quarta-feira, 21 de dezembro de 2011

TOSCANY... my love



I didn't foresee this one. The plan was to attend Vito's wedding in Salerno, and then head North Italy to my Number 1 in Travel Wishes List: FLORENCE. The rest would go as it would come. And so it went, in June 2011.

What I didn't expect was to be striked by Italy's beauty in natural and cultural heritage in every city... Yes, I should have known better from History classes and common sense.
Rome had already surprised me in 2007 and hey! - we all have heard of the wonders of Venice or Florence or even Pisa... But little did I know when I thought that apart from Milan's fashion and some other historical cities like Genova... there weren't that many other ex-libris in The Boot.

Well I was really wrong. I got that impression already when I was asking around about what cities I should visit around Florence...
When I left Lisbon the plan was to do Salerno - some town close to it with Marcela and Riquita - Florence, Siena, San Gimignano and Cinque Terre.
The weather made me change plans and I ended up doing the following path:

- SALERNO, or to be more precise: Battiplaglia for the wedding. It was great to see Vito happy. He's an example to me. Salerno, in the end, was left without a proper visit.

- The plan to go to Pompei with the girls was ruined by the train schedules (and the unfriendly ticket-sellers :) ) and became a half-a-day trip to NAPOLI, in my eyes unworthy of a tourist visit, at least if payed on purpose.

- That train trip led to us to meet Arthur though. And that made me meet the beautiful CAPRI. The romantic Island definitely has its enchantments: a lot of quality of living is hidden amongst the houses that proudly scroll down the mountains while the luxury of the shops exhibits how expensive and posh it is to stay there... The trip around the island is worth it because of the "Blue Cave", where the under-cave ocean meets the most intensive cristal blue as the sunlight enters the massive hanging rocks from underneath... Unforgettable!

- From the Island, Napoli train brought me to the most expected FLORENCE. I had been wanting to go there since I missed it in 2007 due to fever... I expected a lot, I knew I would meet the origins of humanistic thought and arts. I knew I would stand in front of the major paintings that I studied for 6 months in Madrid... but I couldn't believe when I actually found myself in front of those masterpieces: Boticcelli's "The Birth of Venus" and "Spring"; the ancient realism of Masaccio's, Lippi's and Masolino's frescos depicting St. Peter's life at Capella Brancacci; the Duomo is a-ma-zing especially on the outside... But I was surprised with the concentration of architectural beauty, massive buildings that leave you out of breath... at every corner.

STOP...
This was all I managed to write close after return. I also remember Luana with whom I shared a 6 people-room in Firenze - a Brazilian medical intern that I want to go back in touch with, who knows to share "El Camino de Santiago"... For now I shall add to my own Italian Impressionism that:

- LUCA left a mark on me for the welcoming of the owner of the guest house that I took 1 "lost" hour to find; the gentleness of the restaurant girls who had me eat gnocchi and a glass of wine toped with a typical warm drink and cookies... in a perfectly romantic yet alone outside evening dinner. The wall that surrounds the city leaves a unique space for walking and gave me the guts to ride a bike on my own: indeed so simple, I just need to let go! Finally the view from the tree-decorated top of one of the towers also touched my senses as so-like grown-up and kids carried on with their lives in the midst of the brown city right below my feet.

- The TOSCANY natural landscape, its green mountains bottomed by shy-flowing rivers, the calmness of the wooden houses... all of it and more would have been strange to me if only I hadn't taken the wrong train from Luca to Pizza. When 1h30 later I finally realized it (as all my travelling was a bit improvised and went as it came), I had the luck to be allowed into a return train while it moved in departure already... where I traveled alone with the humble driver and the windy opened windows with its flowing curtains making a spectacle inside the cabine! I FELT SO FREE as I put my head out to the Toscany sun! I felt so happy for getting lost and being blessed with such sights and sense of adventure!! (happy for feeling lost just as last week I was happy for falling down when playing basketball... I think I'm missing the adventure I didn't live as a child :) ).
A lot more of marvellous Toscany is left to see: for example, its lemon fields I was told in the meantime. It's for sure a place to come back to. Who knows San Gimignano?

