Pleasant Surprises

As you may have gathered from my last post I have experienced a few… let’s say… adjustment issues following my move to England. I mean, when a supermarket shelf full of pasta can reduce you to tears, something is wrong!

Over the past few weeks, however, I have taken some time to reflect upon my new surroundings. I’ve been in England for over a month now and I must admit that I had quite a number of preconceived ideas about this place that have turned out to be untrue.

First rule of travel: Don’t take people’s word for it. Go with a blank canvas and an open mind. See for yourself.

FALLACY #1: NO-ONE WILL BE NICE TO YOU IN LONDON

Ever since I can remember, I’ve heard people saying how unfriendly people are in this big, impersonal city; how the tube (underground train network) is the headquarters of rudeness and that no one in this town would even tip out the dregs of their Evian on you if you were on fire. Well. I’m sure that like everywhere on Earth, London has its rude and boorish types, but my experience to date has been quite the opposite of what I was told to expect. Let me tell you some heart-warming public transport stories!!

The Suitcase

As always I was carting around the big suitcase filled with all my worldly possessions. Hey when you're away from home for a year and a suitcase is all you've got - it's big ok! While Paddington Bear was one of my childhood heroes, it is not my goal in life to emulate him. The suitcase is more like a thorn in my side than a romantic travel icon.

So I was training it from St. Alban’s to Kent with a change at London Bridge. I got off at platform 5 and lugged the heavy suitcase UP a flight of stairs, and then down again to platform 1. Well I took too long doing that because just as I stepped onto the platform, the doors shut and my train departed… of course. So I asked a lady standing on the platform a couple of futile questions in the hopes that she knew the information I would need to go back upstairs to find out. “I’ll go have a check for you,” she said, dashing up the steps. She returned moments later and sympathetically informed me that the next train was leaving from platform 5. I’D JUST COME FROM THERE!! RRRRR!!

I was psyching myself up for another round of weight-lifting when a concerned older woman approached me: “You’re not going back up the stairs are you?”

“Yes I’m afraid I have to.”

“But you know, if you walk to the other end of the platform, there’s a ramp!”

“Oh thank you soooooooooo much!!!”

Wasn’t that nice of both of them?

Two points to England! However, I do have to score Italy highly in this area also because, over there, my suitcase and I have never approached a flight of stairs without some nice Italian man offering to carry it for me. That doesn’t happen here. I don’t think it’s because people aren’t as helpful; I think that there is a fear of intruding or giving the impression that they are a swindler hoping to take off with your stuff. The English are nothing if not exceedingly POLITE. Also, the litigation culture here is ca-razy and perhaps there is an unwritten rule that no-one risks putting out their back and consequently no-one risks being sued!

The Gentlemen

England was the birthplace of the Gentleman and from time to time this history manifests itself in even the most unlikely of places. It’s so refreshing to get on a train while some nice man stands aside to let you step in first. I’ve also noticed that English gentlemen do no walk through a door before a lady even if the door is already open and they happen to reach it first. They stand aside and wait till the lady has gone through. It’s so lovely! There are many other little examples, but suffice to say, chivalry is not dead!

FALLACY #2: THE ENGLISH ARE AS WARM AS THEIR WINTERS

I think it’s fair to say that there is a stereotype out there that British culture is lacking somewhat in emotion and warmth. The Italians had no qualms about pitying me as I left their vivacious, passionate, hospitable culture for "colder climes"!

English culture can be quite polite, reserved and subdued in the way people relate to each other… however I don’t believe that that equates to a lack of feeling. You know what I think? If affection, passion and ardour do not bubble over, they don’t disappear; they simply bore down into the depths of the heart. I haven’t been here very long, but I can already see that the English character has many qualities I admire very much. Adjectives like noble, decent, courteous and respectful are not often hailed as the height of adulation, but I think these virtues are indicators of an underlying substance of great worth. I look forward to finding out what is actually underneath the surface.

I mean what makes a man say this:

“God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” (William Wilberforce, abolitionist, politician, author and all-round amazing human being).

Now Wilberforce is one of my heroes, but I think this statement is hilarious! Only an Englishman would say such a thing! But I love it. I love it and I’m determined to find out what makes this culture tick.

