JandalsnAll

The woman opened her eyes as if she had felt my gaze through her eyelids and I glanced away quickly, pretending I’d actually been looking at something really interesting out the window all the while. Outside, sepia toned clusters nestled deep in the mountainous landscape go whizzing by, extraordinary and beautiful habitats – to my unaccustomed eyes.

The woman across from me is peering into her handmirror now, oblivious, uninterested in any but her own beauty. Satisfied, she leans back and closes her eyes again, allowing me to contemplate her freshly decorated face – ready to feign ignorance should she look up…

It’s a weary face, tired and abused by the sun. Wine coloured eyeshadow (appropriate in this country of wine makers) settles in the creases of her eyelids. As I stare at her mouth which droops lazily to one side, she opens her eyes and so I shut mine just in time to obey the unspoken rule of all trains- never, ever, make eyecontact.

The train slows to a stop as we reach La Spezia and we, the woman with the droopy mouth and I, sit in silence as people disembark or board, each busy with their own life.

I look up only to find my own face under scrutiny from the woman with the weary face. She obediently looks away and I wonder what she thinks of my own undecorated face, a dirty hat holding back my unfashionably uncoloured, not to mention unwashed, hair. How very un-Italian.

The train splutters to life again and I start to prepare myself to get off at the next stop. I consider what lies ahead of me: a long awaited rendevous with the coast after three weeks landlocked in Germany. At least that is what I intend, though I’ve seen nothing of the ocean outside my window yet. But the sky is different over there and I think maybe it could be waiting for me just around the next bend. But before I catch a glimpse of what Im looking for the train enters a tunnel and my window becomes a black wall. Two minutes and still darkness. Then three and four. For all I know we could be passing the ocean right now.

For some reason I get nervous when I have to disembark a train. Maybe its something about those automatic doors and that gap that drops to the tracks. This eternal tunnel isnt helping settle my nerves. What if the tunnel never ends, the train never stops and Im forced to talk to the woman the weary face? And then, there is a flash of light and I catch a fleeting glimpse of pale blue, then another, and finally daylight and the long awaited sight of the ocean meeting the sky.

The train stops at my destination and hauling my pack on my back I manage to exit the train without getting stuck in the doors and dragged along side the train, or falling down into the abyss. And so, here I stand in Riomaggiore, at the gate way to the Cinque Terre, the ‘Five Lands’.

The tiny trainstation sits high into the side of a cliff (that explains the tunnel). Far below the vast ocean slaps against the rock, a heaving momentum carried across miles and miles of wide open space. I walk through another tunnel to find the main street of Riomaggiore opening up to my left. And when I say main street I mean it only in comparison to the tiny town that rises high on either side of it. This is no High St or Queen St, more annonymous alleyway, or insignificant town square.

Pastel coloured buildings, four storeys high, line the street as it stretches up towards the mountains. High above me shutters swing free and local laundry moves in the breeze. I start climbing up the cobbled road, past a deli with a paint-palette of fruit outside the door, past a sign that says: ROOMS CAMERE ZIMMER’ and another … and another. All the way up the street signs like these (some with accompanying photo collages) vie for my attention (and my cash). I pass a group of old men, listening to them cackle and gabble like old women. They watch with no reservations as I walk to the door of La Dolce Vita accomodations. A woman chatting to a man in the doorway greets me with a ‘BuonGiorno’ and waits. ‘l’Ostello questo?’ I enquire, aware that this is possibly neither correct nor polite. I point at the floor to try to clarify my question. It works. She takes a key and beckons for me to follow. She understands. I can speak Italian. Either that or Im about to be locked away for my ignorance.

I walk behind her down the street, aware of how authenitically Italian she looks with her grey hair pulled back in a bun from a strong face, knee-length woollen skirt and sensible shoes. I do suppose women all over the world wear knee-length woollen skirts and sensible shoes at a certain age, but somehow they dont seem to make it look so…..Italian. We walk up two sets of marble stairs, through a door into a stifling heat and the strong smell of bleach, reassuring me that at least something has been cleaned. She shows me a room with three beds, sparten but clean. ‘I need passport, you pay when you leave’ and she’s off down the stairs.

The heat in here is more than I can bear after dragging my pack round and working up a sweat, so I open the windows,and then the shutters, and peer down into the street below. The now familiar sound of an unfamiliar language greets me. Breathing in the cool air I listen and look. Across the street, a storey up, a night gown dances outside a window. I look around for undies (just out of curiosity understand) but it seems the locals hang their delicates indoors…

I head back outside, down the hill towards the sea and come to a piazza that seems so intimate I wonder if I might have wandered onto someone’s property. But the only non-public spaces here are those of the verandahs high above and the doorsteps below. Narrow walkways and steep stairs wind in and out from the main street, leading from doorstep to doorstep. Looking down from the square whre I stand I get a view of the ocean stretching away to an empty horizon, and directly below, rows of brightly coloured dinghies, upturned, patiently awaiting their next voyage.

Behind me, the town of Riomaggiore slithers down a slope. Before me, the sea beckons and sighs.

Tags: Italy

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.