Vecchi porti

There are places in the world where peace of mind is easily achieved. Places where the sea embraces tenderly the people that settled at her shores centuries ago. Aged cities. Old harbours. Wise people.



Cities, like Trieste, where I feel like I were home, even though, until this last weekend, I had never been there before. Towns, like Muggia, that lull me gently, in a way I never felt up North, in Central Europe.





Aged buildings, shabby walls, familiar people, broken windows, laundry, narrow alleys, street lamps, all those things that you miss when you are living in CandyLand, where you still look for the stage machinery behind the scenes...





The charm of towns and cities of a modest past, whose History does not include great wealth that would have allowed frequent reconstruction of its buildings, but left their loveliness untouched and let them keep a genuineness that the others, those keeping up with the last architectural tendencies, lost long ago.



And of course the Mediterranean, which welcomes us once again, this time with a new face, but always the same, always the one whose water caressed my skin so often. The sea and all her rig that are, without any extra effort, main characters of the best pictures in the world.





By the way, I found those ears again...

Waiting for the rain

The Mediterranean coastline is a hard piece of ground.

One of the first things that strucks the Mediterranean expatriate on arriving to Austria is the greenness, that incredibly saturated green colour, almost supernatural, whose brightness hurts those eyes that grew accustomed to red ochre ridges, yellow brooms, infinite blue sea and dusty green olive trees.

Soon after moving to Austria one realizes where does the green come from: flora has a rather easy life on this land because it rains often and abundantly. That's why trees can turn into 30 and 40 meter tall giants. That's why going into the woods outside paths is almost mission impossible in spring and summer, save you have a machete.

The Mediterranean coastline, I was saying, is a hard piece of ground. Because rain is there a really scarce good that, when it falls, does so in a short and wild way over a very dry ground that cannot soak it up and ends up causing floods instead of producing crops.



But Mediterranean vegetation, as are its people, is old and wise and learned to wait, keeping all their energies for that couple raindrops that are going to fall, if not today, maybe tomorrow, or next week, or next month. And when those raindrops do eventually fall, they get strength out of nowhere, throwing roots to drink them, sprouting little shoots that will let them continue saving that light, that Sun, saving energy for the next drought.



I think Mediterranean vegetation is fascinating because of the way it holds on anxiously to life and carries on in spite of a rather hostile environment. I love it because it reminds me of its people, it reminds me of my people, who turned barren into cultivated land with sweat, blood, effort and resolution, under the remorseless Sun that burns everything out.



Last week we have been to Catalonia. As we came back, my office colleagues asked me, as usual, if we'd had nice weather. And I told them yes, it'd rained every day and that's the best weather we could have wished for. I'm not sure that they really understood my smile and the joy I felt in my heart as I saw my land green and alive.

The Source of All Things

When you decide to move to another country, it has to be clear that there is a lot of things that you are going to miss. Besides your friends and family, of course, most of the things that you are going to end up missing are quite surprising, because they are quite trivial, like fried corn, the music of a jackpot machine in a bar or water-filled ashtrays, and because you realize that you miss them the first time you see them again.

Other things you know you are going to miss from the very beginning. Before moving to Austria I told someone here that one of the things that I was going to miss the most was the sea. He looked at me with a strange look on his face and he told me that I should not worry, because there are lots of lakes here in which one can go swimming in summer. All right. Great. It is not what you can do on the sea what I miss. I miss the sea. Just like that. But they don't get it. Maybe because they are not able to understand it at all.



But I am not alone. I know there's someone who understands me. I get understanding from my friend K's blue eyes, where I am able to see the sun reflection on the North Sea over the bow of his Phaleron. I get understanding from the sarcastic smile of a Swedish girl, who asked herself what is really the point of all those Germans who buy themselves a boat to sail around a lake.



But, what is it about the sea? Why do we all who grew at its shores miss it so much? Why do we feel so attracted to the sea?

My mother always told she needs the sea because it is an escape way. Because knowing that the sea is there, she does not feel trapped on solid ground. She might have something there, but I believe there is a deeper reason.



Because the sea is the source of everything. The sea gave us life millions of years ago, and it keeps us alive ever since. It is the sea who gives us our bread. As I look at the sea, I marvel at its incredible beauty, and I could spend hours and hours watching, listening to the waves breaking onto the cliffs, letting the smell of the salt into me, stepping down in respect in front of its infinite power. As I look at the sea I think that everything began just there. And it is still there, after all that happened, and this provides a security and cosiness quite similar to the one you might feel going home. Because I think that the sea is, actually, our home.



I live far away. But I know it's there, and I just need to close my eyes to see the colours, to hear the waves letting their white hair go before dying on the sand with a murmur.