Handling bureaucracy for a new passport

I am in front of the Italian consulate's door at 8:30 before it opens its doors for the week. It's an endless series of phone calls bu in the end it all works out for the best. I have a new passport by the end of the morning and a new Polish visa (albeit a temporary one) in the afternoon!

In the evening dinner in the hotel room with a bottle of Italian Merlot, getting psychologically ready to cross the "iron curtain" tomorrow. It will be a memorable day, tomorrow, but we don't know that yet!

Celebrating a new passport!

Gloom in Vienna

A gloomy Sunday. The sky is gray just like my mood. Most everything is closed down, not much to do except trying to cheer myself up for the loss of my passport. Ann and Andrew are good comfort in a difficult moment.

Which a couple of Sachertorten and a great dinner of wild game and red wine help to do.

Hit the sack early, tomorrow I'll have to try and get a new passport!

Drama in Vienna

A day that started well with a tour of the Schoenbrunn palace turned into one of the worst nightmares of my life.

After the tour, we went to the Westbanhof for a quick and cheap lunch. Which we got, no problem. We ate standing up at some tall tables. I was carrying all my essentials (passport, wallet, etc. though I did not have any credit cards at that time yet!) in a small shoulder bag, which I took off to eat and put on a shelf just under the table. Where I left it after I was done eating and we all left.

I only realized my blunder a few minutes later. We were driving in town, I turned around and sped back to the station, but the bag was gone. I made a feeble attempt to ask the lady at the counter, but is a busy railway station café she, quite comprehensibly, had not seen anyone take it away.

This is going to be a problem, not so much for the money as for the passport and Polish visa, without which it will be impossible to continue my journey. Are months of preparation going to be in vain?

I felt so dumb and, for a brief moment, powerless.

Yet I never lost hope. I knew this could be made right and started calling home to see if mum and dad could help me get a new passport at the Italian Embassy in Vienna. A procedure which could take weeks, but my country being Italy, where organization might be wanting but common sense sometimes prevails over procedures, I was hoping a couple of phone calls might allow all of us to continue on our journey with minimal delay.

Police report on a stolen passport

Drive from Salzburg to Vienna

We leave Salzburg at 10:00am for an uneventful drive to Vienna.

In the evening we get tickets to watch The Barber of Seville by Gioacchino Rossini at the Wienerstaatsoper.  Great show! My American friends are extatic, and actually so am I. You can see a couple of "Barbers" on youtube below. To me it is an incredibly powerful yet playful music: that is the genius of Rossini.









Afterwards we find a restaurant called Paulusstube to eat the typical Wienerschnitzel. Funny when we ask whether it comes with a side dish, as in America a piece of meat is usually served with some potatoes or vegetables. "It comes with nothing" is the peremptory answer of our otherwise friendly waiter. Our tasty schnitzel is profusely irrorated with good Austrian beer, after which we hit the sack.

Salzburg, Austria, remembering Mozart

Breakfast at 9:00am, followed by a quiet walk in the downtown area. We visit first the cathedral, where Mozart was baptized, then the Franziskanerkirche, a sober yet intense moment.

After that we climb up to the Hohensalzburg fortress. It's a cloudy day and a pretty cold one in Salzburg, the city of salt, from the barges laden with the precious ingredient that passed through the city in antiquity on the aptly named river Salzach.

In the afternoon we visit Mozart's birth home and stop at the Fuerst Konditorei, on the Brodgasse, for a big chunk of chocolate torte!

Slow walk in town in the evening, nothing much, just a peaceful walk in an atmosphere charged with history where Mozart's notes somehow keep ringing in my mind. Andrew is not feeling well and I have a Wienerscnhitzel with Ann in a small restaurant near our hotel.

From Venice to Salzburg under the Alps

Crossing the Alps

We leave Venice at 9:45am and take the Autostrada to Vittorio Veneto, then a regional road to Cortina and the Austrian border. The weather is great, sunny and chilly, ideal for driving.

After refueling and changing the windshield wipers we cross into Austria and the Grossgloeckner glacier presents itself to us in all its mighty beauty. Normally one would drive up the pass and enjoy the drive but there is too much snow and the road is closed. No choice but to return to Winklern, then Obervellach where we can put Giallina on a train car that takes us through a tunnel to the other side of the Alps, and finally we reach Badgastein. Andrew and I alternate at driving.