Autumn Leaves on Skinny Trees

Yes, it’s true, I have been in the U.K. for a couple of weeks now and I have not told you guys anything about it. There are a number of contributing factors to this: busyness, laziness and the logistics of moving to a new place being among them. However, if I’m honest, I guess the primary reason for my silence is that I’ve just been missing Italy too much to concentrate effectively on my new surroundings.

I never expected it would be so hard to leave Siena. I guess I need to cut myself some slack though; I did live there for five months, make some amazing friends, and have the best summer of my life! It was difficult to leave it all behind. Moreover, I don’t yet have a place to really settle into here. The instability makes it easy to look back in the direction of Tuscany where I was comfortable and happy.

Anyway… once I put gothic edifices and fields of poppies and sunflowers out of my head, I was able to see the new type of beauty around me. England’s landscape is rather unique and, I might add, quite beautiful. Since I arrived I’ve been staying in Kent, which is affectionately known as “the garden of England” – and with good reason too. It’s gorgeous.

Little winding laneways enclosed by skinny, tall trees. Vibrant deciduous leaves contrasted against vast green lawns. Tudor and Victorian style houses sprinkled throughout the old streets. Little country churches. Pretty, pruned gardens. Stacks of history.

That’s Kent.

I’ve been staying with some distant relations: a retired couple who are just the best! They have been so good to me and I couldn’t have asked for a better starting point. They have helped to make the settling-in process a little smoother; though I must admit it has been more emotionally draining than I anticipated. There are also SO MANY things to organise to get yourself set up in a new country. I tip my hat – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, beanie – to anyone who has ever immigrated!!

The other day a friend asked me if I was working yet, or still living “the life”. I said that I planned on living the life until January! Why not! I worked darn hard to save the funds for this period and, I also must mention the generosity of my family and the Australian Taxation Office whose gifts have bolstered the funds!! It’s my birthday tomorrow and my family have definitely given me the best present they could: their support for this little dream of mine. I have wanted to do this European thing since I was thirteen! So, yeah, I guess you can say I’m living the life I want to live. I’ll be sure to be grateful for that every time I see the autumn leaves on the skinny trees.

The Montepulciano Debacle

We set out with the best of intentions.

We set out with the most harmless assumptions.

The Italian public transport system had other plans for us…

My friend Waka and I set out for the nearby bus-stop at 6.30am on a Saturday morning. The plan was: a bus to Piazza del Sale, and a fifteen minute walk to the station from where we would leave for Montepulciano at 7.25am. Seems simple enough, right?

After going one stop too many, we got off and started walking at a leisurely pace toward Siena’s main station as we ostensibly had heaps of time. Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind: “I haven’t checked the time-table for myself. I’m going on what Waka said two days ago.” Sure enough, when I had a look, the bus was arriving at 7.05am, not 7.25am. We ran! But as it turns out, the bus was late, not us.

We mounted the bus; relieved to be sitting in it after the frenzied half an hour it took us to reach it. Our relief, however, soon turned into stupefied incredulity when the Montepulciano bus stopped right opposite our apartment to pick up passengers. We never needed to go to the station! We laughed, we lamented, we got over it and we did what most people would do on a long bus ride at that hour of the morning: we fell asleep.

“Montepulciano! Montepulciano!” yelled the bus driver.

We hurriedly grabbed our things and alighted from the bus, which stopped outside a bar (for those of you unfamiliar with the Italian bar, it serves quick breakfasts and coffees in the morning). Within a minute of entering the bar it was quickly made known to us that we were not in Montepulciano, but a tiny little town called Buonconvento. What the heck?!!

There were only three possible reasons this could have happened: (1) Waka and I were simultaneously having the same dream about the bus driver’s announcement; (2) the bus driver didn’t have a clue about his own bus route and didn’t know where he was; or (3) he was telling the people getting on from the back where the bus was headed. You choose…

In any case, we were stranded at 8am on a freezing cold day and the next bus was not until 1:50pm. We took on board a few helpful tips from a local street cleaner and saw what there was to see at Buonconvento; that is, all that we could see past the condensation fog produced by our own breathing!

