Sunday, September 27, 2009

Mela Velba Santa Claus

June 17-PORT - AVEIRO

travel diary

Still on the road, because it never ends, because it is our condition if we are alive ...
I'm naked, lying on a bed as a priest in the room 320 of the hotel Arcada Aveiro (P), but the air temperature is identical to that of Bologna, home of Charles last night: 28 ° C.
are the 20 local time in Italy are 21. Decides to take a thought, rather than a thought, a promise to phone home. Or rather, I try. I hate phones and phone calls. International calls are also always a puzzle to be solved step by step, trying again and again, each country has its own combination and it would take a hand climbing burglar!
The bedroom window 'on a square overlooking the Canal Central. The sun is still impossible stare, his light still hot. I recently finished trumpeted and processions of cars, because Portugal beat Romania to the European football ... TV sends Germany - England, while my head summarizes the long day that has brought me this far (and still unfinished, though the sun does not decide ...).

The trip was quite boring air travel picks up the first time, then the other tires. At least I was quite on time. Landed in Porto (Oporto I do not like the term, which does not use almost none) I changed $ 400 in escudos, then I took the car, with the usual problems of language and bureaucracy typical dell'Europcar. I started driving the Renault Clio 1.2 NR-new new westminster blue. The serious problem, given the weather, is that the AC is not working or not, that there is only the light (I am reminded of a trip in Puglia on a Daewoo on which they had "forgotten" to assemble) .
In the room the thermometer dropped to 27.5 ° C, I back the mood, try to call home. Still pit. I decide to smash the phone that manages to combine a triangulation on the first try. Again, this is it!

The story of the day is better to stop and think about finding a place to put something in the stomach. Today I ate only sandwiches elastic, plastic and croissant sandwiches, frozen ...
But the inconveniences of travel are many and got excited about traveling: to say that I left the key in the lock of the suitcase in the car (good idea to lock ... to leave the key in the car is just an oversight). Moral: I have to get back the wet towel after a refreshing bath.

Out now is fresh and inviting me to this walk. There is the old neighborhood (rearranging all the floors are paved in) and the new shopping mall run by architects with skill. Okay, it soon becomes clear that there is poetry, that it is prose, but a very good prose. Moreover mix poetry and I think how we can trade to mix water and oil.
E 'being a book fair with the participation of many local publishers, writers and a few too many players here? Many youth running idle, refreshed after a long hot day's work. I visit all the center, the gallery is reminiscent of the Expo in Lisbon (but cheaper), I climb on the roof-terrace fitted with roof garden and watch the turning off of each color in the sky.

Ceno Iron restaurant, a room for local furniture with polished by time, sink into a wall of the room, sweaty and brisk waiters, cast and simple dishes. At the tables seem to see friends at the weekly ritual of dinner, the first stage of a long Saturday night, only a few tables are occupied by odd dive in the newspaper or the cigarette hung with thoughts. Summing up a big dinner and economic.
Leaving see so many guys who fill the streets and squares (Aveiro is the university and students are perhaps the idle or before), but sleep is so and the white wine does the rest.
These notes are, in fact, taken the morning after, when the sky is torn between the blue and gray.

I had been wrong to AC '.
The traffic and the signs are not to be: I wanted to sail around Porto and instead we ended up inside. I also saw where he will spend the night Hotel Dom Henrique at the end of the month. Obviously step and point to the south, but I lose time in traffic jams and arrive a little late on the road map (detail I still can not forget ...) to the Santa Maria da Feira. I decide to stop only if I find a shady spot, luckily I find it. From 10 to 20 there is a medieval historical re-enactment, with lots of stalls selling fabrics, embroidery, sausages, honey and jams and people dressed up as pathetic and hypothetical ancestors.
I go to the castle, which has little of the medieval, but is in the midst of a dense and cool park. I take a stroll through the streets, but the heat is unbearable and I think today's good to continue the journey toward Ovar.

Here I make an expenditure in food (water, tea and biscuits), where I enjoy it here as well AC works, then try, with a constancy that deserves a better fate, the museum much-vaunted by Saramago, I find at last after much hard work, but is closed for structural repairs, no less!
The town is deserted, the bars come out the effects of the match between Portugal and Romania, the hot air as nearly chipped a wall, the cars are hot items and properties, it seems to me to return the child, the world's Mexican ...

again south to Aveiro, where he arrived and already I get lost. From the highway, which would bring in Lisboa, I see, beyond the marsh, the university campus I visited a few years ago ', still under construction: I recognize the library and the water tank of Siza el' Institute of Souto de Moura . Will I be able to make us jump tomorrow (ie today)? Bumps into the hotel I am the guide suggested we Mondadori and over again: the daily duties of travelers is made.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Souleater Fakku Dojin

travel diary



Among my papers I found traces disordered, almost illegible by the same author, old travel diary on which to pin my thoughts and considerations of travelers. They are part of one of the many projects remained so.

