The Book of Thomas / The Book of John

We arrived from Italy late Saturday evening.

Early Monday morning, B had to fly to France for work.

It was strange, suddenly being away from her after the longest time we've spent together in our seven-year-long relationship....but she's coming home from France today and I used the time alone to catch up on this blog, writing about our Italy adventure.

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The only thing of note that occurred in my time alone was, I went to pick up the blank book Thomas Eisendle, the bookbinder, made for me.

Labor and materials, I have about $100 in the book. I'd given Thomas a little extra and asked him to create something one of a kind, instead of an ordinary bound book. The finished piece is about 12 inches tall, 9.5 inches wide, and about 1.5 inches thick, and has 200 pieces of paper in it.

Front cover

Back cover. Hard to see, but the bottom left corner protector is also yellow.

Opened

Thomas signed the book for me: "A book from the heart, for John."

 Thomas Eisendle, the bookbinder, with the book he made for me.

Italy--Final Day. Saturday September 04

We woke up early, had breakfast, then left for Salerno where we were to catch our train to Rome.

B's parents drove us there, along the coast road. The highway would've been faster but less direct and more confusing. We had plenty of time, so no worries.

We got to Salerno in about forty minutes, then crawled through town several kilometers until we found the train station. The center of Salerno on a Saturday morning is a busy place. The traffic creeps along, you hear the occasional honk of a horn (but nobody leans on it) and of course the scooters weave in and out of traffic, split lanes, and generally do as they please. Unlike Vienna, I saw nobody riding a bicycle. I think it would be suicidal.

We said our goodbyes at the train station. B's parents and sister had another week in Paestum.

Our train was scheduled to leave at 11:30 or so . We checked the board and, sure enough: DELAYED.

This time, they had a legitimate excuse---because of the rain, there'd been a landslide much further south. They had to clear the track before our train could pass. Thankfully we'd changed tickets the day before, figuring even a three hour delay would still get us to the airport in time....assuming the train from Rome's Termini to the airport wasn't fucked up, as well.

B asked one of the ticket agents if it was possible to get an earlier train. Yes----but they too were delayed because of the mudslide, AND you'd have to pay a fee for changing. Fortunately the conductor on board the train could take care of this. OK. We decided to take the first train to Rome that pulled into the station, and fuck the rest of it.

On the platform, we kept hearing a robotic announcement, first in Italian then repeated in English: "(The train in question) will be delayed 90 minutes." The thing is, no matter how much time passed, the amount of the delay remained the same instead of decreasing. It was always 90 minutes.

We looked at the electronic signs. The 90 minute delay was for the first train---the one we were now hoping to catch---not OUR train, which was 220 minutes delayed! Holy shit.

We had First Class tickets. The train cars are numbered 1 or 2. Our job was to get on the car with the 1 on it. We didn't expect to get seats----those would have been reserved. But if we were fast, we'd have a place to stow our luggage and maybe a place to lean against a wall for the long trip to Rome. B told me: "The location of the First Class car varies. It can be at the front, or the back. When the train pulls in, start looking. If you don't see a big 1 on the first car, run like hell for the back of the train!" If you're late getting in the car, you won't have a place for your luggage and you damned sure won't have a place to lean / squat, resulting in la fuck della cluster, as I think they say in Italy.

After about, uh, 90 minutes, the train pulled in. I scanned for the big number 1. "It's at the end---run for it!" We dashed like hares for the end of the train, dragging our luggage behind us. Got on, put our luggage on the rack, and claimed a place to stand / lean. All the seats were taken. After a few minutes, the train pulled out.

Sitting on his suitcase in the aisle way near the luggage rack was a pleasant man of about 40 who spoke excellent English. As I alternately leaned against the wall (dangerously close to the EMERGENCY BRAKE lever) or squatted down trying to get comfortable, and B sat on her suitcase, we and the guy commiserated with one another, kind of smiling and shrugging and generally glad we'd made the train---and hoping it wasn't delayed further down the track.

