibitions, to street performers and processions, most of it completely free. Oh, and have I mentioned the fact that Noto itself is quite extraordinarily pretty? Every corner you turn there is yet another gorgeous, honey-coloured baroque building with perfectly clipped, zingy green hedges setting off the colour of the stone. The earthquake of 1693 which devastated much of this part of Sicily did Noto nothing but good in the long run. The city was rebuilt in 20 years, with an eye for the grand and the beautiful. In appropriately flowery style, the guide to the city which I’m handed as I enter the festival describes Noto as ‘… a city … imagined like music; a place which is the ideal metaphor for the sweetness of a life which effortlessly combines spirit and matter.’ Ah, Italy. It doesn’t matter whether it’s prose or actuality, flowers are all the rage here.

And so we come to the reason why I’ve risked a claustrophobic panic attack to get myself to the top of a belltower. It’s not just any old belltower: it’s at the top of Chiesa di San Carlo al Corso, directly opposite Via Nicolaci, which is the flower-paved street that’s the main reason we’re here today. The view is supposed to be fantastic, so I go into the church, pay my €2 entry fee, and walk through the doorway behind the girl taking the money. Only then do I see what I’ve let myself in for.

I’m horribly, debilitatingly, panic-inducingly claustrophobic. And I’m faced with a tiny, narrow, spiral staircase with barely enough width for one person. I almost turn straight around and ask for my money back. However, the promise of a good view from the top of the tower spurs me on. That and pride. My friends have already gone on ahead and there’s no way I’m letting them get all the good photos without me. I take a deep breath and start to climb.

I reach the top shaking and hyperventilating. Was it worth it?

Absolutely yes. From the ground you only see the detail of the mosaics. Up here you can see them in their full, technicolour glory. And they really are glorious. It’s day three of the festival, but the mosaics have been diligently watered to keep them as fresh as possible, and they’re beautiful. The theme this year is ‘baroque moments’, and there are gorgeous, sweeping designs galore. However, it’s the colours that really amaze me. Bright reds and yellows abound, humming with vibrancy despite the grey day. They’re not just made up of primary colours, though. There is light and shade to these mosaics, much as there would be in a painting. Against all odds, they’re subtle. Considering the raw materials are compost (for the borders), flower petals (for the bright colours) and seeds (for the more muted ones), it’s staggering what has been achieved. In search of a good photo, I elbow my way past the man with the video camera who seems to have been blocking my shots all day today.

That’s when it happens. It turns out he’s not just some idiot with a video camera. He’s part of a news team reporting for an internet TV channel. When he asks me where I’m from, I’m caught unawares. Before I know it I’ve agreed to be interviewed and am babbling incoherently in Italian about how beautiful it all is, and how marvellous the view is from up here. It’s true, of course, but I can’t help feeling like a gushing schoolgirl. At times like these I wish my vocabulary was rather more extended. Mind you, I probably wouldn’t have done much better in English. At least in Italian you have not just a licence but an obligation to use superlatives wherever possible.

We make our way back down the narrow staircase to ground level. I reach the bottom once again on the verge of hyperventilation. Spotting a sign for an exhibition, my friend suggests that we go look at it to calm our my shredded nerves. So we do.

The advertised art exhibition isn’t to my taste. However, hidden behind it is a permanent museum, the Museo del Presepe Noto. Entry costs the princely sum of €1 and the museum features more than 50 Nativity scenes (presepe), all hand-made by one woman, Dr Cettina Perricone.

Nativity scenes in Italy are big business. Not for the Italians a little thing made out of a shoebox with a couple of lego figures and a mismatched plastic horse because you couldn’t find a donkey in your brother’s farm set. Oh no. They range in size from miniature works of art hidden inside a defunct mobile phone, to large-scale grandeur taking up the centre of the town square, sometimes even with living characters therein. The larger-scale presepe usually have running water featured somewhere in them, and are triumphs of tiny detail, with plenty of little in-jokes hidden away for people to find.

The presepe in this particular museum range from a scene at a Hornby train station, to one knitted in white wool and lit up with a UV lamp so that the characters look like they’re floating in space, to another made entirely out of chocolate. From a distance this last one looks unremarkable, the chocolate greying from being left open to the air for so long. Then I get closer.

Oh.

Dear.

God.

Imagine a pile of milk, dark and white chocolate a metre wide and half a metre tall, gently warmed to room temperature, with people walking past and pushing the airflow about every few minutes. Now imagine how that would smell.

Yes, you may drool.

With the scent of chocolate in our nostrils, we decide that it’s time for either gelato or granita. We’ve been saying this all afternoon, but the need has now become urgent. Thankfully, wherever there are Italians, bars and cafes abound; despite the crush of people thronging the streets, we’ve found a gelateria and are eating granita within ten minutes.

Have I mentioned that I love this country?

