September 21-22: VARIATIONS ON LIFE CYCLE MONTPELLIER: TRAM, TALK, RECOVER, PERFORM, PHOTOGRAPH CABBAGE TREE, NO PAUSES, NO FULLSTOPS

Montpellier has an elegant, wonderful, 4-line tram system. I do not take photos of it. Simply to be riding within the calm of its pale bright green spacious interiors is a thing of beauty

Montpellier has an exquisite, intimate old town. Old means, dating back to medieval times. The city has one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1160, and one of the oldest medical schools. As a history scholar who studied the middle ages and the 12th century in particular, I am getting a big kick out of being here. I take a few photos, but only in one street, the street of the arm of iron...

Beneath this strong arm holding the heavy lantern is a marvellous bookshop run by welcoming, generous-hearted people. This is it, from the outside, Le Bookshop https://lebookshop.jimdo.com/ at 8 rue du Bras de Fer...

This scene is typical of the old city. Similar to the tram system, which rings it, simply to be walking within the old city's calm pedestrian squares and alleys is a thing of beauty. I can highly recommend sitting in one of those little pedestrian alleys or squares at a tiny little restaurant sipping wine. More specifically I recommend the very tiny Le Petit Bistrot https://www.facebook.com/le.petit.bistrot.montpellier The guy who runs it is mega sweet poetry in motion. His establishment is an excellent location for excellent conversations

Here are Salomé and Manon, hard at work inside Le Bookshop, acting for me playing the photographer. They are such good actors that the shooting ratio is extremely low

Though as greeting poets who will read downstairs and want to take photographs is part of their job, they are not only acting at working here, they are in fact working. The shop has an extremely wide range of books and plenty of shelf space for them, and also hosts all kinds of events. From the cellar to the rafters, Salomé and Manon work on many different levels

It looks like a poet is about to start reading here. Several of her single poem A3 fold out books - a copyleft design adapted from Aotearoa-New Zealand poet David Merritt's ones - are on the table, and Manon has kindly set a pot of verbena tea on another table for her. Le Bookshop has a cafe inside it, it's very convenient. A copy of the poet's collection Looking for Lago di Lecco, is on a shelf, somewhere. You are welcome to sit in here, read that book, read other books, sip hot drinks, become very meditative and still inside, to become, in fact, a part of the stone walls. Which means you are now from the 1500s, so quite old, meditative, and still inside already

Medicinal verbena tea helps warm you and excite your poeticising atoms, especially if you have had the inadvertent misfortune to eat leek sprouts the evening before, causing discombobulation, lack of sleep, and ongoing heartburn. I highly recommend everyone avoids eating leek sprouts. Note to organic supermarket back in Marseilles, leek sprouts are not a thing that should be included in the food chain. Back in Montpellier, as Freddie Mercury sang, "The show must go on!"

Evidence of poet, snapped by Manon

The next day, at the lovely home of my lovely host, Annie, I go out into her lovely garden one last time. I feed the voracious and not so lovely Montpellier mosquitoes one last time, and photograph another New Zealand native which apparently also loves the warm climate here. I hadn't expected to find cabbage trees/Cordyline australis in Montpellier, or on the Cote d'Azur, but having been quite fashionable in local garden centres 15 or so years ago, the place is riddled with these giant, spiky lilies. Aotearoan natives are taking over the world

September 19-21: WALKING THROUGH MARSEILLE IN CURVES, STRIKES, AND STRAIGHT LINES

First view of Marseilles from the terrace in front of the railway station

Marseille is a stop-off to see my friend Agata on the way through to Montpellier to do a show. Jumping out of my lovely TGV (only 0.7 kg of transit carbon emitted vs 6.1kg on a regional TER), slipping in and out of the in-station free wi-fi zone, and out onto the terrace, it's immediately impressive. And the immediate decision is to walk to the church-marked high point to see the view at sunset.