I couldn't place his accent but finally it emerged that he was a Turkish academic who'd been in Italy for a conference. B and the Turk talked a lot about place they'd visited in common, or about places she'd heard of in Turkey but never visited. Very interesting, pleasant, urbane, and mellow man, not the kind of Turk you might imagine from watching the old movie Midnight Express.

The train stopped in Naples. People got off, emptying some seats. We quickly grabbed two, and the Turk found one for himself. B said: "Expect to give these seats up, either immediately or further down the line. No doubt they're reserved." But in one of those weird southern Italy train-travel reversals of fortune, we rode those comfortable seats all the way to Rome. AND never saw the conductor, who would have charged us more for taking this earlier train.

And, biggest miracle of all: this train was a fast train to Rome, the fastest of the three kinds we could have taken. Our original train had been of the second-fastest variety. So the way it turned out, we actually got to the Rome Termini about 30 minutes before we were originally supposed to arrive----even though we'd taken a train that left later than we were originally supposed to leave!

It was as if the delay had actually reversed itself, the train propelling us through the time-space continuum to land in the future earlier than expected!

Fuckin' Italy....

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Hung around the airport for hours. Ate sandwiches. Read. Wrote. Watched people.

The crowd at the gate was growing. The plane arrived. There was a long line to board. I thought they'd board by row number, as usual. But B, very experienced flier that she is, saw something I didn't. "Get ready. Put your backpack on and follow me when I say."

Suddenly a second gate agent appeared and opened his gate to check the boarding passes! "NOW!" B said. We jumped up and were first in the newly-opened line and for the only time in my motherfucking life, I was the first guy on board a plane---which meant, no struggling to find space in the overhead, no having to wade through people, no wriggling into an already-seated row, no fighting for the fucking armrest.

Of course, the luggage loading machine broke down, so we were about forty minutes late leaving. But the pilot made up most of the time in the air, bringing us into Vienna only about ten minutes late.

And unlike Rome, we waited about five minutes for our luggage.

Got back home about 10:30, ready to settle in with a bottle of wine.

Greetings from John and B, back from Italy.

Italy--Day Nine. Friday September 03.

A rainy day. No swimming or laying on the beach.

We'd heard of a local place where the buffalo mozzarella was the best. But you had to get there early. So the five of us loaded up and drove the few miles to the place, only to find the parking lot packed. The farm had a big barn where the buffalo were standing around eating, a retail shop where you order the cheese, and a few other buildings dating from the time when this had been just a simple farm, instead of a small industry.

B went inside the packed retail place. You had to take a number, which she did---number 85. They were then serving number 48. So we wandered around a bit, looking at things and coming back every few minutes to check the progress of the line.

Converting hay into milk, which then gets converted into cheese.

After thirty minutes or so, our number came up. It was an efficient operation. You could buy any of three things: 1) butter 2) ricotta in small 1/2 kilo tubs, or 3) mozzarella, which by far was what most people were there for.

You tell the lady how much mozzarella you want, and whether you want the BIG balls, or the SMALL balls. The big ones are about baseball size, the small ones about golf ball size. She walks into the next room, where you can see her scoop the balls out of a large stainless steel tank filled with water and mozzarella. She puts the balls in a plastic bag, weighs them, and when the amount is right, she fills the bag most of the way to the top with water and ties it off.

We bought a tub of ricotta and 2 kilos of mozzarella. Total: €15, or about $19. That's $19 for 4.4 pounds of the finest buffalo mozzarella around, and 1.1 pounds of ricotta. The price, she does not suck!

Thanks for all that cheesy goodness, my friend.

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There are ancient Greek temples in Paestum, the remnants of what had once been a thriving Greek town dating from around 600 BCE. It was drizzling when they dropped me off, so I popped my umbrella and wandered around.

There were not too many people around, so I could get good pictures of the temples, though I did take a few with people in them just to show the sense of scale. There's a museum nearby with lots of artifacts, but I chose just to wander around on my own and think my thoughts.