This post has been entered in the May edition of Destination Europe’s Carnival of Europe.

by Kate Bailward Posted on May 25, 2012
Posted in Living Like a Maniac, Travelling Like a Maniac | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Beer and gelato

You have to try the chips – they’re amazing! Linda’s not joking. Even though I hadn’t accounted for the difference between English and American chips, and was therefore expecting something chunkier, the thin-sliced, so-fresh-they’re-still-hot crisps that arrive are delicious. Dipped in home-made tomato ketchup and washed down with one of the many beers on offer at Open Baladin, it’s a pretty much perfect light lunch. Except that there are the most amazing-looking burgers on the menu as well. Yeah, well that’s going to have to be done. Screw the diet and semi-vegetarianism. These look far too good to pass up.

We’re here for a WordPress bloggers meetup. There are maybe 15 of us, and the waitress is monumentally pissed off. Not everyone’s eating and we’re split over two tables, which is apparently a big no-no. Keane – the newest kid on the GoGoBot block – and I get our orders in quick and leave her to glower and roll her eyes at the others as they dither over what to order. I amuse myself taking photos of the hundreds of bottles of beer behind the bar, but don’t realise that Keane’s spying over my shoulder. Hey, that’s good! Ice broken, we chat about photos and being introverted and music and performance. You sing? Cool – me too!

Our burgers arrive, but the waitress has messed up the order, bringing two of my burgers. She’s convinced it’s our fault, and flounces back to the kitchen, black clouds wreathing around her head. Two minutes later another waitress brings the second burger over again. Anyone order a Singin’ in the Rain? We tell her no and she returns to the kitchen. Then the first waitress stomps back. Are you *sure* you didn’t order it? Another blogger, Eyal, has joined us at our table by this time, and he eyes it hungrily. We suggest the waitress leaves it with him, but she won’t allow it. No! If he didn’t order it he can’t have it. She storms back to the kitchen to throw the burger in the bin. Or, more likely, feed it to her mates and try to palm it off onto our bill later.

The blogging crowd slowly filters away. Keane’s just ordered another beer, and I’m thinking about doing the same. We move to the bar, and try to hook Robbin in on the way. But I’ve already had two beers – I should go …

A minute later everyone else has left and Robbin’s perched on the stool next to me. The three of us sit and shoot the breeze. I try a red beer, Rodenbach. It tastes like sour cherries. I like it. The barman comes over to ask what I think. I can’t remember the word for sour, so tell him it’s bitter, but not. You know – like lemons. Luckily he understands me. We get into a discussion of beer topnotes and brewing. In Italian. Now *that’s* something I never expected to happen.

Robbin asks to try a Geoffrey the Tortoise beer, more for the comedy value of the name than anything else. The barman pours a generous taster measure and we all have a sip. That Tortoise is yummy, let me tell you, and he’s the perfect way to not end up feeling like you’ve been hit with a beer-flavoured freight train. I steal the remainder of the taster and give it a good home.

Beers finished, we begin to slump into post-lunch dozes. Reluctantly we peel ourselves from our bar stools and wander blinkily into the late-afternoon Roman sunshine. As we meander along the street Keane spies one of the ubiquitous spigots which supply Rome with drinking water and stops to fill his water bottle. I’m thirsty, but nothing like as prepared, so cup my hands below the flow and scoop it into my mouth, ending up with plenty on my face and very little inside me. As I dry myself off, Robbin tells a story of how she watched a businessman in a suit approaching one of these taps. I thought he was going to do exactly what you just did but … She steps forward and puts a finger over the end of the tap, blocking the flow of water and forcing it out of the hole drilled into the top of the tap to make a rudimentary water fountain. She then takes a leisurely, non-splashy, drink.

Romans. Really quite clever.

Passing Grom gelateria in Piazza Navona, we (re-)discover the universal truth: however full of burgers, chips and beer you are, there’s always room for gelato. Especially if it’s an unbelievably smooth salted caramel with just the right balance of sweet to salt. We each order it as one of our two flavours, and a reverent silence falls as we take our first mouthfuls. Bloody hell it’s good. We head for a bench in the piazza and amuse ourselves, as we sink into dairy-induced comas, by critiquing the enormously twee, identikit artwork distracting attention from the Bernini fountain in the middle of the square.

Hey! I know that dog! I exclaim, pointing at the little grey terrier that’s just trotted into the Piazza. Keane and Robbin look at me in amusement.

That’s the quote of the afternoon, definitely, quips Robbin.

I laugh with them, and explain myself: No, but seriously. I met him outside the Pantheon earlier. The look on Keane’s face tells me that I’m not making myself sound any saner. I flounder on. His name’s Charlie. He’s super-cute!

Robbin grins. I think it might be time to go home now …

So we do, safe in the knowledge that we’ve made some new friends this afternoon.

And I’m not talking about Charlie.

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by Kate Bailward Posted on May 20, 2012
Posted in Eating Like a Maniac, Living Like a Maniac | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments