Scorpion

No one mentioned the scorpions in Genova ...

I met my first scorpion yesterday and watched horrified as a young man played with it, just a metre from my foot, trying to pick it up to throw it outside.

Seeing it brought back memories of a Turkish friend’s archeologist husband delighting in telling me tales of his time working in a place where you didn’t leave clothes on the tent floor and where you shook trousers before wearing them because ... scorpions are heat-seekers and the groin of the French archaeologist was where a group of scorpions ended up.

Was he teasing me?
Quite possibly but he was so amused by the French archaeologist's response, I suspect he was truth-telling.

This scorpion was pale black, between 1-2 inches long and looked like a crab maybe ... or perhaps more like one of those scorpions, seen only in books and on television until now.

Apparently the bigger they are, the less poisonous they are ... but how poisonous is less poisonous?  My informant was sorry to tell me but she had found one in her shower.  I came back to the apartment and checked the shower plug-cover was in place, and then popped a plug in the bath too.

It probably explains the small lines of yellow foul-smelling powder along door ledges on this street just lately.

Scorpions ... I hope to see no more with the camera I didn’t have on me yesterday.

In Genoa ...

I have these days where I wake wondering who on earth I think I am and why I feel I have the right to wander and ask questions of strangers ...

Initially, waking this morning was gentle and delicious.  The first footsteps passed by my window, the voices were quiet but later, after I opened the windows, I heard the cafe owner arrive and roll up her metal door while talking on the phone ... soon the coffee cups began clanking together in much the same way as I crash dishes together when forced to be the housewife at home.

I slept again, only to wake to the laughter of a group of men below my window.  I imagined them drinking coffee together at the cafe on their way to work, perhaps doing that everyday, and I enjoyed being there on the edge of their lives.

A craving for onion foccacia lured me out of my bed and down the street before I was properly awake which surely explains my fright on opening my door and finding a neighbour out there on the stairs.  She was amused as she greeted me and out of some place unknown to me, I responded with a good morning greeting in French ... I don’t know French, not really.

I was able to redeem myself with a ‘grazie’ as she held the outside door open for me.

And so my day had begun.

The onion foccacia still had 30 minutes before it was ready down at the forno so I chose something else, not wanting the woman who greets me with a friendly ciao every morning to interupt the baker for English ... I ate a delicious pie full of ingredients completely unknown to me.

And then I fell into this funk ...  wondering who I thought I was, coming to Italy without language but packing this desire to capture a small slice of the life that I find myself living on the edges of.

I began writing but today is the day I’m meant to begin everything else I came here to do now that everyone has left me alone.  Gert limped home with a walking stick yesterday ... a cracked bone in his toe.  He walked into a bed leg in the dark.  He made it safely, picking up the rental contract for the new house when he reached home.

The internet cafe down in the piazza cocooned me for a while, being online provided me with a kind of identity ... people who knew me had written, I could speak their language but I was still frustrated with this feeling of being small.

Almost midday and not much work done. I left the cafe and broke the cappuccino rule, ordering one from my favourite cafe too late ... but okay because I’m a tourist and tourists order cappuccino’s long after the 10am breakfast tradition here in Italy.

My guide on this is an author I recommend, an Italian called Beppe Severgnini, columnist for Italy’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera.  He wrote in his book, La Bella Figura, ‘Consider the humble cappuccino.  After ten o’clock in the morning, it is unethical, and possibly even unlawful, to order one.  You wouldn’t have one in the afternoon unless the weather was very cold.  Needless to say, sipping a cappuccino after a meal is something only non-Italians do’.

It’s not that I want to try and pass myself off as Italian, it’s only that I prefer not to stand out as a complete barbarian ... a charge leveled at me more than once by a 'gentle' Italian friend.  And I have never quite recovered from the surprise I gave another lovely Italian friend and the waitress when I ordered cappuccino (once) after a pasta lunch.  And regretted immensely because there really is a reason for that.

When in doubt, when shyness overtakes me, or I’m nervous and unconvinced about what I’m doing in life, my impulse seems to be ‘just do it anyway’.  I mean, I don’t parachute or go deep-sea diving, I don’t take drugs but going out and talking to strangers without language in a country not my own ... that’s something else.  I grew up in smalltown New Zealand and today finds me talking myself into doing what I love doing most of the time.

So tonight I will photograph apertivo at my favourite cafe here in the city.  And I stopped in at the farinata shop ... the one the family have owned since 1812, and photographed the beautiful food on display there, surely the best farinata in the city and a place you really should eat from if you find yourself in Genova.  I will meet Stefano and Guilia, Alex and I have tentative plans and I will surely return to my seat on the top of the hill at Boccadasse ... these are my plans for the moment.

And just after digging up the courage required,  the universe smiled down on me for a moment and an old man said, ‘Ciao bella ragazza’.  I don’t mind he that he was old because he made me smile for a while which was grand because I was all out of courage on this day here in La Superba.

The bike on the stairs, Genoa

Sometimes it’s about turning your head and peering up stairways, finding a bicycle that somehow defines some kind of beauty and then waiting, quietly for the bike owner to disappear inside, only to struggle with the light ... then struggle again with the light when you process the photograph.

Mostly though, the evening light here is about magic.

Evening light and the Sundial, Genoa

One the of the things we’ve come to love doing here in Genoa is wandering in the soft light of evening ...

Our path has almost become a habit, as we return to capture the light again and again ... always believing there is a slightly different light yet to be captured.

However one minute taken to change a lens or a full memory card can mean the difference between the rich evening sun-down glow and the flat light after sun-down. 

Different light reveals things unseen a 100 times before ... like this sundial.  I’ve walked this road so many times but last night, the light was just right and the sundial glowed.

How to Arrive in Genoa ...

I think I arrive once there are flowers on the kitchen table ...

Here in Genova there is always someplace to buy flowers and Paola’s round dining table invites flowers, even if I still haven’t quite organised a vase. Today one of my water bottles has been sawn-off to play hostess to flowers bought at a market on Piazza Scio where we also discovered a large market and the sweetest smallest tomatoes.

These last few days have been days of long conversations, where two old friends caught up on 5 years of absence and massive life changes.  We reminisced, laughed over pizzas and red wine, caught boats and journeyed through that favourite space we most enjoy – the place where the land meets the sea.

Genova was good to us, providing us with the very best foccacia at the beginning of each day or, on alternate days, unbelievably good breakfast cappuccino.  We had days of wandering, cherry gelato, inexpensive yet good red wines, slow mornings and late nights.

Pippa came to me 2 weeks out of New Zealand, via Haiwaii and Vienna, and our 5 days passed quicky.  Yesterday we caught a train to Milan to say goodbye at an airport bus stop in a city on fire with heat and humidity.  We talked through the 2 hour train trip to Milan, and then, after the goodbye, I possibly became one of the few people to have travelled with a slightly nervous, world-wandering friend, from Genova through to Milan only to leave her boarding her airport bus while I returned on another train within the hour and head straight back to Genova.

That would be the train where the air-conditioning in my carriage was broken.  Being a creature who prefers heat not too much above 20 celsius yesterday was a struggle and I struck out in search of a cool place only to find myself standing on tiptoes in a corridor, trying to catch something of the slightly cooler breeze as it came in through a high window. 

A very short elderly woman spotted the breeze in my hair, and came to stand in front of me, continuing to fan herself furiously as the breeze was never going to reach her.  We all laughed, her son too, and I resisted the temptation to offer to hoist her up to the high window.

imageEventually a harried, sweating conductor came to our rescue and led us through to carriage 5 ... or I think that was what he was saying.  I flopped into an air-conditioned 6 seat carriage with two men who left at the next stop.  I could only smile over my own paranoia that they were moving away from this smelly foreign woman.

Those last tunnels before Genova held us captive longer than necessary, as our train queued to weave its way into the main station ... the station I didn’t really know how to get ‘home’ from.

I read bus stop lists and decided on Bus 33, it would reach Piazza De Ferrari eventually and I was too tired to do more than smile as Bus 33 climbed up into the hills behind Genova and took me around my destination, the one marked out clearly by the giant ERG sign down there near the old centre ... round and then down.


I saw the city from the heights and its a beautiful city ...

