The birch is an explorer tree. When the wood starts conquering uncultivated lands, it sends the birches first. They adapt quickly and grow fast: if they can do it, the wood advances quietly. This wonderful thing has been told me in Santhià and since then I’ve been willing to make a metaphore out of it, without succeding.
In the last two weeks my mood and my priorities had changed: legs acquired a constant rythm and resistance; trip surprises were fading out being me so used to new; future dreams started overcoming daily reality. Apart from the breathtaking northern cliffs, France ran out of thing to offer. The project had just to be completed, the story had to be completed. Narrative needs mostly. It was time to accelerate, to arrive: most of all, the burning desire to hug her, the one that I could not stand anymore to greet on the phone before going to bed alone.
fearful, anxious, hypocondriac, always unsatisfied, super-critical, prejudiced, cinical and selfish: I found a girl who loves me regardless of all those faults, you see why it was worth the effort and speed up to meet her before loosing control. When they say me “you are great” it make me laugh: I’m very smal; I just ran out of envy and I concentrate the few courage I had in one single moment: the one when I decided that I was actually going to do it. Once you step out of your house with your backpack there’s not much to do but going on. The problem is that you risk to catch the travel virus. If you really esteem me so much, don’t say that I’m great. Go out and walk instead, walk where you usually drive. You’ll see that no greatness is required. You’ll find wonderful things, you’ll be fine. Trust me, I’m not great, may be a small explorer. Like a birch…
Now, I don’t know what will I do with this blog, if it will remain as a journal for memory or if it will evolve. We’ll see. For sure I’m not going back in Italy. In a few days mt team from Terni will join me (with traditional means), bringing me a couple of bags with clothes, laptop and other tools: from that moment I’ll be able to edit the other video and photographic materials I collected during the trip; to those who are interested I ask for a bit of patience, the final product will come soon. In the meanwhile, here is some highlights:
Aperitive award: Papà Marcel (Aosta), Le Bout du Monde (Vevey), Chou Chou (Champlitte), L’equinoxe (Arras).
I Want To Live Here award: Bagno Vignoni (Toscana), Cassio (Emilia), Vercelli (Piemonte), Cully (Vaud), Mouthier Hautepierre (Franche-Comtè), Escalles (Nord-Pas-De-Calais), Barham (Kent).
Duly Noted award: “There’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s only bad gears” (Michele), “My ambition is to get Clint Eastwood’s wrinkles and Gandhi’s wisdom” (Maurizio), “My neighbor crossed the Atlantic in his car” (Luca), “To make cheese, just put flowers into cows” (Daniel), “Mola nen e bùgia!” (battaglione alpini susa 133° mortai).
p.s.: among the other reading instrument, my travel can now also be read through my Couchsurfing profile, rich in the opinions I left to my hosts and they left me (down on the left) after surfing their couches. A good register indeed, just as I anticipated.
Posted in What about now?
Terni, December 10th 2009 - Cambridge, March 17th 2010
Posted in You are so silly
Terni, December 10th 2009 - Canterbury, March 11th 2010
Posted in You are so silly
Terni December 10th 2009 - Calais March 10th 2010
Will to arrive. Strain, english curiosity, greed. By now feet (or whatever those lumpy potatoes attached to my ankles had become) and legs are insensitive to strain and beauty (or uglyness, it depends). I keep on straightening the route, I go faster and skip some stops. If everything goes fine THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW I’m in Calais and leave France and the continent. It’s been four/five days now since not even the places I visit spur me to slow down (except for the Arras’ gang): insignificant fields, poor and ugly villages peopled by the unemployed miners’ grandsons, Commonwealth soldiers war cemeteries every ten km. On the other hand the weather is glorious: few white clouds, dry cold, wind blowing from the back. Headphones on, play and go, few photos, few chats; not even tea break, ’cause France costed me twice Italy (I tried to explain italian politics to Frenchs. They are astonished, find it hard to believe and, for solidarity, they complain about Sarkozy).