Sunset view from the future or the past, depending on time perspectives

Almost the only thing I know about the city is that it, alongside Trieste, was once one of the most important Mediterranean ports. One writer acquaintance, Hugues, an import here from Paris, has coloured my insights into the city with his humorous and ironic episodic thumbnails, but he's not here to tour me around. And Agata I only get to see for one evening before she abandons me to the generous hospitality of her busy flatmates. I'm on my own and relying on instinct. 

Don't look down

After a long queue - think, French train strike imminent - to secure a train ticket for travel further west, and with a little advice and assistance from maps I follow the straight lines from where I'm staying in Rue de Lodi, to the top of that hill. It looks something like this...

He wasn't that bad

Rush-hour snakes slowly uphill

 

A miracle! Green oasis in the not-many-trees city

A miracle! Snow in Marseille

The only way is up, bébé

Ominous reflections

No clouds, so somewhat less spectacular this evening (one is in France, one must complain about something)

At the top of the hill I meet another imported sunset seeker, Aïfa, who has come down here from Paris to further her economics qualifications. We chat philosophy for a beautifully lit hour and find the solution to everything in the world with one word, community. Then we walk back down the hill. Here she is at the other end of my straight road line, Rue Dragon...

After all, not on my own! Marseille, so long, and thanks for all the fish...

Detail, Gare Marseille St Charles (St Charles Station, Marseilles)

September 15-16: A DEDICATED NON-STOP MENTON MANSFIELD COUCHSURFING PRESSWOMAN PILGRIMAGE

Every Aotearoan-New Zealander who makes it to Menton has to go on a wee mission to Villa Isola Bella, where the writer Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote in some of her happiest days. Poet Kate Camp, 2017's Katherine Mansfield Fellow, is currently getting paid to sit in a room here and write. Though today she's up north and the gate is locked, but I can sit on a little guttering on the other side of the street, gazing and reflecting. She kindly sent me the address link - it's just east of the Menton-Garavan station https://goo.gl/maps/EewoGaGAWQm

The mother of one of my lovely Couchsurfing hosts also did this visit, for pure, literary pilgrimage reasons. In a relatively short life, Katherine Mansfield kicked some pretty major arse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Mansfield

CouchSurfing is marvellous and generous humanity in action. I'm being hosted by two smart, warm, and delightful political science majors - one Canadian, one Welsh-Irish-raised-in-Berlin hybrid - who are in their second year at the Menton campus of the quite famous French university Sciences Po. When I arrive at their lofty seaside apartment latish Friday night to a roomful of their friends/fellow students, I'm invited to share their tasty wine, rice, and curry dinner and to contribute to discussions. The group is planning an event to attract people to the environmental association they're starting on campus. After the others leave around midnight we stay up chatting till two. I am further treated to fresh sheets and banana ice-cream with cinnamon.

Waking at seven, spectacular, sparkling views of the Italian border and the Mediterranean  are duly afforded. Anna and Sophie say they sometimes have to remind themselves that this is really their life. It's pretty good, even if extremely high academic standards, including Arabic lessons, are fairly hard graft. But as it is Saturday morning we pop across the road for a swim. This is more or less the view from the water...

And we swim about in this...

The water is mega-salty and mega-brain-chilling cold from heavy late-night rain. We manage somehow. Doubtless, the various sky aerial gods are smiling beneficently upon us. 

Breakfast, conversation and poetry books are exchanged; my literary pilgrimage is carried out; a few photos are shot while strolling back past the yachts, feeling a bit angry, and suspecting they are a good part of the reason some people are not allowed to cross the border from Italy into France. Upon return I gratefully utilise the wi-fi to organise myself - including confirming my next CouchSurfing host an hour and a half further west along the coast in Antibes. 

Then I race off through the alleys of the old town to meet and interview an economist acquaintance, Gian Carlo, about his insights into the European rail industry. He has chosen a delightful location for our chat, namely, the gardens of Palais de Camolès, upon the grounds of Musée des Beaux-Arts, and which are tended by local school children. We talk carbon emissions, high-speed rail and train-culture cultural differences, and enjoy the sunshine, scents and sights...

The flowers and scented perennial herbs are busy with bees. I feel like the bees, diving headlong into the richness. Time to catch another train...