In these days of wandering without intending to talk, I have discovered some truly special people anyway ... the lovely man with the vegetarian cafe, who has since asked if one of my photographs of him might be used in an article for the Corriere della Sera; the man and his wife with the farinata shop close by and the pizza people… 

imageThe woman who sells me my breakfast foccacia discovered I come from Nuova Zelanda today ... we reached a point of understanding and agreement via gestures and our few words in common, regarding the fact that we both loved our countries of origin but admired each other’s too.

The cafe where my favourite cappuccino is made is called Cafe Boomerang, in honour of the owner’s visit to Australia, and the gelato guy had an ‘I love you!‘moment when he realised I wanted the details of his shop for this website.

The internet cafe people are just as I left them last year but the vegetarian cafe has free wifi too, so I’ll wander between them, so as not to seem too internet needy perhaps ...

There is so much here in this tiny corner of the city, so much to love.  I’m holidaying with Gert for a few days now, trying not to talk to or photograph interesting strangers but it’s difficult.

Even the man operating the boat trips to Camogli, San Fruttuoso and Portofino is going to cycle New Zealand next year.

It’s good to be out ...

Ciao for now.

Genoa!

It was a 1 hour and 15 minute flight to Milan ... perhaps 60euro.

Pippa, an old friend from New Zealand, not seen in 5 years, was there waiting for me in the arrivals hall in Milano.  It was so good to see this woman who knew me before I went wandering in a serious other-side-of-the-world way.  We negotiated the bus to Central Station in Milano, then the 2 hour train to Genova and voila, I was back in this place that has surely stolen my soul.

The apartment door opened with the key Paola had given me and she talked me through turning on the hot water via a phone call where I am sure that I exuded a simple deep happiness about returning. I walked to the supermarket, successfully navigated supplies, then Pippa and I had one of those fabulous pizzas for dinner later that night ...  amid much belly-laughter and that delicious silliness that persists between old friends despite any passage of time.

Today has been about two cappuccinos, excellent cappuccinos that you surely only find here in Italy. 
A divine foccacia breakfast - where the plain and the onion foccacia turned up on our table, with something I don’t know the name of but we both loved.
Photos and stories to follow, as this forno is surely one of the best fornos anyplace.

My new wifi cafe is a vegetarian restaurant just along the street from where I am staying and I couldn’t resist talking to the lovely people who work there.  Photographs and words to follow on this truly excellent cafe.  He introduced me to the farinata guy along the road, and I will post photographs and stories next week sometime. 

I think it is well-known that I am in love with a hilltop view here, the one out at Boccadasse and I took Pippa to visit with it today.  She’s a beach-lover and hilltop sitter like me and we talked for a long time, photographs to follow of how it was up there on the lookout after drinking limoncello at the bar in the old fishing village below. 

We returned to the city, visited my favourite bookshop and then came back via the supermarket and farinata shop for our dinner supplies.

It’s hot here, and just so very beautifully Italian.  I’m never sure that I will find the strength required to leave however ... I have more than a few days here to wrap up the Genova section.  Bear with me while I get those photographs and tidy up the interviews collected, find the new ones ... and then, well, you can join me from your place over there and visit the city of Genova with me.

Ciao!

Genoa, Bach and I

These last few days, I’ve been trying to capture the Genova I fell in love with while staying in Italy last year ...

There was a paragraph where I tried to describe the quietly sublime beauty of a Sunday morning spent alone in that city I love.

I wrote: Sunday, my first day alone and the city is emptied for football.  Slipping and tripping through the air comes the sound of the most exquisite violin ... drifting from some open window.  Delicate notes that create this perfect sound for an afternoon spent lying on a bed reading. I am lazy on this first day spent as a solitary creature, alone in a strange city where I know no one.

I wanted that music but stopped short of shouting from my open window to whichever neighbour was playing the music. 

I came home and forgot it about mostly, just pulling the memory out in moments peace.

Yesterday I was in FNAC, thinking I might like one book to celebrate this month’s pay cheque when I had this idea about making a fool of myself and asking about a delicate solo violin ...

The shop assistant listened and then said ‘Bach!’.

She took me over to a listening post and she was right.  If this isn’t the music I heard then it’s close enough to delight and carry me back into that place in time.

