It was cold when I left Ragusa. Having nothing much to do, and hoping to warm up, I went to the train station early, but it was boarded-up, so I shivered on a bench outside. A one-car stub of a train pulled up and shuddered off again. The train to Siracusa, the old CRT monitor mounted by the track said, would be on track 2, which could be reached by walking across the tracks, which the signs urged you not to do. (There turned out to be smaller signs that just asked you not to do it when there are trains in sight.)
There was also a train arriving on track 1 at the same time, which would surely block access to track 2. But no one else was moving. Finally, I walked over and stood facing the other way, wondering whether people would follow, or call me back, or laugh, or throw fruit, which, incidentally, was for sale everywhere in Ragusa, and was delicious. One couple timidly came across, and seemed to agree with me; but then there was a slight delay for the Siracusa train, the other one arrived first, and the conductor confronted us. Siracusa? "La," he says, pointing disgustedly to track 1.
I don't tell this because it's an interesting story -- I'm sorry if it seemed to be going somewhere -- but because it's what about 60% of the actual traveling is like. A cycle of stress and slight weirdness, followed by disproportionate self-satisfaction when I finally check into a new hotel. Then the cycle begins again, moving forwards through daily epicycles of lower-stakes confusion.
The old regional train had heating and comfortable seats and windows covered in ancient smudges that made the landscape hazy and distorted, like the camera filter a hacky director might use to film a dream. Shepherd's huts of dry stone, white cliffs, dry riverbeds of white boulders. I ate delicious Sicilian almonds, which are a special treat in arid spots, because the widespread horror over their water requirements lends a sort of decadent, apres-moi-le-deluge feeling, like they're some cruel dainty from the table of a Roman Emperor. There were more and more lemon groves, and then we pulled into Syracuse.
The hotel is through a little hobbit door cut into an enormous wooden gate on Corso Umberto I. The operation in Ragusa was homey; this one is stylish: clean and monochromatic. Breakfast is in a posh restaurant three blocks away, and the bathroom soaps are little packets of flowery goo distilled from the rarest and most exotic botanicals (if I've translated the packet correctly, mine contains eidelweiss torn from the hands of a musical Austrian family fleeing the Anschluss).
Just up the street are the bridges to Ortigia, the little island that was the original Greek colony. Apart from a ruined temple to Apollo, not much is left from any period before the 1693 earthquake: Sicilian architecture at any time has been whatever was fashionable just after the last catastrophe. It's an odd uniformity after 2700 or more years of complicated history.
The Duomo has a plain, medieval interior, and is full of roaming gangs of teens seeking solitary or careless tourists to educate about the life of St. Lucy. They're deployed mostly in threes. When you stop to stare at something, you see them edging closer and closer in your peripheral vision. The sense of being stalked is very strong. They urge each other forward a bit, and then one of them steps up and blurts out an offer (in English) to tell you some things about the Saint and her artifacts. And they turn out to be quite nice, earnest kids. They showed me images of St. Lucy, pictures of her statue (which is only brought out twice a year for processions -- a reminder of how little ritual has changed in the last five thousand years), and a couple of her fingers. St. Lucy was quite finely divided after her death, and her remains are now far-flung. She was a major saint into the middle ages; everyone (sorry) wanted a piece of her. More complete are the remains of two other holy figures whose names I've forgotten and haven't yet had time to look up. Their bones rest, in skull-and-crossbones arrangements, on pillows of red velvet.
Also on Ortigia, a graffiti-covered walkway -- almost entirely declarations of love, except for a pair of smoking aliens who disapprove of police and a Marie about whom it is recorded that she is "strong and independent" -- and a long breakwater of 8' cement cubes you can hop along, two absurdly tiny beaches where the shape of the city has caused a bit of sand and gravel to be deposited, a side street full of ragtime music because someone thought it would help him sell earrings from a fold-out table, at least one accordionist, and a fried-fish place where I ate a sandwich and was rung up by the server's 5-year-old daughter -- a very serious girl, who also tried to read Ernst Jünger's memoir of the First World War over my shoulder (much like Fear of a Dutch Planet, it is "a memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism").
Away from the island is Neapolis, the "new" (but still quite ancient) city that contains most of the visible ruins. I walked there in a violent thunderstorm along a road named after the worst general of the First World War (Luigi Cadorna), getting down into the road at times to splash around tables set up by frond-sellers, who were incredibly numerous. I think there were so many because I was approaching the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Tears, a surprising concrete cone built to commemorate the miraculous weeping, in 1953, of a picture of Mary of the Immaculate Heart. The Sanctuary's web site, borne out by Italian Wikipedia, says that scientists tested the liquid and showed it to be real lacrimal fluid, and that this helped kindle the enthusiasm that found its ultimate expression in the construction of this startlingly ugly building. (It will eventually be demolished when science validates the tears wept by portraits of famous architects.)
The archaeological museum, too, has its problems. It's from the 60s, and is bold and eager to defy architectural conventions, especially the sensible ones. It's one of those buildings that can't actually be used for anything without all kinds of sloppy improvisations. Bits of it are closed off with rope, benches, and striped tape. In the entrance of the hard-to-find washroom in the basement, I sat on a plastic chair trying to wring out my socks and could see a row of headless statues lying down on pallets, amid stacks of supplies and piles of construction materials. Even so, its smashed pots are not bad, and it has some very interesting statues and ancient bric-a-brac.
