TrainItalia isn’t actually all that bad, now that I’ve gotten to experience the full range of locomotives it deploys. The train from Venice to Milan is a fast modern affair, and we blow through the countryside at a grand clip, putting our pokey Acela Express to shame through and through. Nothing quite so entertaining as thundering by traffic on the freeway at speeds twice as fast. Here, in the northern country, things finally start looking productive. Farms, industrial warehouses and buildings dominate our journey, and I hope all the menfolk are hard at work somewhere in them, because Italy seems to be a country largely dominated by women from our brief taste of it so far.
Our seat mates on the train are a pair of fashionably attired Italian women, probably to be expected of individuals going to Milan. I’ve trained Bee Jin to watch for what is important to look for in women, the aesthetic gold so to speak. She nudges me excitedly, with the idea that one of the women are close to ideal. Afterall, this specimen has golden hair, a particular feature made by blond hair on tanned skin, something she has gravitated on for quite a while. I roll my eyes at her excitement. At the station in Milan she interrogates me on my lack of interest.
“Underage Bee Jin!” I exclaim.
“But she has nice boobies, and golden hair!” she protests. If my eyes could roll anymore, they would be tumblers on a slot machine.
“Look at the jaw line, and her cheeks! Entirely too much baby fat attached to her face, and didn’t you see the bracelets she was wearing? Little puppy dogs and hearts? What woman beyond the age of sixteen do you see wearing that bunk?”
“Sixteen? You think?” She asks incredulously. I smile grimly and nod. “There was nothing to see there.”
Milan is an impressive station, built with an arching lattice of steel and glass, the station’s overhang conveys grace and power at once, and Bee Jin stops to snap a couple pictures. Just off the platforms, Gucci, and other shops of its caliber crowd the marketplace, intruding into the travel area like I’ve not seen yet in Italy. Milan however, is just a way station, and minutes later we’re on another train to Genova.
At the station however, just before the train pulls out of the station, I get a taste of a popular Italian scam. Two young girls rush through the cabin distributing little leaflets that supposedly describe a destitute situation involving a newborn baby. Minutes later, they come back to ask for change, and their leaflets back! As curious an approach to panhandling if I’ve ever seen one.
This train isn’t as modern or as fast as the one that brought us to Milan, but even so, it manages speeds that would put our Acela Express to shame, rumbling along the mountains at speeds that still put automobiles in our dust. To get trains through this mountainous area at such speeds, tunnels are paramount, and we pass through several before we trundle into the Genova central station.
Genova is when I start pushing the envelope of my Italian, slinging words and phrases I see around me together.
“Duo billiggteria a Montorosso par favore.” The ticket lady answers in a chatter of Italian, and I realize helplessly that though I can slam an interrogative and declarative down with enough confidence and accent to be taken for a proper italian speaker, my comprehensive skills are non-existent.
“Scusi-mi?” I mumble, the wind suddenly deflated.
“18 euros.” Comes the response.
This story is to repeated often, now with a week in country, I’m picking up enough Italian, and applying the six years of French and six months of Spanish I’ve had in me to piece together enough to create a working language out of Italian. It proves to be an exciting game, where I am rewarded with instant comprehension by the person I’m speaking to, and I fail to understand a damn thing they’re saying back to me. Still, it’s a start, and the failure to understand is hardly any reason for me to not continue my attempts.
In any case, we are directed to an underground platform for the train to Montorosso, The train is a slow pokey thing, that stops at every stop possible, inching our way down the coast towards our destination of Cinque Terre. And it is quite a coast, the landscape is stereotypically mediterranean, the warmth and fantastic landscape something quite typical of my own home in Los Angeles.
Here the train is packed with old French Tourists eager to get on the Italian Riviera, and young Italian highschool students traveling home from their schools in Genova. Italians are a tan bunch, a lifetime, and generations basking in the warm sun of the peninsula, have led to a culture that worship the sun as much as any Californian, and probably more. From golden teens, to leather skinned elders who enjoy chasing the sunshine at any opportunity, I can only approve of their idea of the good life.
Montorosso is the northern most town of the Cinque Terre, a set of five towns on the northern Italian coast that have a reputation for being the less well known cousin of the French Rivera. They’re all within five miles of each other, linked by many trails as well as trains. It is here we are to spend our last few days in Italy, and upon our exiting the train, it becomes apparent that it was a good choice. The station exits some forty feet from the waterfront, a small beach lined with umbrellas and beach chairs lines the impossibly clear water.
Montorosso is small enough, that its not known to harbor reservations for people just staying one night, but hotel after hotel that I call, is completely filled up. Thankfully, tourist information points us to the only place left that still has open rooms, and we find ourselves with excellent seaside views steps away from the sand. I take the time to dive into the Mediterranean, an amazing body of water high in salinity, high in temperature, and disgracefully lacking in the wave department.
After our evening swim, we take the time to poke around Montorrosso. It’s a very picturesque environment, with restaurants clinging to the rocks on the cliffs, offering fine fare and stunning views. I poke into an old German pillbox, meant to protect the area against the Allies should they decide to go poking around and invade the Axis’s preferred vacation spot before they went and grabbed the French Riviera for themselves. The view is great, the ability to machine gun down enemies apparent, but after a few minutes of clambering the rocks hunkered down, I find all the weak points, the access routes that allow you to get up close and throw in a grenade, or squeeze a burst from a flamethrower and toast the inhabitants. If invading the Italian Riviera is necessary, I got the plans for its successful execution.
The rest of the town is a small collection of bars and eateries, all which are packed at this late hour. A collection of singing and dancing in the center of the town attracts our attention, and we find that they’re selling lasagna and risotto to the accompaniment of the music. We’re apparently stumbled on some sort of fundraiser, and we hand over our euros to chow on some entirely mediocre food. They also sell lemon peel glasses, and after befriending an American from Seattle who is traveling by her lonesome, she explains to us that we’ve stumbled on a festival of fishermen. Apparently, when a fisherman dies by the cruel hand of the sea, the fishermen all get together once a year, and sing songs to the widow’s wife in mourning. Over time, the festival has expanded to include the restaurants and bars, and everyone sings and cavorts on whether anyone has really died or not.
Which is fine, but does nothing to explain the damn lemon glasses. Having given us this piece of information, our newfound friend dances away into the crowd to rejoin the festivities, leaving us as puzzled as before. We finish the evening in a local pub, apparently well frequented by Americans, as they’ve left defaced dollar bills throughout the entire establishment as evidence of their passing. Moretti is the local beer here, and though it ranges from lager to a mild amber, I find it quite pleasing despite its lack of prestige.