As usual, the predominant impression I come away with is that nothing is permanent. These ruins were once a thriving town. The centuries took care of that, just like they'll take care of our cities, and us as individuals. We come, we go. Look at scenes from any old US newsreel dating from, say, 1910 and realize that almost all those buildings are gone now, and certainly all the people, even the infants. Nothing lasts and everything changes. 

Do these sorts of thoughts make you sad? Or do they make you glad you're here, able to enjoy the people and experiences you have available to you? 

For me, it's the latter.

This tourist-shot video gives you some good views of the ruins in Paestum.

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Later in the afternoon, B and I took a walk. We went about two miles down a back road. On our right, the large pine trees that extend much of the length of the coast between Agropoli and Salerno. To our left, small houses, open fields, and the inevitable pieces of trash stuck to fences and blowing down the road.

We got to a small street perpendicular to the beach. Souvenier stands and a few restaurants. The entire street looked pretty dead, no doubt because of the cloudy skies. We bought a few items at a small store, then went to the beach and walked back toward our hotel.

The beaches differ. Some are just unimproved stretches, some have a few lifeguard stands and tables and chairs. Many of them, sadly, were littered with trash---plastic bottles, beer cans, paper. Some had no litter of that type, but a lot of small twigs and leaves and other crap that the sea had spit out. I don't know if it's the currents along certain stretches of beach that creates these different piles of detritus, or just the laziness of the beach goers.

But there were no swimmers and no sunbathers, of course. It looked like it would rain at any moment. We did see several fishermen, however, their long fishing poles stuck into tubes they'd shoved into the sand.

Despite the dark skies and windy weather, it was a pleasant walk. When we finally got back to the hotel, we sat outside and stared at the empty tables, the sea, the hills of Agropoli and, across the bay in the other direction, the Amalfi coast. We both felt sad, having gotten to know the place and now having to leave it. We just sat there like that for several minutes, wondering what kind of dream we'd stepped into...and were now about to step out of.

On our beach on the last day, looking back toward Agropoli after our walk.

Our last sunset.

Italy--Day Eight. Thursday September 02

A thing that started off badly but ended up well:

B was getting nervous about our return trip. The original plan was to leave from Agropoli for Rome early Saturday afternoon (requiring a change of trains in Naples). Under ideal circumstances, that would get us to the airport in plenty of time. But two significant delays on two train trips made us believe we had to do something different.

At the Salerno train station the day before, B learned there was a direct train from Salerno to Rome, with no changes required. Changes can be problematic because if the first leg of the trip is delayed, you miss your connection. Direct travel is better.

The desk clerk at the hotel told us we could get everything worked out at the Agropoli train station. So we waited until late afternoon and drove in...and, in true southern Italy tradition, the fucking ticket office was closed. No explanation, no nothing----just a sign on the window saying CLOSED.

There was a small newsstand in the station. We went in and asked the woman why the ticket office was closed. She didn't know. When would it open again? She didn't know. As we left, B muttered "Africa...AFRICA!" over and over again. Meaning, southern Italian trains are like African trains insofar as reliability is concerned.

B remembered seeing a travel agent in Agropoli, but she couldn't remember exactly where. Maybe we could find it, and get our tickets there. We drove through town, which was packed tight with traffic (quitting time.) We found a place to park and walked about 100 meters and found the travel agent. This being Italy, there were two clerks, both occupied with people who appeared to be planning trips to the moon. We waited and waited and waited and time just seemed to drag on....

After about half an hour, a desk finally opened up. Long story short, the very nice travel agent lady 1) refunded our original tickets, and 2) applied the refund to our new tickets. So we got a better routing at no extra cost. A blessing----had the ticket agent in the Agropoli train station been open, they wouldn't have given us a refund on the original tickets (because they'd been issued by a travel agent instead of the train company), which means we would have eaten it.