Notwithstanding a mad dash to then catch the bus out of Buonconvento (we were having a meaningful discussion about something and forgot the time!), we did eventually make it to the illusive Montepulciano. BUT when we got there, it was pouring and we were too tired to care. So we had a pisolino (nap) until dinner-time when the most we were up for was a brief evening stroll and food at a nearby restaurant.

It was nice to get back to the hotel and relax after a day dictated by buses. But just when we thought we were free of the public transport tyranny, we realised that there was no bus back to Siena the following day!

Are you getting sick of this story? So were we!

So Sunday morning: An obligatory look around Montepulciano in the pouring rain was followed by a mutual glance between Waka and I that said one thing: “I am so ready to move on.” (That was around 10:30am!).

We were then forced to catch an expensive taxi to Montalcino from where there would be a bus back to Siena. I know you’re thinking we should have checked the Sunday bus schedule previously, but Montepulciano is a much bigger and more touristy town than Montalcino (from where I knew there was a bus) so it didn’t even cross my mind that we could be stranded there!

Okay… so surely that’s it. Surely nothing else could go wrong with the bus? Wrong. We got to Montalcino around noon and found that there was a festival going on. We grabbed some lunch and took in some of the medieval oddities on show while waiting for the 2:48pm bus.

Alas… 3.45pm arrived and we were still peering expectantly up the road in the vain hope that our chariot would arrive. No dice.

So we found a crowd control guy who was working the festival and inquired after our bus. He rang through to someone who had a clue and alas… the bus was never going to arrive at that stop because the city had been shut down to buses for the event. Great. The next bus was at 6.33pm and had to be caught from a stop further out from the city walls. Don’t you just want to scream at this point?! In fact, we would have done so if our senses of humour weren’t just a little bit ironical. All we could do was laugh.

So after a further three hours of time killing, we were picked up by a compassionate bus driver, whom we had flagged down to ask whether we would ever in fact depart from this town. He said, his bus wasn’t going to Siena but that he would take us to the petrol station where he knew the Siena bus driver was coming to refuel.

While standing around waiting, we did have a few doubts. After all, we were totally dependent on the promise of this driver. We held our tickets with anticipation and discussed our fondly cherished dream of validating them.

And then finally… salvation!

All we did the whole weekend was wait on a flipping bus, but somehow it was one of the most hilarious weekends of my life!

Reverse Culture Shock

It’s a phenomenon of travel that people either care or don’t care about where you’ve come from depending on whether you are a foreigner or a local. When overseas, everyone wants to know where you’re from; what you’re home town is like; what you did while you were there; wether you liked the lifestyle; what you enjoyed about it and what you didn’t; so many questions! It’s great for helping you to reflect on on your origins. But when you go back home…

Many people find REVERSE culture shock harder to deal with than the original shock of being in a new and strange place. I think that this is, in part, to do with the fact that people at home are not usually so curious about you. Besides, no one wants to sit through a slideshow of your two-thousand photos while you reminisce. It’s only people who have been to the same places as you, and equally lack the opportunity to talk about them, that will usually engage you in lengthy conversation so you can compare notes.

You have to get back into the everyday swing of things at home; to fit in with everyone else. Sure, people ask you questions depending on either their level of care for you, their curiosity, or at a minimum, the sense of social obligation; but somehow the deeper questions never get asked and a sense of bewilderment often results from the lack of facilitated reflection.

When other friends I know have returned from long stints overseas, I’ve always noticed a sense of loss and isolation on re-entry to their home country. This doesn’t seem to make sense on the surface, because they have gone from being ‘alone’ in strange land to being back with everyone they know and love. However, they have come back changed and they need to be reacquainted with all the old familiar people and places in light of who they are now.

Imagine you return to a situation you know inside out but YOU have changed. It’s just as unsettling as if the situation was completely foreign because you no longer know how to fit in. Culture shock is like a square peg leaving its square hole and trying to fit into a round one… the difference in shape causes incongruence and isolation.

