Cara Budapest

Ciao cara Budapest,

Ti ho lasciato piu' di due settimane fa dopo aver fatto i conti col passato. Come tutto (un giorno o l'altro) e' destinato a finire anche la nostra relazione ha creato una sorta di voragine tra di noi che tanto adesso ci separa.

Non so cosa dirti...Non so nemmeno perche' ti scrivo in italiano....Ma io sempre pensavo che tu fossi una sconosciuta. Sempre quando passeggiavo per le tue vie, avevo quest'impressione, d'altronde di un impatto forte, di essere a Roma. Invece c'eri tu a mostrarmi tutti gli aspetti brutti della vita. Mi hai incoraggiato tu a costruire uno scudo fatto completamente d'acciaio.

Ma sai...Io l'ho lasciato a casa tua, ebbene non mi sembrava una delle cose piu' importanti da portare con me a Cracovia. Me ne volevo sbarazzare. Desideravo togliermi questo peso di dosso e cosi l'ho fatto. Comunque ti vorrei ringraziare e lo faccio con tutto il mio cuore.

Tiziana

We met Tiziana at la Playa di Catania. She is in her 50ties or she is just reaching her 50ties or she is not well maintained.

Once we get into the car we realize it has been broken and unfortunately all of the plans of  going to Taormina get buried in the sand of la Playa di Catania which is a 2nd class quality replacement.

We get on the bus and an old man speaks to me in Sicilian about the government, about how nobody cares about Sicily, about how much support do the immigrants get while an ordinary Sicilian citizen gets just nothing but a punch in the face. How wonderful it is to go to London where everyone is free , free from judgments , free of sights that surround you with the first step you make on the Sicilian land.And about how much he actually dreams of going to Argentina.

Once we get off the bus we meet Tiziana or technically she makes acquaintance with us. She tries to coax us into going to some kind of party discoteca style as obviously it's her job.

Tiziana asks us if we would like to have an Italian man and tells us about her life and 2 kids she has and laughs , laughs hardly about everything and from what is transparent to my eyes laughs to forget about the problems.

We meet her again when heading off to the bus stop that is full of trashes and looks as if there was hardly any bus passing by. I always joke it's like in Africa (Sicilians say that to) , but i had to pay for this joke by being kicked out from fbook by a girl I met in Iceland. In this world I think one has to be ironic. I can be ironic about Poland too. The reality is how it is. How we did get here it's another discussion.

Tiziana is now with her husband who holds a beer can and is very loud. There are two French tourists next to us asking me for directions. While my friend takes this picture :

La Russa

I meet La Russa at b&b, where I'm staying. She is in her 50ties but I gauge she might even have surpassed the limit of being 55. Nevertheless I would never ask her about age as it's a rather perplex and inappropriate topic. She speaks both languages, that is, English and Italian at a broken level.

In contrary to me she is more sociable and although her Italian is much worse than mine, she is not afraid to practice and to speak it, while to me it is almost a drag to say something so imperfect I would rather keep my mouth shut. Indeed I'm very very wrong.

I assume la Russa is a well off entrepreneur back in her homeland, thus she can allow herself  'a vacation' in Sicily 3-4 times a year with a duration of 2 months each. She is divorced and has a daughter who is just as  passionate about Italy as her but somehow she got married to her countryman.

She always wears a gaudy red lipstick and changes her personality drastically once switching to Russian (and since it's a Slavic language just as Polish I can understand quite much). I can't say we got along because I barely know her, but we were hanging out once.

It is my last day in Palermo and I decide to go and hunt for some souvenirs with her (la Russa) since Palermo da sola still seems to be a bit pericoloso to me. She recounts me stories about her amore. Her amore is 50 something I couldn't get what was his job but I started wondering why she has to stay at b&b instead of living with him especially that mind you we went trough the whole city to find suitable pairs of socks for him.

Amore, he likes when I go shopping for him but he is very demanding so a simple pair of socks won't satisfy him. I would like to buy him also a decent pair of shoes but I cannot do it without his approval - she enters every shoe shop and collects pictures of the assortment to show them later on to amore ,so that he could choose his favorite pair.

Without judging anyone I just hope I won't end up like this, but since some people are afraid to be alone they are ready for many sacrifices. However I don't like this kind of approach as it continues labeling Slavic girls in the Italian world as either prostitutes , badante(s) summarizing as obedient chicks, who will do everything to make the man happy not wanting anything in change for themselves, which is a pity because they deserve the best.