- From PISA I only expected a picture. You do get half-marvelled half déjà-vu feeling from being in front of the only monumental area, but I still thought it was worth it for the delight of my touristic journey. But what made Pizza a definitely good bet was "my no such thing as a" coincidence... meeting Sonja in the Jazz Concert by the river. It all started because I wanted some art: I was craving for music or some sort of collective happening even as I saw political demonstrations for the national voting that was about to happen in June. 10 minutes after installing myself in a 6 people bedroom, I left to speak to tourism office and learned what I would do after. I decided to attend that supposedly political.party supporting concert. And as Sonja subtly joined me in the table while we ate the food that Italians often offer with your drink - and repeated!!, the next 7 hours went by flying and the harmonic voice of the old jazz-lady, the lights in the canal and the passing youth in that cosy Pizza night... became a breakfast to say goodbye the next morning. Sonja is an easy-going philosopher from Frankfurt, with whom I found so fast so many things in common! I miss her, I'll soon go back to being in touch.

- SIENA, oh Siena! Siena was the most surprising place, and although Firenze as explained overwhelms you insistingly, Siena unexpected as it is... strikes you even more. It ended up being my favourite site in Toscany. Its central leaning Piaza del Campo that is showered by sun until late and is rulled by the municipal building... relaxes me; its up and down medieval rocky roads, all leading to this central oracle where horses run in July (a pitty I didn't witness it this time)... inspire me; the city overseeing arch that you reach through one of dozens of "hiden" wonders of architecture dazzles me (and also gives me vertigo); the circular giant vitral, which if I remember well lies among statues in the caves of the central church... makes all my aesthetical senses ring; and the diversity of the City Cathedral made me meditate at the INFINITE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF THOSE WALLS AND CEILING, the wonders of the constant music, the surprising "frescos" of the Ancient Library Room, and the details of the "starled sky", overlooking popes, and handy-crafted wood embelishing the walls... Oh my God, all of that made me dream, sit there for around 2 hours and even sleep over a SUBLIME "perfectness" feeling... that no historical memory of oppression or massive dogma would ever make me overlook.


- ROME was a nice one-day return where I allowed myself just to walk and feel the city. It's grandious, that's for sure, and the cheap accommodation next to central train-station resulted quite handy. So has the roaming on my mobile as I could give my granny a phone-call just next to an image a St. John Paul the II right at the Vatican, as the celebration of his sanctification was displayed in all of St. Peter's Piazza walls. I knew that as in 2007 ('06?) it would make her happy, and I'm far from having given back all she has done for me since I was born. Eating the "Posioned Apple-like ice-cream", buying Limoncelo (great discovery by the way), watching street artists and watching a Russian Culture fantastic show in plain Piazza Navona, being walked "home" by the charming 19 year-old argentinian with whom I ended up throwing the "hope coins" into the touristic Fontana di Trevi... these are some of the memories I won't leave from short 2011 Rome.

Again traveling alone did its tricks: I do live well by myself, I do meet people, I do finally feel healthy "Saudades", I do get to know the spots, I do get adventurous, I do try new stuff like sleeping in shared rooms (from whom I end up meeting no-one as I enter such late night all the time), holding my all-purposes bag between my limbs, I do stutter at the beautiful of nature and man construction... not lacking the possibility to share it with a co-traveller.
Don't I have friends and family to travel with? "Porsupuesto!" But indeed my availability to renew myself, stand for hours in front of paintings if I want, change plans, be touched by unexpected details but not notice or just pass by major ex-libris, my openess to get to know the places as I feel like... is incomparable.
And then there's the shared travelling. I love it too. There's space for all.