Apart from that I just followed that nice headless dog: he told me about an old fight in Prague, about his life which is a jumper, about that time he interviewed Dario Fo playing an three strings ukulele and counting to ten bullets; he also performed in hendecasyllabic, interrupted by Drugo’s laughter (a quantità infinite), by CSI, De Gregori, Capossela, an unusually out-of-tune Mozart who sings Summertime and by many other wonderful discordant voices. In one word, radiocontromano. Thank You.
Melancoly was brought by rivers.
I did not know it, but the hardest point so far has been the one where rivers stop flowing to the Mediterranean Sea. They explained me that I passed over the ridge where rivers start flowing to the Seine, that goes quenching the thirst of the Atlantic, and not to the Rhone anymore, that caresses Marseille and plonge into the war mediterranean waters. So, after the Alps, one more symbolic and geographical obstacle keeps me apart from the italic sea; the funny thing is that that sea is so much missed by an inhabitant of the only region of the peninsula without costs.
I had to fill my ears with music, something I hadn’t done for 1300km, to overcome the monotony and indifference of the rectilinear spaces I stepped on.Only today I had the chance to dowload the fantastic tracks from Radiocontromano, but it’s better like this, ’cause tomorrow they say it’s gonna rain and I will desperately need them (a special thanks to Patrick, a surfer that deserves a statue, that, among thousands other things, provided me with two days of computer to recover all the informatic burocracy: walking has never been so digital)
Weather changed. It’s not cold anymore; this means that if bars are closed, I’m still disappointed but at least I can seat in front of them and eat my sandwich outdoor without risking to freeze. And sky is grey, which is an improvement: it is not anymore that dirty-white low dome always identical and hopeless. Now it’s grey, many different greys, clouds shapes to guess and moving cumulus; plus, sometimes, a shread tears and Modugno starts to sing.
So, taken a run-up on the Chaumont viaduct, I stepped by to say Hi to De Gaulle and from there I mounted on a cork of champagne slightly sparkling which hit the cathedral; from up there you can see clearly: landscape is still mostly agricultural but fields are greener (maybe they were green under the snow as well), villages more frequent and roads easier.
My shoes keep destroying, but I just can’t abandon them, they deserve to arrive at the destination and gloriously die on english land. The land where my destination went back doing the destination indeed, after a short french visit which, on one hand completely restored me but on the other hand made me feel all the absurdity of keep being far from her; this, and strain and winter and cornichons convinced me to revise the trail, prune it, extends some legs, in short, to accelerate the pace and shorten the path in order to arrive in Calais as soon as possible, give the five to Chauser, jump over the Thames and run till Cambridge to eat fudge till I explode. Here they don’t even know what the Francigena is anyway, I say something like Saint Jacques and they nod satisfied and say bon courage (which by the way is a beautiful and untranslateble greeting). And now I can program less, I always find a solution for the night, days get longer and my legs solid.
Yeah, what the hell, tomorrow Picardie, thirteenth european region crossed. Not bad, not bad at all.
I never liked bets and agonism. As a kid I had isterical stomach-aches before swimming competitions and, once teenager, the coach kept me in the bench because, while skillful with the ball, I didn’t have the necessary sport wickedness.
When I write my posts, warm and safe after a hot shower and a snack, usually with a mug of tea in front of the screen, I’m in a good mood; or, at least, in a better mood than a few hours before: possibly in a snow blizzard, on the border of a highway with numb shoulders, wet toes and a lot of doubts in my mind. And it’s comprehensible, it’s easy to indulge to (auto)irony and to joke when the worst part is over and you reached the goal. Today, for once, regardless of the shower snack and nap, I decided to recall the tone of my thoughts during the frustrating walk.