We also go to the Ballaro's market where we order a portion of sardines that brings to my stomach nothing but a subsequent contamination and the next day enhanced by the insupportable heat my condition gets just worse, so I'm kind of forced to sightsee the Italian capital at full throttle.

I forgot to say  goodbye to la Russa and I feel sort of bad about it, because le voglio bene lo stesso (I wish her well regardless)

People of Palermo - l'attore

I have never met l'attore. Not yet, not this time, maybe I will never get hold of him.
But I happened to get to know his birthplace(Palermo) and some of the people that apparently saw him in town once, twice or more frequently.

Living in Sicily is a bit like living in Iceland and I don't mean only some particular landscapes by that. If I'm now to elaborate I would say that we can underscore ties between the people and a simple fact that islands are rather small so at the end either all of the people are connected to each other or they simply know each other : childhood friends, common friends etc.

L'attore is reaching his 40ties. He is not a classically handsome man but he definitely has his charm that he had inherited from his mother and the rumor has it that she is indisputably beautiful.
Let's start from scratch. You shall get familiar by now with the character of il traduttore. It happened that his father used to be in a relationship with the mother of l'attore. Imagine he is watching the family albums full of  photos to bump into that special one documenting their relationship. That's how it had gone. I'm speaking of il traduttore mind you :)

L'attore actually comes to Palermo very often, even though he settled (not yet down) in Rome.
Even though I threw a coin into Fontana Di Trevi, the fate did not let me come across him.

The very next day I met a dj (no pun intended). He in contrary used to be in relationship with l'attore's sister.

Let's hope the next time I will be in Sicily I will meet l'attore in person not from the stories told by Palermitians.


Cheers.

People of Palermo il traduttore

Il traduttore is 32 years old and celebrates his birthday one week after me. We have in common : the same zodiac sign and couple of other things, which at the end might be rather a lethal combination.

Diminutive of a medium height, wearing something earring alike or stud alike God only knows what was the metal thing tagged to his ear.

We meet 4th of June its Saturday as far as I remember. I'm sitting at the stairs of the statue at Piazza Bologni waiting for him. We take a long walk around the city, discovering it's beauty. There is a scent of the sea coming from the port levitating and mixing up with the air making the hit more bearable.
It's the best fragrance ever...The smell of the sea. How I missed that.

The more we talk the more resemblances we discover about each other. Since we get along he takes me to Poggioreale (the place I have described in the previous post). On the way back i rest my head on the car seat and fall asleep immediately just to be woken up in Palermo.

We meet again the day after to go to see L'Etna and climb up to the craters together with his friends that are amusing and have a specific kind of humor oscillating from irony to even offenses.  They vested on me a responsibility of choosing the CD as the IPOD lost the connection. Once pondered we insert Carmen Consoli's disc inside. La signora del quinto piano is now the background for our trip :

La signora del quinto piano                                  The lady from the fifth floor

                ha un pitone in salotto                                           She has a python in her living room

un guardiano fidato.                                              a trustworthy guard.

Il suo ex è ogni sera davanti al portone                Her ex is there every night in front of her door.

con un martello in mano.                                      with a hammer in his hand

Non v'è ragione alcuna                                         There is no reason

di aver paura                                                         To have fear

di aver paura                                                         To have fear

questa è una conclusione                                      This is the conclusion

dei funzionari della questura.                               of the police officers.

Bizarre ....In fact this song overtly speaks about women that are stalked by their exes so topic is rather important, but mind you you are having your vacation in a sunny Sicily and you are kind of forced to listen to this tremendous, profound lyrics.

We arrived. It's foggy and we decide to drink something before climbing. The view is amazing I feel as if I was brought back to Iceland. I still wonder why Marco Mengoni had to shoot his video "Ti ho voluto bene veramente" there whilst you can find exactly the same places in Sicily, i guess it would be even cheaper.

On the way back we are sliding down from the  hill. Finding through the rocks ladybirds.
We arrive in Catania and impossible happens. A Polish girl is guiding people of Palermo through the city! Yes it was my second time, so I could show off a little bit in front of Palermitians with my knowledge of Catania.