Starting from the days when it still was not transcribed been so long since the writing and then the work was still possible without excessive effort, and now regret not having completed the work. Are a few days a trip to Portugal in 2000 following some of the routes drawn by José Saramago in his Viagem in Portu , where I enjoy myself too, immodestly, to him the verse, trying to imitate his gentle humorous vein (the traveler here, the traveler of the ...). By the way, written with a capital letter refers to the Master, with the diminutive author.
In this choice I was also stimulated by a Facebook friend, Daniel Lugaresi, which just returned from Portugal shared a beautiful series of photographs that I have brought my mind back to those days and these forgotten writings ...

We will follow up with other trips to: Spain, Israel, Libya, India, Mexico and Guatemala, Brittany and the Loire Castles, Naples, Tunisia, Lesser Antilles, Prague and Budapest, etc..?
depends on many things, like the entire setup of this blog ... especially from the forces of the readers.
started!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Is It Legal To Set Up Cameras In My Bathroom

Sea in winter (final)

Tales Adriatic

But all around is black, the wall, the ceiling, the room, outside, all is silence, the music is over, only the projector fan sends a slight hiss. I turn off the switch. There's a moment of nothing. The heart beats, eyes pinched, the stomach is empty. It 'like coming from a long journey in space and time. Going home is always awesome! After you have expanded the horizons, seeing new things, meet different people, tried different ways of living, return between four walls, in cramped conditions, resume the usual pace, the slow flow of events takes precedence over the individual's will, the voltage drops the memories become regret. With the availability of the world, you end up living in a dot on map, a rocky cliff where you can see the same sunrises and sunsets the same, the billions of people if they know perhaps a thousand, or maybe just some really well no, not even themselves, ignorance of creating fear, generates hatred. The "global village" exists only on the information highway, is populated by bit, byte, file, package, electromagnetic waves and not by specific persons or things: a virtual reality as a parallel world that can not be touched, to live, but only see .
He groped the door of the terrace, finally find it, open it. It was done at night and is still the afternoon. The sky is a big star and crescent moon illuminates a part by hiding the stars, other lights are long streamers of chrome in the distance, a large area remains in the dark. Gradually the eye gets used at night and see better, see more. In the valley there is still the fog, no longer white, but dark gray, almost blue, were it not for the waves highlighted by the giant moon. On the sea of \u200b\u200bmist the moon behaves in the opposite way to the sea water: the level of fog is now decreased as a low tide, but the matter has become more dense, impenetrable.
Tour back to the sea and overlooking the city, with its light yellowish moon but not due to some strange disease, defensive towers, the tiled roofs, the windows lighted, rough walls, the lamps signed, the proximity makes everything appear flat, without depth as some mobile scenarios in picture books for children, a wonderland, silent, so far away from the fervor and clamor of life. How important is the point of view from which you look at things! The photographer a few years ago to kill the boredom of a public holiday was wandering on the beach between the sheds, sinking in wet sand shoes here and there and stealing of images, captured moments, letting oneself by instinct, drive times shutter speed and aperture. The audience today is prey to a mysterious force, sucking these pictures on the wall in quick succession as in a gallery, has a vision Overall, it can easily go back and compare, measure, criticize. The two did not see the same thing: the red can be pink, green, blue, winter summer, sadness, joy, the trivial sublime and vice versa. From Canton today seemed to be on the roof of a lighthouse, the sun was the great light that illuminated the sea of \u200b\u200bcotton, they peered into the great sea rescue boats and seemed to enjoy some kind of privilege with respect to those who were drifting in and swam . Now, from below, the lighthouse does not seem so solid, so sure and does not suggest any way to the shipwreck, so that it is better to let go gentle flow, nice to be carried away by the waves into the unknown. Who knows how
now appears across the sea, the land of Marino, this rock, the mountain of Marino: the shape of the Titanic cruise extraordinary amid the smoke of the steam, all the lights on, the music of ' orchestra that accompanies us, everything seems in festivity with these new American rhythms, the sea is calm and storms suggests, this black, black ship who told me they can not sink ... 5



5 from looting TITANIC Francesco de Gregori.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Footprints With Wings Tattoos

message in a bottle

Sea in winter


The slide is burned by the light half, the high end. And 'the last. Below you see a glass bottle, alcohol content, is now empty, but still has the plastic cap screwed. Next a withered lemon. Tempted to throw in the sea of \u200b\u200bblinding light, the fire of life, to entrust a desperate message to this small piece of glass, a speck in the ocean, a wave in outer space ...


Just a castaway An island lost at sea Another lonely day

No-one here But my loneliness

More Than Any Man Could Bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair
I’ll send an SOS to the world I’ll send an SOS to the world I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle4



4 from MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE by Sting