This part of France, the Haute-Saône departement most of all, and the one immediately following, are infinte expanses of fields, alternated by long and straight national roads, driven mostly by trucks, and sprayed by a handfull of ghost-towns: desert dormitory-villages, closed churches and closed townhall, empty streets, never a bar, rarely a room pretending to be a bakery. The civil death. When I ask for explanations to the few humans I meet, always nice and kind what I get are vague disappointed sentences accompained by pityfull gazes for the naif foreigner. To ask for a bar in here is like to ask for telegraph station: things of the past, “well, you know, once it was full of them”. So far, even the most remote and small italian village had the eternal sport bar. Today, on the notice board of the (closed) townhall in a small village, I saw a flyer advertising Shiatsu courses; they got Shiatsu but they have no bar. Shiatsu. Bar. I wonder how is the social life among these people, luckily enough french television is good and the Wii is cheap. The day before yesterday a woman offered me an hot chocolate at her palce, but it doesn’t always go like this.
Saddened by the portrait? There you are, add some wind and snow, an entire region white and wet, not even a single bench where to sit and rest and the winter holidays in french schools. Plus, weather forecast telling similar weeks to come.
So far the first solution was a partial shortening of the walks and some detours to more crowdy towns: this imply anyway some long walks along national roads borders, tiring stetches without pauses not to get cold (that’s way I need a bar, to spend half an hour in a warm place, not to play lotto), hood well closed with consequent reduction of the visibility. Yes, exactly, a shitty situation. I told it to those I met: look, so far it’s been easy, everyone can do the francigena my way. What now?
Pride is another gift I lack, I prefer stubbornness. Walking these days feels more like an athletic competition, even worst, like a solitary training: lots of effort, few human or aesthetical gratification and insignificant small goals. Italy varied more often, Switzerland was short.
I, nonetheless, believe I have to keep going, at least for little Paolo who cried in the changing room and for the slightly older one that missed unbelievable goals in the muddy soccer field (and because I left to many thing incomplete). Because it will be unspokenly beautiful to accomplish it and for hundres of other reasons. But I’m not disposed to keep going like this; because it there is a thing that this travel must not became, this is sacrifice; this certitude contains all the laicity of my adventure. Effort should always be accompained by beauty, pleasure, exchange. This is not tourism, nor holiday, but not even masochism. To move the backpack 20 km every day, a bus in enough.
Well, I knew that France would have been tough, but it’s not the same to think it while flying over it on Google Maps and finding myself among its most desolate regions. In the last two weeks I saw just one sunny day; this may also help, ’cause, strange to say, all the fantasy in the world doesn’t help to imagine a blue sky over the clouds. And we mediterraneans usually don’t need it.
Oh, I also burned a pair of sock on the stove and lost my toothbrush.
The best ideas on how to write a post come to my mind, of course, while I’m walking. And every single time I tell to myself that there’s no point in noting them, that I will recall them once writing. I never recall them. Let’s know then that the blog your read is way less brilliant than the one I have in mind whilst walking. Too bad for you, you could have come with me.
Switzerland is small. It was soon over. From Sainte Croix, on the top of the Jura, you can see the Alps and they are pretty close. There, clinged to those two mountain ranges and spread on the few plain left in the middle, there is Switzerland, the hole with Europe all around (I refuse to believe that I came up with this definition). Now that I’m back in the €uro zone I already miss it, right when I was starting to understabd their coins (what about coloring them differently?). The last Helvetians I met were amazing hosts (less shy and more open), they are all into the debate about national identity, blurry future and the relationship with us europeans. They got a wonderful country and they left me a big desire to come back and know it better.
