I’ve been back in the U.S. for over a month now, and it’s hard to believe that I spent that same amount of time in constant motion. I met fellow travelers in Europe who had been trekking for as long as two years at a time, which sounded less and less enviable every time I strapped on my 13 kg backpack.
Southern Italy provided a slow-paced ending to our hectic journey, as well as the opportunity to see (more or less) my ancestral lands. Part of my mother’s family came to America from Terranova di Pollino, a small, poor village in the middle of a national park. As such, this Basilicatan town is difficult to reach without a car, so we compromised and set our sights on Matera (also in Basilicata) and Bari (in Puglia).
I’ll spare you the history of Matera’s biggest — and perhaps only– tourist attraction, the Sassi (which you can check out briefly here). Suffice it to say, it’s a mess of old caves that people lived in for centuries. Cows stood on a parallel cliff as we explored this rocky ancient city, their bells the only sound to penetrate the stone-fortified solitude. The smell of tomato sauce (properly known as gravy, thank you very much) wafted out of windows while locals prepared their afternoon dinners. Josh said he liked to imagine my own, modern family living in one of the old caves, which makes for a humorous juxtaposition, until you notice the local teens, decked out in designer jeans (with the ubiquitous Tektonik haircuts), living in what looks like a Biblical village.
(On a related note, Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was filmed here for that very reason.)
The infamous Mediterranean midday siesta proved to an obstacle in Matera, in a way that it never was in our previous travels. More specifically, everything closed from approximately 1 p.m. until 6 p.m. and our hotel (perhaps more accurately described as a bed and breakfast located on the second story of an office building) didn’t even get MTV Italia to distract us from our growing hunger. Luckily, once night fell — and no sooner had we polished off our homemade five-course meal — than the hotel owner, “Il Professore,” bounded into the kitchen, proclaiming, “The night is fresh! Let us go to the Sassi!”
Josh, two very pleasant Canadian women, the Professore’s 2-year-old son, and I piled into the owner’s car just as torrential rains began to fall. “We will be like the pilot who flies into the storm!” Il Professore assured us. Naturally, this was one of the most enjoyable (and comical) nights of the entire trip. We watched lightning strike the hills in the distance of the ancient city while Il Professore force fed Josh a “typical” and highly alcoholic local wine. He then took us to a bakery in town (circa midnight, mind you) where the bakers were beginning their all-night shift and brazenly disregarding all “No smoking” signs.
Il Professore had insisted that Bari was an ugly city and was quite sorry that Josh and I were determined to go there. He was wrong, perhaps influenced by regional rivalries. Bari is a port city divided into two main parts: first, a modern commercial area with tree-lined avenues and expensive boutiques; second, the old city constructed almost entirely of white stones.
We lived like kings, eating the freshest seafood the area could offer. Our hotel room was “country-style,” with a frescoed vaulted ceiling, beneath which we recovered from our non-stop travels and watched soccer. But, after two days and a train ride longer than I’d like to remember, we were back in Rome, where we said our goodbyes to Europe. The flight home was a short seven hours (side note: watched the beginning of P.S. I Love You on the plane, and despite what I may have said in the past, would quite willingly watch the end) and that was that.
To say Josh and I aren’t going to play “The Boys are Back in Town” at least once when we’re reunited in D.C. would be inaccurate.