September 15: SKIPPING THE CINQUE TERRE, STRAIGHT TO MENTON

Beach life, Menton

There is a kind of insanity in training eight and a half hours all the way north then west along the Mediterranean coast from Rome to Menton in one day. Mainly, it's the near-derangement caused by feeling bereft at not visiting the many beautiful, famous, and diverting places that one would usually get off at. Though it's not all bad...
 
Pisa, for example. I'm not pausing to tilt a gaze at its leaning tower. The other week on the Laguna I swear I saw a couple of Venetian church steeples that looked a tad askew. So, curiosity tourism based on sinking foundations? Already ticked that box. 
 
Or, the lure of a transporting detour from the main coastal trunk line, veering slightly inland to Firenze (aka Florence). Nah, not going there, either. Way too much risk of suffering from trembling delirium or fits of atheist pique brought on by an excess of gold-glinting, gory, religious art. Yes, there are all kinds of madness. 

People driven against the wall by the madness of religion and gold (actually part of Roberto Cuoghi's Imitazione di Christo, 2017, in Venice, but hey...)

However, notwithstanding the future risk of some truly horrific, long, shallow earthquake of unprecedented magnitude riffing the Appenines' length, I expect/hope I can visit these places next time I'm in Italy, or the next. 

This is one of the beauties of living in Europe. These glorious, eternal, living, places are always tantalising, always accessible. And too, it's the elegant beauty of a continuous Interrail or Eurrail pass. With such a pass, you can do what you want - it's as flexible as a 95 year old yogi standing on her hands with her feet folded behind her neck. 
 
I've done a little plan-changing during this trip. I cancelled a purely voyeuristic trip to Taranto - in 2014 the third most polluted city in the world due to environmental and ethical industrial contamination - and Matera, a UNESCO World Heritage site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matera. The bump-on effect meant leaving out a permaculture project in Salerno. Skipping Firenze. Also, sadly, due to differences in logistics/needs, I'm missing out Ecovillagio Torri Superiore, up near the border town of Ventimiglia. I can accept it. The next trip's itinerary appears to be mapped out.

But the worst is (due to an interview lined up in Menton with an economist acquaintance who has insight into the European rail industry), I don't get to get out in Liguria to feed my poetic self while ambling the Cinque Terre. Instead, trapped on board the train I can only write.

Poet and journalist hard at work  

I look out the windows and sigh. Oh! The rhapsodical Cinque Terre, or 'five lands'!  Oh! Il Golfo dei Poeti (gulf of the poets)! 200 years ago the poet Shelley drowned around here, and the poet Byron swam here.

Less famously, in the 2013-14 winter I lived nearby, in Varese Ligure, on a permaculture project. As a reward before leaving the area I bussed out to the coast, then caught a train to walk its stunning, alluring tracks up and down dizzying heights on one baking, early March day. I paid homage to wild, soaring geese, prostrated myself to violets, and swore on my heart to return. Once back in Berlin after this trip I may have to get out my oversize Golfo dei Poeti souvenir tea towel and saturate it in salty oceans of regretful tears.

 

So, as much as I long to get out when our Frecciabianca train reaches La Spezia - gateway to Il Golfo dei Poeti, and where to catch northbound local trains up the Cinque Terre - I do not get out. And although weather conditions are not ideal today - it's a bit cloudy, a bit spitty - I feel somewhat undone. It's a terrible tragedy not to tread those craggy paths, feeling spry, electric and unpredictable as a mountain goat. Woe! This is all I see today of la dolce vita of the entire eastern Mediterranean coast:

 

I exhort you to the heavens: do not do as I do, Do as I Say! Go to the Cinque Terre by train - it is far and away the best, most practical mode of transport to get there - and get out. Leave yourself behind. Steady the discombobulated body on the selected station platform of Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, or Monterosso al Mare. For example, imagine yourself standing here, looking at my yearning sadface on the train...

   
Once on the Cinque Terre footways take deep breaths. Count the outrageous number of vineyard terraces - my record was 53 on one steep hillside. Inhale the giddy scent of lemon blossom. Walk the rugged land. Swim in the sea. Write poetry. Pluck wild capers. 

