One Trullo, Two Trulli, A Beautiful Tree.

Soon after strolling through Bari's old town my Aunt suggested to show me the Trulli (name derived from Onions). I had no idea about what they were and why we had to drive for so long for them, but the end result made me ridiculously happy.

"I wish I was on a horse."

 

Alberobello literally translates as Beautiful Tree, it is a small town situated around the phenomenal old Trulli village. They were built a while back by brilliant folks who were very heavily taxed. According to my aunt, it was the local lord that would get taxed heavily and in order to cut down his and his people's losses he had a brilliant plan. Like today, the more prosperous a location is, the higher the taxation, back then it was more along the lines of how well are the people on you plot of land doing? Lots of healthy people and animals? Food a plenty? The houses aren't falling apart? KA-CHING.

Somebody was there to save the poor folks...

So the lazy/sympathetic/tax-disliking lord asked the folks to somehow move whenever the tax collectors would swing by. Thus the structure of the Trulli was born. The roof was entirely built of pebbles/flints from the farmed land (the Italian terrain isn't naturally a gods gift for planting olives, it's actually full of rock shards from which most of the Mediterranean region builts garden and plantation walls), layed out in such a balanced manner that in needed no adhesive.

 Most importantly, when the tax collectors were spotted coming up a mountain, the removal of a single rock would cause the entire roof of the house to cave in. People would grab their prized possessions, their animals and wander off into the nearby forest, greenery, beautiful trees, etc. Meanwhile baffled tax collectors couldn't understand why such hard times had befallen the region.

Wikipedia says it looked like this.

So basically they would leave thinking there was nobody left to tax. Nowadays they know better.
As we hiked up the hills, streets and pathways I fell in love.

However most of the pedestrian paths are steep flat marble steps. Italians have excessive amounts of marble which the use everywhere giving off a refreshing chill for hot summer and causing the walkways to become slippery hazards in any other weather. After tackling that we got to some of the most gorgeous views of the streets and shops. Most of the trulli are used today as houses, restaurants and tourist attractions. The famously painted symbols of various origins can be found on some of the roofs. The best known row of such branded huts on via Monte Pertica hide the most endearing shop.

The shop is owned by a lovely lady named Maria. She started the small business by selling handmade linen goods and expanded to general craft work from the region. Because of my relation to my aunt and my overly enthusiastic reaction to her shop she ended up giving me an adorable green sparkly travel bag for delicates and pjs.

The owner Maria Claudia and her work behind her.

She is so popular with Japanese tourists that they often invite her to Japan and the front part of the shop is decorated with photos of her own travel achievements and such gorgeous ceramic

Uncle and the owner Maria lovingly waving their hands around.

If you're in the South of Italy, Alberobello is definitely worth seeing. The history of the place is brilliant, people are friendly (as we see above), there is an absolutely fantastic restaurant that serves authentic Puglia-nese cuisine (my favourite cuisine thus far) which will make your socks explode. "Ristorante Trullo D'Oro". Warning: It's Delicious. Life will never be the same again.

More about food and a post travel tips in next episodes of Advanced Heroics.

Breaking Beautiful Bari

It sometimes seems like my entire family has been thrown around the globe by some hurricane of mythical proportions. Italy, England, South Africa, Israel, USA, Canada, Ukraine, Russia and poor old little Cyprus.
I have a great aunt who lives in Bari (that is pretty much on the other side of Italy from Bologna) with her Italian husband.

Damn it, 7 hours of train...

So they invited me to stay with them for a couple of days. I'm cheap and take the trains that take longer than they could, which is normally 5-6 hours. It seems to me one hour doesn't make that much of a difference when your entire day goes on travel, and it is thanks to the longer trips that I catch up with my reading, check out the scenery and meet new people! The Erasmus year can be time consuming and confusing, so a lot of your time goes out on trying to figure your role out in daily life, and that somehow drains your personal relaxation time. There are options of flying around Italy, but I think going through the hassle of an airport is more torturous.

So, the journey was uneventful, but it did emphasise the insane amount of gypsies that Italy possesses. And how very creative they are about gathering money on trains. They figure out two close train stops where they are less likely to get their non-existent ticket checked (years of practice, I assume), then run down two carriages at a time giving out little paper cut outs explaining that they are a single mother/father with 2 starving kids. It's usually a mother so the paper is written in feminine form and corrected to masculine by pen when needed. Legit, you guys! Either way, I arrived at Bari pretty late and was picked up from the train station by my zio who doesn't speak or understand any English or Russian except "idi kushat'!", which means "come eat!". I find this to be amusing since they're married for 10 years and my aunt became fluent in Italian after a couple of months of communicating with him.

The next day my great aunt and uncle gave me a tour of Bari before heading to Alberobello. We visited the Basilica di San Nicola and old town. The Basilica is notable due to its importance in the history of Christian and Catholic pilgrimage and Russians flock to it like (insert an animal that enthusiastically gathers) to (insert place or food of animal's choice) because Saint Nick is an important fella in the Greek and Russian Orthodox and a majority of his relics (remains) are kept in this very Basilica. What else is amazing is that the building has not been restored. Now if you don't know, historical restoration initially requires a large amount of destruction.

LOOK at that BRICK. You can google better images.

Ceiling of gold. You know.

As for the old town... Bari is generally stretched out along the coast, sitting on an enormous wall and canals which would keep the water from rising into the city. Now the wall is dry and the canals have houses built into them because of how the water levels fell with the centuries. It's an architectural phenomenon that applies to many port towns and cities, which I find amazing and frightening considering how much the world changed and how much it would suck to own a house in an ancient canal if it changed back!

Puglia is a gorgeous region.

The tiny streets of old town.

...and tiny arches.

My aunt proudly explained to me that although Bari likes its seafood, fishing is strictly controlled due to overfishing in the Mediterranean and Adriatic, most of the fish is line caught or by very small fishing boats with controlled nets. This made me very happy. I have a huge respect for when people respect their surroundings and especially their resources. It amazes me how little people realise that fish is as limited as any other living thing in the world, it also needs to restore its numbers and the Mediterranean and Adriatic coasts have been exploited since antiquity, except our population is a little larger nowadays.

Guilt-free, environmentally friendly, grilled with lemon juice!

Thus ended the first part of my excursion. What lay ahead was protected by UNESCO.

Coming up next... The Trulli of Alberobello: a short story of the most creative tax evasion tactics.