B asked the lady why the train system is so fucked up. She said, "Because they're trying to run it like an airline, and that doesn't work with trains." We didn't know specifically what she meant by that, but OK.

So what looked bad at first turned out to be good. For the time being.

Because on Saturday, things got fucked up yet again when we got to the Salerno train station.

But more on that in a subsequent post.

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We went back to the hotel, rested up a few hours, then everyone loaded into the rental car and drove into the Italian night, back to Agropoli, to eat at Heinrich's favorite pizzeria.

It was hard finding a parking place. And when H. found one, a local man told him "This is for local cars only; if you don't have a parking sticker, they'll give you a ticket. €200 fine!" There was a lady cop nearby, directing traffic in the dark. H. walked over, explained the situation, and the cop said: "Sure. Park there if you want. But no more than two hours, OK?" Problem solved, in the dual Heinrich / Italian way.

These old European towns are magical in the evening. The lights give a yellowish cast.

Dark and quiet.

We found the place after walking around a bit. For some reason I didn't think to note its name, so I can't link to it----but I doubt it has a website, anyhow. The history: the restaurant has been around about 20 years. When B's parents first discovered it, there were hardly any customers and they worried the place might not survive. But now it has the opposite problem: it's so popular, it was hard to find a seat.

Not as if there's a place to sit inside. No---you sit outside, and the long wooden tables were jammed with people, most of them Italian. At first we couldn't get a place at a table, but finally someone finished and we grabbed our place. Then we walked around the corner to order.

The crowd enjoying the pizza on a Thursday night in Agropoli. No inside dining!

It works like this: you stand in line in an entryway leading to an incredibly tiny kitchen. Behind the microscopic counter, with just room enough for the cash register, the owner and two workers are busy making pizzas, then shoving them into stone ovens. It appears chaotic, like the deck of an aircraft carrier when they prepare jets for launching. 

Meantime a harried young guy is carrying finished pizzas out to the tables in huge, shallow baskets. The line was about ten deep, but it went quickly. The building, like all of them in this part of town, was ancient and the stone walls were thick. It was a tight squeeze in there.

Back outside with our beers, we watched the happy crowds. Every few minutes the young guy would come out and shout a number in Italian: "Number 90! Number 90!" Somebody would say, "Hey!" and raise their hand and the guy would drop off the basket(s), bus any empty spots, and run back inside.

Two young women sat at another table. One said, in English: "I can help you when your pizza comes---what is your number?" (She thought Heinrich didn't understand Italian---which he mostly doesn't, but he knows the numbers.) It shows the friendliness and kindness of the average southern Italian. 

Heinrich told her he didn't need help, but thanks, and went on to describe Heurigen (Austrian wine taverns) and their similarities to this restaurant, which Heinrich calls "the pizza heurige." Later, when the two women left, they smiled and wished us a polite "Buona sera!" Even though they knew we were fuckin' tourists. Whereas in Vienna, by contrast, they pretend they don't even know you, even if they do----a combination of shyness and aloofness but mostly the latter. I much prefer the Italians in this regard.

One of three pizzas we shared. Thin crust, great ingredients. Delicious.

A nice Italian evening, dining casually on (somewhat sloping) simple tables, sitting on long benches, in the middle of a crowd of (mostly) Italians, watching the occasional local guy walk by on his way somewhere (and greeting anyone he knew, if they happened to see each other), and great pizza. Plus, spending the evening with B's parents and sister: how many more times will I get to do this? The parents are elderly and B's sister has serious health problems, so you never know. It was a bit poignant, thinking about it, but the others seemed so happy about the atmosphere, I quickly rejoined them, pushing sad thoughts away.

Mindful of the two-hour special dispensation the lady cop had given us when we parked the car, we couldn't linger too long. The walk back through old Agropoli was enchanting, and the view from the parking place on the hill to the ocean below was other-worldly...yes. A September night in Agroploi, Italy.

You know, it was just an evening out...but at the same time it was way, way, more than that.