[note: if I'm parsimonious with touristic details it's because I believe that the world is full of specialized guides, Internet most of all. That's not the point of this blog, may be at the end I'll give you a list of the most beautiful places. And it will be partial anyway, since - due to my metereopathy - wonderful places looked awfull under the rain and, similarely, ugly spots seemed glorious if blessed by the shining sun. Same thing for photos]
The entrance in France has been definitely unpleasant: no sign to victoriously portait, no police officers to laugh with; on the other hand it snowed heavily and new forms of aquatic life were developping into my shoes. I really felt bad when I decided to hitchhike: it is always a disappointment and a loss, even if it was just for a few miles of national highway, I felt bad till today. Till, in short, I’m about to get back on the road. Weather forecast tells fog and clouds for a week (Italians, never, NEVER, consider a blue sky as a given) but no rain, so I postpone any possible measure for my shoes that, poor them, are not exactly designed to step on 20 cm of melting snow.
The CouchSurfing blast is unfortunately over, here in France I will find sufers only in the few main cities, while in most of the villages I will have to improvise, being them lacking in “francigenous” structures. Let’s hope for the best. I could also have some hard time finding internet connections for a while, so I greet you all and I go discover a bit of France, finally leaving behind the mountains (anyway, so far the thoughest walk was the one to the small Radicofani).
Guiding animal: cat and crow
Winner of the “useless item” award: sunglasses; obvious, I always aim at north-west.
Anecdote of the day: they say that during similar trips, the body losts the weight of the backpack; the brain tends to recuperate the original balance, eliminating the new excessive weight; if I loose the kilos of my backpack, once in Calais they could as well put me in an envelope and send me to Cambridge via mail.
The other day, as I was repairing my watch with my Swiss knife whilst eating chocolate and fontina, I had a discussion about the falsity of stereotypes with a shepherd who happened to be passing by. He sustained that the Swiss are not at all the way people portray them. And he was right. They are shorter.
Jokes aside, so far Swiss hospitality has been attentive but with a slow build up. The Swiss are accustomed to the cold so, with rare exceptions, they have trouble breaking the ice. They like the ice. They stare at me silently. At which point, using my rediscovered French, I embark on a monologue composed of a combination of comments on the bad weather, our corrupt government and rigged football championships – so the entire repertory of small talk classics. The Swiss hosts then lower their guard and get caught up in the heat of the discussion, and from then on it’s all chat and gossip about our respective countries. The Swiss, at least the francophone Swiss, do complain about their country. The grass is always greener… So far my hosts have been the usual quasi-thirty-year-olds, quasi-graduates I have already described – except in their Swiss version they don’t live in their grandparents’ apartment, they have good jobs, they are relatively well off and they take their Sunday walks in snow shoes. And as if this weren’t enough, their national hero continues to obliterate tennis records like sandcastles. To sum up, a bit distant to begin with, the low profile Swiss actually have a lot to say. Did you know they don’t like Germans? Ah, the irony…
(In any case hats off to them for elegantly remedying the most illogical of french bad habits, the one that requires you to perform complicated calculations to express the most banal of numbers: to say “97″, for example, instead of the ridiculous quatre-vingt-dix-sept; they say (thank God) nonante-sept. Simple and efficient. Not at all French, that is).
After this embarrassing ethnographic interlude, let’s return to our usual subject: the ode to walking. My latest discovery regarding the advantages of long-term walking is a prodigious improvement of memory. The days are so slow and the occupations so few that every gesture is performed with the utmost awareness, and details are perceived with such precision that they become naturally embedded in memory: I remember perfectly well where and what I had for lunch on the 28th of December, where I was at sundown on the 4th of January, or what the mattress I slept on on the fourth day of my journey felt like. Not bad. Right?
Tomorrow I reach the 1100th km and I’ll be exactly halfway through my journey. I am a little tired.
technical report: I have holes in my shoes.
weather report: it’s bitterly cold even at noon, the sun doesn’t seem to be aware of the whereabouts of Switzerland, it snows every day and there’s ice everywhere. And the coldest bit is still to come: a place with the charming nickname “little Siberia”
phrase of the day: “excuse me, the parish?”, “Which one, catholic or protestant?”
guiding animal: ferret and swan
advice of the day: my cousin has written his second book. Buy it – trust me.
Also, new videos!
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