Below you can hear something of the music on the cd titled Bach 6 Solo Sonatas & Partitas, Viktoria Mullova.

Camogli, Italy - after the storm

 

We wandered out, via an 3.80euro return train fare, to Camogli - about half an hour from the city.

Everything here is just so very beautiful, although Boccadasse remains my favourite section of coastline here, this was unbearably stunning too.

Off to take photographs on my last full day in Genova.

Ciao from this kiwi in love with Genova!


Oh and yes, those were people swimming, it was that warm in November.

 

Yes, that was me ...

I was that woman who apparently screamed as she fell yesterday on Via XX Settembre, bending my knee in a way that it hasn't bent in quite a few months. I was so sure I had either cracked something inside the knee or my achilles tendon had finally snapped.

I lay back on the rain-soaked pavement and waited for the agony to arrive however a lovely Genovese man came along, spoke to me and started helping me up. I was stunned, it hurt, I was shaking but it wasn't bone-shattering pain.

Once he had made sure I was okay and Gert had taken over, we walked on to the railway station. Me drenched from head to toe and limping ...

And so it was that I returned home from Italy.
My Belgian had come to bring me back after 17 days in Genova.
It was 2 hours to Milano by train, then an hour through Milano to the airport by bus, then a 1 hour and 10 minute flight to Brussels and a final 35 minute bus ride home to Antwerpen city and voila, here I am, freezing in the fog, surrounded by the mess of semi-unpacked bags, working out the when and the how and the why of the days ahead.

Full of stories, a few 1000 photographs and some really excellent memories.

 

I love ...

I loved the way the light slowly revealed the beautiful buildings of Genova.

And the way that I would wake in the mornings... with people calling out and greeting each other in the street where I was living.

I loved the way that I woke not only needing a cappuchino for my breakfast but knowing that I could go find the best cappuccino I have tasted, just a few hundred metres down the road.

I loved the way the focaccia was soaked in just the right amount of oil and salt.

I loved choosing my fresh pasta and sauce and unwrapping the gift-wrapped package when it came time to cook it.

And I loved walking lost in the alleyways of the old city, aperitivo, Italian wine, the chocolates, the architecture, the sea, the bookshops, the language and the Genovese.


And the weather changed here in Genoa

Gert flew in yesterday afternoon, via Milano and a train, so I had some time in the morning and caught a bus back out to Boccadasse because ... huge winds were blowing and the sea was storming in the beautiful little fishing village I had first seen on a stunningly sunny and calm autumn day.

Once again I took over 100 photographs however this time I was covered in sea spray and so battered by the winds that I came home exhausted and chilled. The camera fared far better, as I cleaned it continuously with a special damp cloth and kept it under my coat.

I wasn't the only one taking photographs out there and when I'm back in Belgium, you'll probably see more of this superbly wild day on the coast of Genova.

Richard Wagner writes about Genoa

For various days I lived in real ecstasy. Unable to follow a set plan to visit the masterpieces in town, I gave myself up to the enjoyment of that new environment in what might be called a musical guise. I have never seen anything like this Genoa! It is something indescribably beautiful, grandiose, characteristic … I really would not know how to start explaining the impression that all this has had and is continuing to have on me …

Richard Wagner in a letter to Minna Wagner, 1853.

Boccadasse, Italy

I began today processing people photographs, working at the kitchen table until it was time to set out in search of my morning cappuchino and the bus to Boccadesse … that old fishing village I walked to on Sunday.

Do you know ... it turns out that there is this bus that leaves from just below the apartment and stops near the top of the stairs that lead down to the beach at Boccadasse … so much simpler than walking and being lost in the heat of a Genovese autumn day.

I would write ’but the bus is less interesting’ except for the fact that I met the most interesting woman as I returned via the bus and we talked all the way back to the city. She was lovely. So even the buses are interesting here.

I arrived at the beach in time to watch a rain storm making its way down from the hills. I was up at the lookout for maybe an hour and it was stunning. I really don’t know how I will leave this beautiful city.

So there are photographs from today … as a creature who adores Nature I found it simple to take more than 100 images of light changes playing over the sea and then one or two other subjects I am passionate about. You see, I found the house I would like to live in …

Ciao from Genova in Italy.