 

 

Because exercise and intoxicating sea air work up an appetite, eat and drink, to the maximum, all the delicious regional delicacies available in each of the five villages. Do not risk the loss of reason suffered by moi, forced to drive-by the Cinque Terre, rushing ahead to Menton to sacrifice myself to journalism on the Côte d'Azur!  Although admittedly, this is waiting for me:

 

 

It could be worse.

 

 

September 15: FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES

1000m in France inaccessible to some people. Many attempt to cross the precarious clifftop paths by night

After the gallant Italian Regionale races through the darkening evening

to make up for lost time

(and finds nine miraculous minutes)

we have six minutes spare to subway and change platforms

for the French TER border crossing Ventimiglia to Menton service

but

departure time comes

and goes

we sit

and sit,

sit, peer out the dirty rain-streaked windows

and wonder

about the several women standing alongside the train

and their young kids sitting on the ground

crane our necks up the carriage

and down

get up to peek out the door to look left and right along the platform

and wait for an announcement that doesn’t come

we have our suspicions

at least

I have mine

confirmed

when the tidily-dressed young man accompanied by a large, respectable, pale grey-blue suitcase

enters our carriage

via the door at our backs

which duly closes – let’s go!

No.

it re-opens

admitting various shirt-sleeved French border police

while another strides on board via the door to our fronts

and they swiftly close around him

not an embrace

a cuffing

having switched on my journalist I’ve been mentally eyeing the location of the camera

but as the innocent saxe luggage is portered past by the country’s gatekeepers

followed by the man, his neat, strong arms pinned behind his back

elbows bent in, wrists held in, wearing hard, cold steel

under the cheap flicker of shitty fluorescents

– “I have passport, what’s problem?” he says,

removed from us fellow migrants on the train –

it feels wrong

he may not but we – 13 minutes after scheduled departure – may,

pass into France

September 10-15: HEADBUTTING MODERN AND OLD: FOUR DAYS FOR FOUR MINUTES AND FOUR SECONDS IN ROME

German graffiti on an ATAC train in Rome

For sure, leaving the Puglian red earth lands is a wrench. I've managed to get covered in paint, dust and dirt to my satisfaction; swum in the Adriatic; been appalled at the amount of rubbish on the beach (plastic, cigarette butts, plastic, glass bottles, more plastic); gone barefoot, patted dogs, painted boards and fed mosquitoes; seen my friends and the progress of their permaculture project; eaten fresh fruit from the trees for breakfast; and have an invitation to return and work/learn/live there next March. I down a train travel ritual caffè corretto con grappa at the station cafeteria to soften the farewell blow. 
 
It'll take two trains to go cross-country. The first is a fast regional north to Foggia, with ample final views of olive trees…

 
...and the Adriatic out the carriage window. After lunch and a second coffee in Foggia station's cafeteria I transfer onto a fast Frecciargento to Rome. 

My seat neighbour, an Italian oncologist living in Florida - who's both jet-lagged and hungover from a long-weekend trip to a friend's wedding that took place the day and night before - taps nervously at her phone. Stateside, Hurricane Irma has cancelled her flight and she needs to re-book to get back home for work.  

For whatever reason the train wi-fi is down. Could be caused by the big storm in Rome, finally giving the parched city a little rainy respite from heatwave 'Lucifer', the density of the raindrops blocking the signal. But the oncologist blames Italy - to add insult to injury our fast train is on a go-slow, and running progressively later - we eventually arrive at our destination 50 minutes behind schedule. Whatever the reason for the wi-fi blockage, it proves to be an omen for my stay in Rome.


At Roma Termini the evening sun is shining but gaps in the steel of the building are still dripping heavily from the storm, puddles wetting the platforms. I subway and try to ring my host but the public telephone won't accept my Telecom Italia card, then eats my ninety cents without making a connection. In retrospect, another portent. 

The public transport connections, at least, run smoothly. Metro B to Piramide. A quick directional piece of advice from a Russian woman involving Italian, Russian, a snatch of archaic song about an eagle, and information for finding the correct platform. Onto another train going west out towards the beach.