When we get there we can't miss a typical local Wurstel. Ann sprains an ankle. We get to Salzburg in the early evening and after looking around for an inexpensive accommodation we settle for a room in the "Wolf" B&B, near the Mozartplatz. Right, Mozart, the enduring champion of Salzburg.

Salzburg in Mozart's time

Of Salzburg, yes, but not of Austria. A German friend of mine pointed out to me how the Austrians pulled this incredible trick in persuading the world that Hitler was German and Mozart was Austrian. In fact, Hitler was of course an Austrian who then became a naturalized German. Mozart however was never Austrian. During his lifetime (1756-1791) Salzburg the capital of the eponymous Arcbishopric, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Germany's immediate predecessor state if you will, not of the Austrian one.

Salzburg only became part of Austria after the Congress of Vienna, over twenty years after Mozart's death. That Wolfgang Amadeus worked in Vienna for much of his life did not make him a citizen.

Quiet evening in town.

Visiting Venice and Murano

Wake up at 9:00 and back to Venice by car and ferry. Usual tourist spots: Rialto, San Marco with its superb Pala d'oro, the Palazzo Ducale.

In the afternoon we visited Murano and its world famous glass blowers where I bought a new key-chain for Giallina, a small multifaceted crystal sphere for our trusted bright yellow VW beetle that will lead us through this trip.











Long day of walking, interrupted only by a couple of snacks and a good gelato. In the evening we eat some bread and cheese in the hotel room, and end the day with a game of scopa and a bottle of pinot noir. Hit the sack by 11:30, tomorrow it's going to be a driving day to Austria.

Departure from Rome to Poland for an academic semester abroad

By way of background

I was a student at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service from 1978 to 1981. In the Spring semester of 1980 I wanted to enroll in G.U.'s "semester abroad" program. Among various options, G.U. offered an exchange with Poland. Well, it was a one-way "exchange", in that no Polish students were allowed to the U.S.

It was not a happy time, the USSR had just invaded Afghanistan and NATO was about to deploy its euromissiles in Europe. One day I was having lunch in our cafeteria with my friend Andrew, and talked to him about this opportunity. "Would you go? I am not sure I am into spending a semester in a Communist country on my own" I said. He replied "Well I am not sure I would either, but if you go, I'll go".

Author and Andrew in Rome with Giallina

Three months later Andrew came down to visit me in Rome, Italy and then the two of us and Ann, another fellow SFS student, were on our way to Poland in an old, bright yellow VW beetle nicknamed "Giallina" (the little yellow one). But to get to Poland we had to cross Austria - easy, piece of (Sachertorte) cake - and Czechoslovakia with a 24-hour transit visa, very poor maps and, of course, neither GPS nor GSM...

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So the moment of truth has arrived, after months of preparation we are off to start our semester abroad.

Andrew, Ann and I depart from Rome at about 9:30am. We reach Florence at about 2:00pm where we stop for a short walk in the old city. Start again and after having the car's tires checked we drive on until Mestre, just outside Venice. I was looking for an Agip motel but it's no longere there. We book a room at the "Vivit" and then we go to Venice to explore.

In Florence

Walking around this magic city is always an experience to remember for life. One most memorable moment is when we approach Piazza San Marco late in the evening, at about 1:00am. It is totally empy! An eerie sensation. The ground is shiny from the rain of the day and the lamp posts emanate a tenuous light. We stand in silence for a long moment before heading back to the ferry that will take us back to Mestre for the night.

Scambi interscolastici Italia-Finlandia

Articolo da me scritto e pubblicato su "Piazza di Spagna", rivista quadrimestrale del Collegio S. Giuseppe - istituto De Merode. Anno XXVI, N. 2-3, giugno-ottobre 1977. L'articolo è solo indirettamente collegato ad un viaggio. Infatti esso nasce dalla visita di una mia amica finlandese in Italia, dopo che io avevo visitato la sua famiglia, e la sua scuola, qualche mese prima.

Sauna in Sweden and a watershed in life

Today I had an experience that would change me for the rest of my life. I was in Sweden visiting my friend Karin, my high school sweetheart whom I had met in England a couple of years ago when we were both students of English in Bournemouth.

