venerdì 25 settembre 2009

Forca di Penne - Transitions

Italy is a social country, if you are out with friends and let too much time pass by without speaking you risk worrying people that something is wrong. But not everyone has the wiring to withstand the hours of eating, drinking, joking and chatting that a holiday like Ferragosto (August 15th) can bring on.











Ferragosto is a religious holiday, but for most people it means picnicking. And it is taken very, very seriously. More shops and public services are open on Christmas day than on Ferragosto. Being on a picnic on Ferragosto is like turkey dinner with your family on Thanksgiving in the US.
At least on Thanksgiving you can take a mass nap in front of a football game (american rules).
So around five when I wanted to be alone, in this beautiful corner of Italy in the mountains near L’Aquila, I decided to take a quick 15 minute drive to find a nice scenic place to be alone.
Impossible.
Every scenic look out safe enough to park a car was occupied, every trail to the Tirino river or the artificial lake nearby was full. Everywhere I drove there were people.
Then I noticed the road to Pescara over a nearby piece of Gran Sasso. There were no road indications beyond the name of the road. “Forca di Penne”.
Playing on the hunch that if a road is named after a place, sooner or later it will take you there, I turned onto it.

The signs indicated the town of Ofena, home to some of the best red wine in Abruzzo come from this little mountain valley. My favorite “Cerasuolo” pink wines, they are robust enough to go with grilled meats. The road rose twisting back and forth through the Ofena’s narrow streets to the other side - still no road indications for Forca di Penne - so I kept going. After a few miles of driving up through pine trees the road forked. To the left, Castel del Monte, to the right, Pescara. Since the place I was after was a pass to Pescara I took a hunch.
Fifteen minutes later I pulled over. The road was about to level off and I was about to leave the Tirino Valley behind me. The view of Capestrano, and the patchwork of farmland below was breathtaking.

As I got into my car I noticed what looked like a ruined tower a few hours ahead of me. As I drove closer it became clearer - it was the ruins of a castle. Forca di Penne was a key passageway in the Transumanza, the ancient seasonal pastoral migration from central Italy to Foggia in Puglia (Apuglia).

I found a place to park my car and hiked up a steep, freshly harvested hay field to the base of the Castle. The view was spectacular. The slopes of Gran Sasso rolled lushly down to the Pescara valley below. To the right the Appenine’s second-largest mountain - the Maiella, dominated. Behind me was Capestrano, Navelli, L’Aquila and dozens of wonderful places wounded by the earthquake. In front of me was the sea and my soon to be new home.

venerdì 4 settembre 2009

What’s Italy without traffic?

Last night, on my way home from a quick family vacation in Sabaudia, I stopped in the office in L’Aquila to catch up on a bit of work. Silvia and the girls also stayed in town, so we ended up leaving together for home.


One of the many negative consequences of the earthquake is the traffic. We used to complain if a few of the main streets slowed to a standstill at rush hour, but at most they slowed us down by 15 minutes a trip. People in Rome or Milan (or Chicago, for that matter) would probably have called it light traffic.

Now, with two of the major routs across town off limits (one passes through the Red Zone, the other has a bridge out), traffic is everywhere. The road system in town, like most cities with thriving downtowns, was organized in a wheel and spoke system. Most of the traffic flow went to and from the center - in the space of 30 seconds that all changed, there is no center and will not be for years. Offices, both public and private, are scattered in neighborhoods and outlying hamlets many of us had never been to. Add in a boom of heavy vehicles for the reconstructions and you have a permanent log jam.


Until after six in the evening, when people start to leave. Tens of thousands of us now live in outlying villages just in or out of the "crater" and in cities and towns up to 100 kilometers away, sometimes more. Many take the bus, of course, but it is striking to drive out after work. Last night at eight I started driving home. I have my secret back roads in town that are mostly deserted at the time, but it was from the roundabout at the cemetery all the way to Navelli that brought back memories of driving with the cars full on the evening of April 6th, I was part of long trail of cars driving orderly out of the city towards Pescara and Sulmona. Very few cars were going the other way, unlike April 6th when cars and buses left, heavy vehicles from the fire brigades and civil defense services in the other.


This happens every night. Logjams in the morning as people try to make it in before work starts, a slower more orderly trail home at night.


By the way, the months living in a family-run hotel in Montesilvano on the coast was not a vacation as some try to pass off. My clear complexion below the neckline is testifies on my behalf. While we were sheltered and fed and away from the aftershocks, like tens of thousands of aquilani, we lost hours of our lives commuting and creating an ever larger carbon footprint.