But say, over time, the square peg’s edges get softened a bit and although it is still square, the edges get rounded enough to fit into the round hole, albeit imperfectly. When that round-edged-square comes back home to its square hole, it will find that it does not fit there like it used to. It will experience the reverse of what happened in the first place. I think this is why travellers I’ve known have told me they could not bear to go back to their old jobs, or the place they used to live once they had returned. The new incongruence is just too unsettling.

I was thinking about all this while I was in Rome, recently returned from a short visit to home. I was trying to make sense of the strange sensations I experienced while at home and realised that a sense of frustration came from not being able to talk about the things that were really on my mind. A rush of a thousand thoughts that had followed me home from my life overseas.

I must admit that in the past, I too have cared little for returning travellers’ stories. Now I see the importance of giving someone a platform, not to boast about their adventures, but to process just what has happened as a result of the said adventure. I mean, pilgrims travelled FOR the purpose of being changed. Changing your environment, your lifestyle, your everyday objectives and your preconceived ideas is bound to leave an indelible impression on your identity.

Books

Just the word, books, conjures so many sweet and heart-warming sensations. There’s something about books that becomes a part of us and helps us to both understand and express who we are as individuals. There’s something comforting about the familiarity of a childhood story or a favourite novel that puts us back in touch with the narrative of our own lives.

Overlooking my bed are two tall, dark and handsome bookshelves made of some tragically inferior wood. I know, I know: Tolstoy, Hugo, Dostoevsky and Plutarch deserve the finest mahogany or some such incorruptible wood to highlight their intrinsic worth… but for now, the flat-pack ingenuity of Ikea will have to do. In spite of this minor infraction, I take great pleasure in scanning my shelves and gazing with maternal pride at the intriguing titles. But it wasn’t always this way…

In primary school, I hated reading. Yes, it’s true. I always loved the bedtime stories my mum used to read to me, but novels; I hated them. They made us read books with names like, “Journey” and… well… to tell you the truth, I don’t remember the others because I never read more than three pages of any of them. It wasn’t until my final year of primary school that I discovered a novel I could bare to read the whole way through. It was called “Number the Stars” by Lois Lowry and was a World War II story about a little Danish girl whose best friend was Jewish. I couldn’t put it down. A few years later when I read “The Diary of Anne Frank”, I realised that I had just been reading the wrong kind of books.

With time, it became clear that I’m all about non-fiction and classics. You know, autobiographies, histories, social commentaries, philosophies, and literary masterpieces like the plays of Oscar Wilde or Les Misérables (which, by the way, is my favourite book).

I bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this. The truth is I am just repining the fact that I am only a few days away from abandoning my fledgling library once more! Given that the airlines only permit a couple dozen kilos for me to squeeze my entire life into, I have some difficult decisions to make about which books I will take! But don’t worry, I have contingency plans. I fully intend to join the most amazing public library I can find in England, and if I can’t find some of the more uncommon books on my ‘To Read List’, I shall be heard on skype, or any communication means necessary, saying: “Hey Mum, do you think you could mail me that pile of books now?”

:P

(Stay tuned for the explanation of what the heck I’m doing once I get back to Europe!)

Nationality Is Too Complicated, I'm Just a Melbourne Girl

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia!

Yes, I am home… Just for four weeks. It was a surprise for my family and friends. Since Sal didn’t end up coming for our planned six-week trip, I had some spare time on my hands and a very generous offer from my step-dad to be flown home for a visit.

It’s been really wonderful catching up with everyone. It’s strange, but it doesn’t feel like I’ve been away for nearly five months. The only things that reminded me I was gone were my bedroom, which was filled with bathroom renovation junk, and the fact that I tend to respond to my little brother and sister in Italian when they wake me up too early in the morning!

Now the great thing about being home, besides seeing loved ones, is that I get to visit all my favourite Melbourne spots. There are plenty of valid reasons why this place has won “The World’s Most Liveable City Award” twice, but my favourite thing about it is that Melbourne is a city of cached richness and character.