A metro train arriving at Vitinia station

By a seeming miracle my friend Geraldine is at the top of the escalator. Psychic telegram? No, technology. She's checked some app on her mobile phone and seen my fast train was running late. I drop off my luggage and we go out to eat.

The next morning I wake up in my gorgeous, patio-garden-adjacent suite at my friend’s home, permaculture, and B&B project, RIPE (Roman Institute of Permaculture Experimentation), https://www.facebook.com/RIPESBB/ but my computer refuses to wake up with me. The next two days are variations on this: 

Deep inside the third? fourth? unsuccessful slow motion wi-fi old ops system reinstall

This isn't how I've envisaged spending time in Rome. The vision being: head into the historic centre, find an arty location with high foot traffic, make poetry books there, meet people, and with luck find chances to surreptitiously sell them said poetry books and publicise my upcoming reading. It seems I still haven't done a high enough level of esoteric practices to be able to see accurately into the future.  Which is, essentially a four day residency in RIPE’s big living room.

Breakfast cleared, time to head for the IT desk at the other end of the table

Nevertheless, maybe my past can help. Half my life ago, before mass, worldwide, neo-right, labour-market deregulation, and the massive growth of the precariat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat I used to study part time, almost never work a full-time week, and nevertheless earn shitloads of money, as a mainframe computer operator. If it's a software problem I know I have the hard-wiring to fix it myself.   

But sometimes knowledge is a curse. What I haven't reckoned on are the limitations of Italian telecommunications infrastructure - in many areas still not fibre-optic, but running through copper cable - which means network overloads and slow connections. 

Two and a half days, a bit of swearing, periods of rational calm, and one pragmatic and necessary hard-drive erase later, I bite the bullet and go to the nearby Apple store. The saint-like technician plugs a magic cable into their own hard-wiring and the Sierra operations system is back in five  minutes. I treat myself to a Roman felafel and a Croation beer in the late afternoon sun.

When I get back to RIPE I start restoring programmes, tabs and bookmarks, and compare notes on the day with everyone else. The Dutch guest, Paula, on a ten-day holiday, has accomplished yet another awesome, incredibly full day of sightseeing. The Russian guest, Kristina, has done a ton of study towards her upcoming engineering exams. Geraldine has made it to her first black-belt aikido lesson of the season. The three cats slink in for food and return to the warm night. System operations update: happy and calm. 

Experimenting with alternative forms of communication with plants from the garden at RIPE. 

 

A Sicilian zucchini trombetta 

 

PHOTO: Geraldine Schreiber

The next day I finally make it out to see some of the sights and get a bit of a feel for the eternal city. On the 280 bus from Piramide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Cestius we pass a very high, long, impressive, old stone wall thing that I can't identitfy, and a fellow passenger offers me some of her anti-inflammatory salve for my swollen ankle.

I get off at Ponte Sisto to cross the Tiber. The bridge is swirling with hang, didgeridoo and electric guitar music, and a lot of arty types catching a few late afternoon rays. I record four minutes and four seconds of video, then sit and stamp titles on the covers of a few poetry books. It’s exactly two months till my next birthday and these moments are a treasured early gift.

Then I cross the rest of the bridge, pass Piazza Trilussa into the Trastevere district, go and do my show at Almost Corner Bookshop https://www.facebook.com/Almost-Corner-Bookshop-183431962225/ meet some lovely people, and perform the miracle of making it snow in Rome.
 

Evidence of climate change PHOTO: Madeline Wulffson

Afterwards, Geraldine and I wander the lively quarter's pedestrian-full alleys and streets, pause for a very cheap beer at a very popular bar, then walk along by the river past Isola Tiberina and another big old stone thing...

We have no idea what this old stone thing is

Given my gaps in knowledge about historical landmarks, it's hard to believe that I studied Latin and Roman culture and history. It's almost as if all memory of it has been erased from my mind, just like all the old data on my hard disk. At least I have a little evidence that I came and saw, and conquered some IT opposition.