My Maia, my fate



WITH MAIA AROUND THE WORLD

I'm writing from Reykjavik, in Iceland, right as my dear Maia packs her bag to leave this cold graceful island with me.
With Maia it's forever like this, ever natural, ever sister-like.
It had been 4 years since we had met and I know you know what I mean when I say that really no time has passed: just stories, knowledge, maturing, relationships, trips, discoveries, experiences... all of that adding up to our closeness and mutual admiration... And which we easily share around subsequent home-cooked meals prepared by her with the most important ingredient: tenderness, love (tal y como con Tita - "Como agua para chocolate").

MAIA is hence not part of this blog's memory, but she for sure deserves a significant paragraph of this bible of trip registers. This "Mexican-looking" ;) small girl from the Basc Country is the best result of all my so said "lonely" trips I've been doing since I was 15 years old.
Maia and I happened something like my last night in long-gone Paris, back when "la grand canicule" (? - as she just put it) happened: the warmest summer, 2003.
Hours of night talk resulted in a timeless spaceless friendship, that has joined us in Lisbon, Donosti/San Sebastian, Ondarroa, Helsinki and now Reikjavik.
Maia is the example for me of an accomplished thinker, still living to the fullest ¡t her life, femininity and artistry, always going beyond the surface of peoples and their "arts", always finding the smallest reason to laugh, always strong-willed and defending justice; traveling, studying and singing her way through life in spite of all the learnings that she simply wouldn't let bitter her, not ever!
Maia, here's one of our hugs!

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Can't believe it's been more than one year since I last shared thoughts here. No doubt about it: it reflects the speed in which I've been living. Well the new year's resolution, I've been anticipating it for 2 months now - it's quite hard on me as it counters my forever pattern: running from "home" by over-scheduling, being a workaholic, resting on what I'm successful at and not leaving space for resting or simply "being"...
I share it here as this year I decided I need to make it public: something needs to change and I'm not sure I'll be able to inforce it on my own. Year after year I reach the "too tired", the "too far from living, from my health, from sleep, from boyfriend, from friends".... And being in love, loving tremendously what I do at Jason... can't be and excuse. It's in me.
That having been said, 2012, even with rising responsibility, must be the WORK-LIFE BALANCE finding year.

REYKJAVIK AND THE CHRISTMAS FEELING

Reykjavik was short in time and full in sharing. It is little and, all covered in white, what astonished me the most is the short time of light in Winter, the rain-dear soup in round opened bread at "Svarta... Caffee", the hot hot tubs, the Blue Lagoon, the dried lava that changed the landscape, how easy you are in -3 degrees if only you wear the proper clothes; the permanent whiteness of everything snow touches, and the home-like cafeterias where Iceland proudly exhibits the happiness and good life-quality of its people.
Even more: the Christmas feeling expressed in lights and decoration which miss no window, no building, no bridge, no airplane.
I now understand when Johan says he gets no Christmas feeling in Lisbon: truthfully the female chorus singing in the street while the smoke from street-cooked sweets embraces you and red christmas lights create the scenario, only further completed by lightly falling snow while you're in your cosy clothes... that's indeed a Christmas setting.



The most ZEN moment(s)?... For sure bathing in 40 degrees celsius waters in external spa pools while it snows and winds in your shy uncovered head, definitely the mysterious look of the hot smoking water while you indulge in the pleasure and relaxation of feeling no body weight and no cold against the open sky in plain ICEland.
Curious findings about this place?... So much natality!; in an Island bigger than Great Britain live 300.000 people; the surnames here are substituted by the father's name to which they add "son" or "daughter"; they're totally not environmentally-conscious: they waste energy, they waste water, they have no consciousness of the limitedness of the resources: privileges (and blindness) of who has the blessing of having enough to waste.

Taking it easy... Next to see upon return: well geysers, volcanos, auroras borealis... All that I had managed not to expect too much but still had the illusion of being in the presence of. It definitelly suited us better as it was: calm for me, Maia and Gunnar.