When you arrive in Melbourne, you are not greeted with mind-boggling history (like, for example, Rome), iconic landmarks (Sydney), or the sense that you have exited reality and landed on the set of every Hollywood film ever made (Los Angeles and New York). However, if you look closely, you will find a wealth of tucked-away culinary institutions, creative coffee houses, quirky clothing stores, beckoning bookstores, outbursts of spontaneous off-beat street art (like a stack of shoes hanging from lines in a tiny alley), and a hundred little laneways packed with every intriguing thing you can imagine. Yep, I’ll say it again: I love my city.

Compared to Europe, it may seem young and un-tested, but the other day, I had a thought about that… I was driving through Carlton (my favourite place in the world – and not just because I was born there!) and I realised that Melbourne has got character and authenticity like nowhere else. It doesn’t offer what most European cities do. It has no ancient history, breath-taking views, traditional cuisine or robust cultural heritage to lure you. Melbourne is for the curious; for the inquirers; for the ones who are willing to get under its skin, inject themselves into its vessels and course through its veins. And as we all know... veins lead to hearts.

When I was younger, all I could think about was going overseas and seeing all the cities I’d spent my spare time reading about; but over the past few years I really fell in love with this town.

When it comes to nationality, I’ll be honest with you; I am so mixed-up that sometimes I don’t feel like I am particularly anything. This is a common consequence of colonisation and immigration! Of course I am Australian, but then, when people look at me, they always ask, “Yeah, but what’s your background?” That leads to a complicated history lesson on just how my family came together from all over the place to create me. It makes it difficult to identify with any one national heritage. But at the end of the day, if someone needs to know where I’m from, the most accurate statement I can make – and one I always make with pleasure – is that I am a Melbourne girl.

Recommended Reading – The Melbourne: A History of Now by Maree Coote (This book is more interesting than it sounds! It’s got cool pictures and eccentric stories)

Basel

Apologies for my absence from the blogging world! I realise it has been a couple of weeks since I promised you an account of Basel – the city I loved best during my visit to Switzerland – and I am very sorry for the delay.

Well… where do I start? I spent my last day in Switzerland with my friend Shadi – a truly magnificent person. I arrived Saturday morning and departed Sunday morning, but it was a 24-hour period I will never forget! Loving a place comes easy when you are there with an awesome person and when the place itself has some kind of intrigue about it.

The ability to intrigue is a quality I rate very highly in life. It’s the reason I’m into notebooks with squares instead of lines, Humphrey Bogart movies, little Melbourne laneways, Antoine De Saint-Exupèry, fresco paintings, anything with pistachios, and of course…

Basel.

It helped that I had a ‘tour guide’ who knew all the interesting stories. Let me tell you how the day went and hopefully I can adequately convey some of the fascination I felt.

Shadi picked me up from the station and took me to her home in Basel-land. That’s a half-canton. Why? Because the two halves of the Basel canton couldn’t get along, so they split into half-cantons, called Basel-Stadt and Basel-land. More on that later…

When Shadi and I are together, the priority is always chocolate. Our first stop was therefore a little café that produces a chocolate chip pastry to remember! We got chatting about Sandy’s notion that adding an ‘os’ to an Italian word is close enough to speaking Spanish. So we gave this language a crack and laughed away all the calories endowed by the pastry.

From time to time, everyone needs to laugh ‘till their abdominal muscles hurt. It’s good for you. The only trouble is that once you reach that point of hysteria, you are no longer any good to society. A little boy at a table near us fell off his chair, causing two tables in his path of destruction to fall like dominoes. I watched it all happen as if in slow motion. I could have stopped the dominoes, but alas, Shadi and I were too busy laughing and expressing our worthless sympathy for the boy in Sanshatanos – our version of Spanish – which just made us laugh all the more.

After the hysteria, we went for a little walk around the city. It was pouring rain and my shoes were completely saturated. So saturated, in fact, that the next morning when I packed them they were still wet. By the time I unpacked them back in Siena, thousands of tiny mildew communities had sprung up all over. It was disgusting. Of course, they are now part of Siena’s landscape – or should I say, landfill.

Anyway, there are three things I saw during this soggy walk that particularly captured my attention and quickly took up permanent lodgings in the old heart…

SOMETHING UNUSUAL

“I’m going to show you something that even most people in Basel don’t know about,” said Shadi with a hint of mystery.

