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.
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| LOOK at that BRICK. You can google better images. |
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| Ceiling of gold. You know. |
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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.
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| The tiny streets of old town. |
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| ...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.
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| 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.
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