Sirmione

The Romans had it right.

This weekend, I went to Sirmione, a small fishing village built on the end of a peninsula that juts out into the middle of Lago di Garda. It's location affords some impressive views of the lake, the Alps and the surrounding foothills and farmland on the shores of the lake. The town itself is riddled with layers of history and of the traces of generations of pleasure-seekers looking for a bit of rest and relaxation.

Frankly, it's remarkably beautiful. Look:





















The reason why I say the Romans had it right is because at the very end of the peninsula there are the ruins of the Grotte di Catullo, a kind of Roman bath resort, spa emporium, pleasure island, villa all in one. Why it went into disrepair, we can only guess but the scale of the ruins is a testament to the might of Rome and of course the spectacular excess that comes with the wealth of one of the world's largest historical empires. Now though, where once the elite of Rome wined and dined today remains only olive groves that sway in the breeze and the sound of waves lapping the cliffside.













Walking around, I could only wonder if in a 1000 years, our modern day shopping malls, big box stores, McMansions or cruise ships will be in the same shape and have quite the same power of place as the Grotte di Catullo. What will they be a testament to? Sirmione, for example, is a testament to the fixity and continuity of place: a once Roman resort that today remains a vacation destination and even boasts the Terme di Sirmione spa. Is this vocation informed by geography? by cultural memory? How is it that place and identity can resonate throughout the ages?

I leave you to ponder this with a photo of a Roman pillar. An Italian tour group invaded the church that appears in the photos above right as my friend Diego and I were leaving to continue our exploration of the peninsula. The tour guide explained that the church, like much of the town in it's present form was built with recycled marble and construction materials from the Roman era. Such ingenuity was of course the product of forced necessity, as roads in the medieval era were overrun by bandits that made it near impossible to transport and exchange such materials.

Again, I ask, what if we had to do the same?

Paris In Glances [because it’s just too big to touch]

Paris is monumental. It’s esthetically pleasing. It’s sidewalks are wide and unencumbered by cars (like some other cities). Parisians themselves are beautiful people that are for the most part well-dressed and who ultimately enjoy an appreciable standard of living [at least in the impossibly expensive center of the city].

Paris is without a doubt the City of Light.

This all being said, it’s easy to get lost in photos of grand monuments that finer details of urban life in such a dynamic city go seemingly unnoticed. Residential street scenes, architectural detail, wide open and constantly changing skies, Paris is a stimulating experience for all the senses. The crunchy of the crust of a fresh baguette, the rhythm of French spoken the streets, the texture of cobblestones and the gently varying topography, the uniformly white façades of it's residential buildings that absorb the incredible variations of lighting and of course the pungent aroma of cheese.

I will post some obligatory shots of the Eiffel Tower, but this trip I found a lot more to look at.

European Air Travel: A Saga

My recent trip to Paris was made possible by the conjunction of two universal forces: first, RyanAir offering a substantial discount on many flights across Europe. Secondly, my friend Sanaz who frequently checks RyanAir’s website and was thus ready to pounce on the Milan [Bergamo] to Paris [Beauvais] flight as soon as it appeared. In the end we landed 2 Euro rountrip tickets for four people [with no added taxes and airport fees I might add] to Paris.

There are many gimmicks, however, that make RyanAir travel not as glamorous as a 2 Euro price would suggest. If you check in at the airport you have to pay an additional 40 Euro fee. If your bag doesn’t fit in the check bin, then again, you get slammed with an unreasonable fee. The flight itself seems more like a series of those inopportune commercial breaks during [insert suspenseful TV show here] that leave you hollering at the TV and cursing the inane repetition of the same Oxy Clean ad. Not even your iPod headphones can protect you from the onslaught of advertisements for lottery cards, smokeless cigarettes for the plane and incongruent security announcements in at least three languages. In the end travelers get what they pay for; if you can resign yourself to that fact, than RyanAir travel is the way to go. If not, please, hop on a train and save yourself the stress because you probably won’t like the trumpet celebration over a recorded announcement informing you that you arrived ahead of schedule [because somehow RyanAir flights also seem to bend the forces of the space-time continuum and ALWAYS arrive early].

Apart from strange fees, the constant bombardment of advertisements, and let’s just say precipitous schedule, RyanAir operates cheaply for two apparent reasons. The airports that it services are a far cry [and distance] from the principal airports that service most major European cities. In addition, the flight hours are, by all accounts, ungodly.

Let me give you an example of how this changes the travel experience.

My courageous group of 2 Euro traveling buddies and I had tickets from Bergamo for a plane that departed at six in the morning. The only problem is that Bergamo is located an hour away from Milan and of course mass transit [re: an awkward combination of buses and trains] doesn’t run at three or four in the morning. The only solution for those travelers without automobile access or amazingly generous friends willing to give a lift is to take the shuttle bus from Milan’s central train station to Bergamo at midnight and spend the…evening/morning…in the airport.

One could muse for hours about the economic inefficiencies of incongruencies in transport system schedules whereby travelers have to spend obscene amounts of time at ungodly hours in an airport. That though, would just be too easy.

In any case, we set off. Happy travelers at ten in the evening, with water and snack food in hand thanks to the recommendations of my friend Karin who astutely checked www.sleepinginairports.net and found out that the café in the Bergamo airport closing in the evening, leaving travelers without access to comestibles that would in theory provide some degree of comfort in an otherwise hostile environment. The cafe, fortunately, remained open thereby allowing Karin and me to enjoy a generous three Euro cup of whiskey to induce some level of sleep before departing at six in the morning.