I had spent several days with the family in Stockholm when they decided to move to the summer house they owned by the sea in a town called Oxelösund.

It was a very cold January evening when they prepared dinner with lots of crabs, potatoes, and glogg, a potent Scandinavian hot drink made up of alcohol and melted sugar.

After we were done eating to everyone's satisfaction and had drunk substantially, though we were not quite done with that, Karin's father, Bo Ossian, proposed we all go and take a sauna together. I thought that was a very cool idea even though I have never done it before in my life.

Next thing I knew everybody started taking their clothes off, like... all their clothes off and grabbing some towels. I was brought up in Catholic Italy and attended schools run by priests so I was slightly shocked at the sight but played along and took my towel.

Once everybody was ready the father opened the door of the house and a swift draft of icy air from outside rushed into the dining room. The outside temperature was minus 20 degrees centigrade I was told, normal for an evening this time of the year. We all walked out into the dark night and in a minute or so reached an outhouse where this how now was located just next to the Waterfront. Their water of the Baltic Sea was frozen solid. We all went inside the outhouse where the temperature was about 90° Celsius, typical Scandinavian sauna

A few minutes later we were joined by a couple of friends, I think neighbors, covered in nothing their own skin. Once inside the sauna, everybody laid the white towels that had hitherto wrapped milk-white bodies on the wooden benches to sit on and here we were, completely naked enjoying the heat.

It is hard for me to describe what I felt being completely naked not only with my sweetheart but also her parents, her stunningly beautiful sister, who at age twenty looked quite old to me, her sister's tall and soft-spoken boyfriend, and a couple of family friends who happened to pass by and joined us. A few frozen beers served the purpose of toasting to friendship and avoiding moments of uneasy silence.

After 15 minutes my hypothetical father-in-law said it was time to go out and jump in the water. I was very perplexed at this idea, first because the temperature gap between inside and outside the sauna room over 100 degrees Celsius and, second, because the Baltic Sea was actually, as I said, frozen solid.

No fear: Bo Ossian took an ice pick and started to punch holes through the surface of the sea, which was frozen four maybe five centimeters deep. We could have walked on it, I am sure. But we did not, we swam into it. After a minute or so he had made a hole big enough for several of us to jump into. I hesitated but it was so cold standing in the night wind that I thought it could not be colder in the water. 

So we all jumped in the water, I screaming and yelling, they calm and relaxed. I remained there barely floating for maybe 30 seconds before jumping out and running the few steps which separated me from the safety of the sauna.

Heat, sweat, drink beer, skinny dip in frozen Baltic sea, repeat. this was my routine for three rounds until Karin said it was enough and we could walk back to the house.

On the way, still dripping cold sweat, protected only by a white cotton towel around the waist, we met two neighbors who were taking a walk to the waterfront. they were fully clothed with fur coats and hats, boots and gloves. Karin waved to them hand decided it would be good manners to greet them. So we stopped and she introduced us. Then they started asking questions about Italy and how my trip to Sweden was going so far. I tried to answer politely but as concisely as possible to try and make it back to the house before my sweat froze on my skin. Which I did, and which it did, but about five minutes later we were all back in the dining room where more glogg was waiting to provide a stroke of the whip to our guts and restore a sensation of warmth and peace for the rest of the night.

What happened today might be dismissed as an insignificant episode in the life of a Mediterranean adolescent who is exposed to a more liberated, some would say emancipated, society, and culture. And maybe that is really all there was to it but, for me, it marked a watershed in my life. It drove the point home that the way things were done in Italy definitely not the only way and, more importantly, was not necessarily the best way.

In fact, I realized, there and then, while still under the influence of glogg, that "my way" was going to be more like the Scandinavian way than the Italian way. More like the secular, egalitarian way than the religious, compartmentalized way.

What I did not realize was that this would not be understood, let alone accepted, by most of my friends and family back home. But, like Frank Sinatra sang a few years ago,  I would do it my way, anyway. It would bring me pleasure and satisfaction, but it would also make my life more difficult. It would create more obstacles on my path to life than a 17-year-old kid could even think of. This was definitely one of the most significant days of my life so far and, I suspect, ever.