The ruins in Neapolis include the Greek theatre (Aeschylus visited at some point, and put on a play or two in an earlier version of the theatre). The Romans, who had their own ideas about entertainment, added an amphitheatre nearby. There's also the odd limestone cave known as the Ear of Dionysius, into which you can freely wander, stray cats, and the taped-off areas and mysterious construction projects that represent the usual modern Italian contribution to these places.
There was also a train arriving on track 1 at the same time, which would surely block access to track 2. But no one else was moving. Finally, I walked over and stood facing the other way, wondering whether people would follow, or call me back, or laugh, or throw fruit, which, incidentally, was for sale everywhere in Ragusa, and was delicious. One couple timidly came across, and seemed to agree with me; but then there was a slight delay for the Siracusa train, the other one arrived first, and the conductor confronted us. Siracusa? "La," he says, pointing disgustedly to track 1.
I don't tell this because it's an interesting story -- I'm sorry if it seemed to be going somewhere -- but because it's what about 60% of the actual traveling is like. A cycle of stress and slight weirdness, followed by disproportionate self-satisfaction when I finally check into a new hotel. Then the cycle begins again, moving forwards through daily epicycles of lower-stakes confusion.
The old regional train had heating and comfortable seats and windows covered in ancient smudges that made the landscape hazy and distorted, like the camera filter a hacky director might use to film a dream. Shepherd's huts of dry stone, white cliffs, dry riverbeds of white boulders. I ate delicious Sicilian almonds, which are a special treat in arid spots, because the widespread horror over their water requirements lends a sort of decadent, apres-moi-le-deluge feeling, like they're some cruel dainty from the table of a Roman Emperor. There were more and more lemon groves, and then we pulled into Syracuse.
The hotel is through a little hobbit door cut into an enormous wooden gate on Corso Umberto I. The operation in Ragusa was homey; this one is stylish: clean and monochromatic. Breakfast is in a posh restaurant three blocks away, and the bathroom soaps are little packets of flowery goo distilled from the rarest and most exotic botanicals (if I've translated the packet correctly, mine contains eidelweiss torn from the hands of a musical Austrian family fleeing the Anschluss).
Just up the street are the bridges to Ortigia, the little island that was the original Greek colony. Apart from a ruined temple to Apollo, not much is left from any period before the 1693 earthquake: Sicilian architecture at any time has been whatever was fashionable just after the last catastrophe. It's an odd uniformity after 2700 or more years of complicated history.
The Duomo has a plain, medieval interior, and is full of roaming gangs of teens seeking solitary or careless tourists to educate about the life of St. Lucy. They're deployed mostly in threes. When you stop to stare at something, you see them edging closer and closer in your peripheral vision. The sense of being stalked is very strong. They urge each other forward a bit, and then one of them steps up and blurts out an offer (in English) to tell you some things about the Saint and her artifacts. And they turn out to be quite nice, earnest kids. They showed me images of St. Lucy, pictures of her statue (which is only brought out twice a year for processions -- a reminder of how little ritual has changed in the last five thousand years), and a couple of her fingers. St. Lucy was quite finely divided after her death, and her remains are now far-flung. She was a major saint into the middle ages; everyone (sorry) wanted a piece of her. More complete are the remains of two other holy figures whose names I've forgotten and haven't yet had time to look up. Their bones rest, in skull-and-crossbones arrangements, on pillows of red velvet.
Also on Ortigia, a graffiti-covered walkway -- almost entirely declarations of love, except for a pair of smoking aliens who disapprove of police and a Marie about whom it is recorded that she is "strong and independent" -- and a long breakwater of 8' cement cubes you can hop along, two absurdly tiny beaches where the shape of the city has caused a bit of sand and gravel to be deposited, a side street full of ragtime music because someone thought it would help him sell earrings from a fold-out table, at least one accordionist, and a fried-fish place where I ate a sandwich and was rung up by the server's 5-year-old daughter -- a very serious girl, who also tried to read Ernst Jünger's memoir of the First World War over my shoulder (much like Fear of a Dutch Planet, it is "a memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism").
Away from the island is Neapolis, the "new" (but still quite ancient) city that contains most of the visible ruins. I walked there in a violent thunderstorm along a road named after the worst general of the First World War (Luigi Cadorna), getting down into the road at times to splash around tables set up by frond-sellers, who were incredibly numerous. I think there were so many because I was approaching the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Tears, a surprising concrete cone built to commemorate the miraculous weeping, in 1953, of a picture of Mary of the Immaculate Heart. The Sanctuary's web site, borne out by Italian Wikipedia, says that scientists tested the liquid and showed it to be real lacrimal fluid, and that this helped kindle the enthusiasm that found its ultimate expression in the construction of this startlingly ugly building. (It will eventually be demolished when science validates the tears wept by portraits of famous architects.)
The archaeological museum, too, has its problems. It's from the 60s, and is bold and eager to defy architectural conventions, especially the sensible ones. It's one of those buildings that can't actually be used for anything without all kinds of sloppy improvisations. Bits of it are closed off with rope, benches, and striped tape. In the entrance of the hard-to-find washroom in the basement, I sat on a plastic chair trying to wring out my socks and could see a row of headless statues lying down on pallets, amid stacks of supplies and piles of construction materials. Even so, its smashed pots are not bad, and it has some very interesting statues and ancient bric-a-brac.
The ruins in Neapolis include the Greek theatre (Aeschylus visited at some point, and put on a play or two in an earlier version of the theatre). The Romans, who had their own ideas about entertainment, added an amphitheatre nearby. There's also the odd limestone cave known as the Ear of Dionysius, into which you can freely wander, stray cats, and the taped-off areas and mysterious construction projects that represent the usual modern Italian contribution to these places.