As we crossed the street, I thought she might have been talking about the revolving disc built into the asphalt (used for turning cars around when there are lots of vehicles parked curb-side). Apparently the Swiss will do anything to get out of a three-point turn. But that wasn’t it. On the other side of the street we entered an undercover walkway, between two uninspiring buildings. I peered toward the light at the end of the tunnel expecting to see something interesting on the other side, but when we were no more than two steps into the walkway, Shadi said, “Stop. Do you notice anything strange?” (I should mention at this point that I only talk to Shadi in Italian so nothing is exactly what she said).

I scanned the area dubiously, realising that this concrete passage was the spectacle I had satched my shoes for. At first it seemed like any other city thoroughfare – practical and consequently ugly. However when I looked closer I realised that the posters were upside down and there were black and white panels on the roof resembling a pedestrian crossing. Where the heck am I? I thought to myself.

Shadi explained that the zebra crossing was on the roof and the posters upside-down because, for the minute you are walking through this passage, you are ostensibly walking on Heaven. It was so random, clandestine and unexpected that I loved it straight away. I can’t explain the irony, the paradox, of having such a poetic and chimerical concept portrayed in such a dank and insignificant passageway. To me, that kind of contradictory juxtaposition is so lovable. Does anyone know what I mean?

SOMETHING MOVING

Next we stopped in at St. Martin’s Church, which, besides having an awesome medieval sun-clock, told a beautiful story from the life of Saint Martin of Tours.

Shadi pointed to a statue on the outer wall that represented St. Martin on a horse, cutting his cloak with a dagger. I didn’t know anything about Martin at the time so, for all I knew, he could have been a masochist like Saint Catherine of Siena whose head and thumb are a short walk from where I am sitting right now, just by the way. Martin was not inclined to torture himself, however.

This guy was a Roman soldier in the 4^th century A.D. who, during a snowstorm, cut his cloak in half to share it with a beggar in the street. That night he had a dream in which he saw Jesus wearing the cloak and saying to the angles, “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clothed me.” Martin then left the military, converted to Christianity and became a monk.*

I love it because he lived what it says in James 2:15-17,

“If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have [deeds], is dead.”

It still gives me shivers when I remember the moment I looked up at that statue and realised for the first time that there had existed a person who, 1600 years later, was still talked about for showing kindness to someone in need. Imagine that was the thing that everybody through the ages remembered about your life. How beautiful.

SOMETHING HILARIOUS

Now to close out this mammoth blog, I will return to the story I touched on last time about the Lällekönig (‘the tongue king’). Oh dear… I can barely contain myself even now! Just to get you all on the same page as me, here is a picture:

The Rhine River divides the city of Basel into two parts, Grossbasel and Klienbasel (or Greater and Lesser Basel respectively). It’s pretty fair to say that these two communities are not the best of friends. To support this statement, I submit Exhibit A: the Lällekönig; and Exhibit B: the Vogel Gryff Carnival.**

The Lällekönig is mounted on a Grossbasel building overlooking the river, and as you can see in the picture, he spends his days poking his tongue in and out at Kleinbasel.

How does Kleinbasel respond? With an annual festival, of which the high point is three costumed Kleinbasel citizens floating down the river, doing a little dance for the sole purpose of wiggling their butts at the Lällekönig, and consequently at the side he represents. The bit that cracked me up the most is that this tradition is hundreds of years old! I thought they had more class back then! More decorum! Nope. They were just like any other mob of Mexican-waving fans at the MCG.

In January, I HAVE TO find a way to get back to Switzerland to see this spectacle!

As for the rest of the day… we had fondue for lunch (for you Australians who think that’s a bowl full of chocolate into which you dunk your fruit, cake and marshmallows: it’s melted cheese with bread for dipping, not chocolate, unless otherwise specified). After that, we did a little shopping, stopped for a hot chocolate and went home to watch DVD’s. It was a fantastic day – thanks Shadi!

Well, I will leave it there. For those of you who have just given up the three years it takes to read this entry, thanks :)

* http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~eknuth/npnf2-11/sulpitiu/lifeofst.html#tp

** http://www.swissworld.org/en/geography/towns/basel/