The airport in the evening looked more like a refugee camp than an airport. Here is the proof:



It was fascinating to see in any case how people made use of seemingly any nook and cranny to catch up on some sleep before departing at the wee hours of the morning. This game of survival was truly a testament to human ingenuity.



So, after six hours of almost-not really sleeping, we departed to later enjoy three intensive days of walking, wining and cheesing in Paris.

Coming back from Paris [Beauvais] was a different story in European airline travel, more of a conundrum in the complexities, inefficiencies and absurdities of airport and airline security coupled with the already quirky experience of RyanAir travel. Our flight departed at roughly ten in the evening. The bus company that offers a shuttle service between Beauvais and Port Maillot suggested that travelers leave at least three hours prior to the time of their flight, putting our estimated time of departure at roughly seven in the evening, just shy of the tail end of rush hour.

We sat in traffic for a bit but arrived with ample time to check in at the airport.

Beauvais itself is a very small airport. There is one information desk, three gates, a rather large duty free and a few overpriced snack stands. You would expect such a small airport to be run with a little less, let’s just say caution than Paris’ larger airports like Charles de Gaulle and Orly, but our evening in Beauvais offered some outstanding insights into the complexities of airport security. Airport scale isn’t proportional to intensity of security, seemingly.

At one point, while sitting to make the check in, I specifically noticed that there was an unattended black computer back. People were coming and going, so I personally didn’t pay too much attention and went back to overdosing on French cheese and baguettes and savoring what I could of France before daring to pass airport security with “gelatinous substances” that could in theory be confiscated. So, I ate. While I ate, within five minutes first a fire man came over and stood a fair distance from the bag, observing it. Then, there was an announcement in French asking its owner to kindly come pick it up. Two police officers in heavy boots joined the fire man. They all stood for awhile and scratched their heads, seemingly waiting for the thing to explode before taking action. A perturbed airport manager then came over and pulled out her walkie-talkie to communicate the disturbance to someone at the other end. The bag sat and slowly one of the police officers began to not so delicately poke at it. He asked for a flashlight and continued to look. Again, another announcement. Again, no owner. Finally, not so delicate searching became downright shaking and the security crew of no more than eight people shook eachothers hands for a job well done when finally ANOTHER security person came to escort the clandestine bag filled with only a pair of pants to some other security area.

Now based on this account and going back to my mention about shoving my face with French cheese at the airport, when I traveled to Paris a number of years ago, I bought some amazingly delicious and expensive French cheese in Rue Mouffetard to bring back to Italy that was consequently confiscated when I went through security. The reason: gelatinous substances, along with more then 100 mL of liquids, can somehow be made into a bomb.

This time, I believed myself somewhat smarter. Not only did I eat half of the cheese I was carrying to begin with, but also, this time in the airport, I was carrying a number of objects [accidentally] that would have in theory diverted security’s attention. Not only did I have a razor and a fork, but in the side pocket of my backpack I also had a pair of stole away pliers that are very heavy and very sharp. I even had an open bottle of water in the other side pocket. There was, in short, a lot that the could’ve confiscated besides the cheese.

So, I stood on line, anxious. I placed my bag on the security belt with whatever was left in my pockets in one of those ubiquitous plastic bins and walked through the metal detector without a beep and proceeded to wait for my bag. There, as I waited, I noticed the security guard was spending quite a fair amount of time studying my bag. I glanced at the screen and very, very clearly made out the METAL fork, razor and pliers. After speaking with his colleague, the security guard asked me to step down the line with my backpack. The guard stared coldly at me and asked me firmly to open my bag. I responded cheerfully and did what she asked. With military precision she went right for the bag with the metal fork AND the cheese. To throw her off, I made an innocent comment something to the tune of “oh, I forgot about that metal fork, silly me”. She instead reached with her nimble fingers and plastic gloves past the fork and extracted my half opened cheese with lightening speed. “Sir, this is not allowed. You are not allowed to have this”. Crushed, I repeated in the form of the question what she just said in a defeated tone, “I’m not allowed to have this?”. With a victorious snicker, she threw out my cheese [that would surely later be extracted from the cheese garbage can and eaten as a snack].

So, I was defeated by Beauvais, twice. It is impossible to fly cheese out of France.

One past Beauvais’ insanely intensive security line ironically still in possession of all my dangerous weapons but sans fromage I proceeded to the duty free where I overdosed on cologne shopping and almost past out because of all the suffocating scents.

Now, I’ve decided that my new test of airport security will be to see how long I can make it will the pliers and razor in my backpack. If I make it back to the States after more European airplane travel with everything intact, I will reward myself with a Guinness to lament the absurdities of the system.

Back in Milan, we touched down with a heavy thud that could only be explained by an overworked pilot wanting desperately to finish the last run of day. We rushed out of the airplane, surprised and jolted by the landing but ready to go with bus tickets in hand [because we were of course astute enough to by roundtrip tickets]. Presenting them proudly to the bus diver, we were informed that in fact our tickets were for THE OTHER bus company that would be arriving in approximately 30 minutes [it was already 11:45 at night, and we would be arriving in Milan at that point by the time all the mass transit was closed]. So we waited for five minutes and in the ate the extra six Euro cost and bought the ticket for the first bus. Somehow, we finally made it home.

To conclude this saga, the rules of RyanAir are the following: all is fair in love and war and free market enterprise, especially in an international traveling context where airport security, travel connections and flight schedules are better described by the laws of chaos rather than traditional scheduling. By all means, take advantage of the reasonably priced ticket, but buckle your seat belt and cautiously prepare for take off as you plunge yourself into what is by all definitions a quizzical of a travel experience. Happy travels and caveat emptor.