Caveat: Pope makes sign of cross

Headline on italian news channel:  "Pope makes sign of cross" hmm… slow news day?  Oh… there are those concerns about his health.

Dateline: Wien

The moon rose over the dimly seen industrial landscape like a disk of hammered copper. The train passed through the snowy east czech country in a matter of hours, and by 10 pm I was in vienna. I walked around a bit, and settled on a hotel just opposite the sudbahnhof. A very firm, finally comfortable bed, and breakfast wasn't bad either.

Dateline: Ljubljana

The austrian alps were beautiful. I decided to go to slovenia because there was no direct departure for italy from vienna's sudbahnhof. Where I really want to go is trieste. So… on a whim. The countryside was beautiful, snow, alps, all that. Ljubljana is ok, I guess. A small city, and I felt really sick again. The hotel I found was grossly overpriced, for what it was. Unimpressed, I guess.

Dateline: Trieste

It wasn't quite like coming home, but there was a notable feeling of comfort when I found myself in Villa Opcina this afternoon. It's not that I really have much skill with the italian language – but I find the culture more familiar, and the language is a sea of cognates – I can make out the meaning of anything I need to, given time and enough repetitions. It felt safer, somehow. Trieste has an additional level of comfort, given amount of time I've existed in the city in my imagination, as the primary adult home of James Joyce, the many biographies and studies I've read on that author spend a lot of energy explaining the place and its circumstances. And, well, the hotel I found is a bit pricey, but it has hotspot internet. So hello, everyone – I'm back in the first world at last. Or the virtrual world. Or something like that.

I don't think it's that I'm really feeling healthier, so much as that I'm used to being sick, now. I can't decide if I'm going to stay in trieste a few nights, exploring more – I've had the geography of the city memorized for so many years that it's weird being here, and it's easy to dismiss it – to say "well, now I've seen it, what's next?" Strange how places that have captured my imagination sometimes have that impact on me once I visit them. I got off the train in Opcina, northern suburb of the city against the slovenian border. I walked to a bus stop, took it two stops, the driver told me it was faster by trolley, so I got off, walked two more blocks and found the trolley, and took that. Old trolley, wooden doors and seats. Rattling down the hill… steep, steep hill, spectacular view of the redroofed city and the greyblue adriatic, half misty.

Back to Top