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

Le mie avventure siciliane

Ever since I watched " Johnny Stecchino" I' had been dreaming of going to Palermo...And finally that dream came true.


As always I planned the whole trip on my own. Buying tickets, looking for hostels , asking Italian people for advice ,directions and so on.

During our one week stay we  managed to see Catania, Siracusa and Palermo. Well basically as a matter of fact we went trought the whole Sicily as well, but I will get back to that later on.


Our trip starts. It's Monday morning. We basically woke up in the middle of the night to get to the airport right on time.  Gloomy weather, raining cats and dogs but just in a little bit more than 3 hours we are going to encounter summer once again. I couldn't be more happy about going back to Italy ...now when I kinda speak also the language in a decent way.


It's 11 o' clock we have landed. It's really warm, not scorchingly hot though. We are taking  the bus from the airport to the centre of Catania ,where we are going to check into a hostel, leave our stuff and without losing time discover the best of what Sicily can offer us.  We are welcomed by the owner of the hostel , who explains everything in  Italian to me. I sort of feel sorry for my lovely friend, who is not able to chime in.

"Remember whenever you get lost in the city, just ask. But try to avoid asking women for directions maybe. They are not as helpful as men" he said.

Well I decided to stick to this spot on advice, provided by our wonderf host.

Ar first we went to see the famous La Playa di Catania with a view to the volcano L'Etna. Certainly I was stopped by an Italian guy, who tried to kiss me. I don't know whats wrong with some of them but it seems that they fall in love in an instant and they also fall out of love in an istant. Actually they should start selling this as a product/tour/ service - Love in an instant. Sounds pretty cool like instant food for desperate people.

It's time to eat ....However my friend is vegan, so with a little help of some application, we found a place serving vegan dishes. In Catania Via Etnea is one of the main streets. Starting from number 1 to I don't remember correctly now maybe something around 1000. We are at the number 200 something and the restaurant mind you is located on Via Etnea 780....


Can we take a bus please? - I asked.
No , no we can walk otherwise we will get lost and I'm really hungry - Ola replies.
But c'mon the bus goes always straight through the whole Via Etnea.... I suggested
No , no we can walk it's not so far.

It was far... Approximately 40 minutes of walking and later on I get to know that it was revenge pointed at me for hurrying her up when we arrived.

The food was delicious though, just for the record, hence my anger had dissolved into thin air.


In the evening we went around and in result we ended up in a house party with bunch of artists , who own a marionette theatre .  I had an ultimate chance to serve as translator to my lovely companion, thus I was torn between half Spanish half Italian guy talking to me and literally mixing both languages (f.e Monika voglio preguntarti...) and Italian man telling me to translate his wise words to my friend every single minute. That long evening turned to be a long long night , as we came to the hostel in the morning.

It's Tuesday.
Hangover, tiredness. It's hot... There mosquitos everywhere... I can literally hear them and I can also feel them and see them on my skin.
We depart. We arrive in Siracusa. There is a friend I met two years ago over the internet and since I was going to Sicily anyway as a typical Italian man , he proposed to help us with whatever he could. He picked us up from the bus station and took to Ortigia, where we spent the whole day sightseeing , eating , buying souvenirs, visitng museums and just relaxing in the sun. He promised to come back in the evening and drive us  back to Catania since it was already too late to catch the last bus. He arrived a bit late and parked his car very far , so we had to walk for 20 minutes and then out of the blue she just panicked. She started running ahead without any notice. Simply like that. I looked at him and I didn't know what to say other than - Wait I'm going to check whats wrong.

Ola what are you doing? You know we can't stay here, we have to go back to Catania.
I'm not going anywhere, he is going to murder us....

Well in the end we got on the car and we safely arrived to Catania and nobody murdered us :)

Another day.
Finally Palermo! My dream is coming true. It's beautiful , it's charming but messy. For instance we take the bus from the station to arrive at the hostel and I can't see the names of the stops....I guess it takes time to get accustomed to this disorganised reality. No pedestrian crossings...I feel as if I was in Morocco again.

 After all you always get tired and have to stop to charge your stomachs with food. While we are looking for a right restaurant I can see lemons being thown at us....Launched at us as if they were missiles. If one of them had reached us I bet I would have been taken to the hospital
We pop in a store, where we buy wine for the evening. There is a terrace in the hostel, so we are planning to go upstairs right there and marvel at the view with a little dosage of wine. Well once we get there, we realise we do not posses an opener. We are trying to open it with every tool around available in the room. In effect I broke  the key to the hostel in Catania.....


 Please let's go to the neighbours and ask if they have an opener - she says.

We went there I spoke up. I asked for the opener. The guy tried to open the wine himself but unfortunately the cork was so devastated that it stopped being a potential solution.

Girls, just take this opener with you and try on your own to open it - he yapped away.

As you can predict, it did not work. We had to go back to the neighbours knock on their door again and ask for tools needed to perform a wine opening operation. These tools are : sieve, knife and jar.

I felt kind of crazy asking neighbours for those things, but I guess we were really desperate to drink that wine in particular.

When we finally managed to open the wine (at the end Ola pushed the cork inside using her mascara), we started heading off to the terrace, but to our dismay the door happened to be closed.
I called the owner and asked him kindly if he could come back and just simply open the door for us. He agreed and he came. Nevetheless I thought he would simply come open the door and go away. No....And how could I immagine such improbable scenario? It's Italy!!!!

I'm waking up during the night. It's almost 4 am. I was dreaming that L'Etna has errupted. Uff it was just a nightmare. Hell no there is plenty of water all over the room. Thunder outside and firm wind pushing me back inside when I'm trying to close the balcony's door. Scene just like from Titanic. Trees falling down , red alarm in the whole country and Ola is sleeping like a baby. Again we are still alive thanks God.

Time to go back to Catania arrived finally ( our host had to wait for us since we broke the key). After a long day of constant sightseeing we are awaiting the train.

It's late (but it's Italy so its normal it would be abnormal the other way round). It arrived ,we get on and are waiting until it departs, but half an hour has passed and we haven't moved a single centimetre ahead. Nobody says anything, just when some passengers are asking what's happening , the conductor is informing us that the previous train has derailed, hence this one is not able to reach Catania. He also mentiones that people going therein should change the train for the one to Messina and then wait for the bus to come. Once we are on the train to Messina somebody says we should go back to the previous train...We departed...Nobody knows where on earth we are going. Stormy weather, thunder, rain....We are still clueless. There is a party  on a train. Italian people trying to chat me up since I do speak their language. Will we get to Catania? and when.....Roads are clossed and apparently we had to go through the whole Sicilly to get back. 10 hours of travelling....10 hours of stress of drivers mistaking the way. Thanks to trenitalia trip around Sicily costed us only 12 euro!  Trip full of adventures, unexpected things happening.

One of the best trips of my life!