The usual after- meal visit to the toilet finishes with me destroying the flush. Luckily I got away with the murder.

We see each other almost everyday and I have an opportunity to learn more about Palermo that an ordinary tourist. Examples? 800 A - it's basically a swearing that would be understandable only in Palermo but I think I will avoid explaining  its inner sense so deem it as your  homework dear reader.

The last day was about to be the best one as I stuffed myself with tagliatelle con gamberi e pistacchi di Bronte (the best thing ever - if you will be ever go to Palermo please visit this restaurant - Osteria Ballaro)...ah maledetto Ballaro - I got food poisoned my very last day eating sardines at the market of Ballaro - dear tourist please add it to the 10 things absolutely not to do once in Palermo.


And I had to go and wave to the traduttore from the bus. Yes the same tradutore that did not know how to translate muratore to English. Shit happens even to the greatest ones.


That was the traduttore remaing always a bit aloof  and restrained and maybe conservative, but the tradutorre is a good person.

Cheers

IL SICILIANO

Poggioreale is a province of Trapani that was destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1968. Instead of being rebuilt after the tragic event the city was moved to a zone nearby most likely as it had been considered a safer spot at that time.

One of the few places in the world,where time stopped running and everything remains unchanged. The uniquitous silence hits you from everywhere, lurking around every corner. Only from time to time  it's being distorted by a former Poggioreale citizen coming back to recount tragedic event to the little ones. As it happened the other day when I was discovering secrets and misteries of former inhabitants of Poggioreale. Old books, commercials, everday life objects. This place seems to make a perfect enviroment for movie directors and in fact several scenes from movies like Malena, L'uomo delle stelle, Il Cinema paradiso were shot there.

As we are walking to reach the car and go back to Palermo a strange voice crops up from nowehere.

API (bees) - this is enough to convince me that I'm in danger, hence I start running to avoid being stung by a bee.

The strange voice now appears to be a man in his 70ties. He wears a red polo and speaks in a sicilian dialect that for me unfortunately is almost incomprehensibile. Maybe I mange to get hold of every second word as he yapps away continuously. Basically I'm nothing but eavesdropping on their conversation and sometimes  I pretend not to understand the dialouge even if I do. I do appreciate a compliment of being gauged as 22 year old girl, while facing my 29th birthday. Those little innocent lies...

As we continue walking Poggioreale loses it charm of being dabbed one of the most deserted places ever due to newly-wed couple on their honeymon. For circa 10 minutes I don't know anymore which language to speak. She was trying to discover the story of her Italian grandmother spurting single words in Italian with an amazingly strong American accent( which I find very cute not that my accent  is any better as to say) to be able to communicate with il siciliano. In the meantime I have no idea how to translate 'muratore' to English. Neither me nor il 'traduttore giurato' friend was able to solve the riddle. I belive it had put us in a little embarassing situation. In the end we manage to escape the awkwardness but still followed by il siciliano who defiantly persuades us to join him for a coffe or a glass of wine. Adding up to this embarassement I try to get into his car by mistake.

For security reasons I belive we had to skip the hospITALI(A)TY of il siciliano.

PEOPLE OF PALERMO - IL BARONE

Everyday he stands there in front of his villa that has been renovated from his own funds. He is an inseparable element of Palermo's cityskape. He is tall , wearing a grayish jacket while his hair all covered in white. Nevertheless there is this fresh energy that he emits. The time has definitely stopped for him with the era of first mobile phones.

In fact as for an extremely rich person he carries rather an out fashioned cell phone in his pocket. Every now and then he whips it out  as it rings.

He welcomes tourists and encourages them to enter inside, probably in order to be admired for the effort he had put in to give a new life to the old, destroyed villa.

He approaches me and lifts my chin asking where is this beauty from. Scrutinizing me as if he was conducting researches about human race.

You have  Greek features - he underlines
Basically she looks like one of us - Mediterranean I would say - my friend chimes in
Anyway I'm Polish - i respond with a smudge of shame as I blush

Ahh Polish people are sophisticated. A wonderful nation indeed - his affirmation slowly evolves into a question.

Why don't you stay here and find an Italian boyfriend? Before I manage to spit any answer out of me whatsoever he turns to my friend and handovers a detailed instruction and rules of courtship to him.
The situation is more than awkward. He does nothing but nodding.

You can't simply contradict un personaggio cosi'.