Syracusa: Day Two

My roommate in the hostel was a woman named Kate.  She is from Hawaii.  Pleasant, round faced girl with haunted deer eyes and nervous friendly manner.  If she were a house everything would be perfectly placed, shiny and new but there would be a dark and scary attic.  When she spoke she always smiled but her eyes were light less and still.  She was traveling alone but was visiting the city with another hostel guest Alan.  Alan was from California.  He was a bit like a submissive puppy.  I think he has spent his life with a screamer.  It seemed like you could walk up behind him say boo and maybe he would piddle a little bit.  the poor guy.  They were exploring the city together that day and asked if I wanted to join them.  Confidently and without remorse I had declined.  i was looking forward to a day without conversation and without discussion, without the consensus of a group vote.  I did not want anyone in tow, or to be in tow, to wait or to keep someone waiting.  I was in me motion and was completely unapologetic about it.

I set out early again this day.  It did not take very long to get into an eating routine.  First a breakfast snack at the hostel, then duck into the bakery on the way out of town for a little snack treat in a bit when hunger started to stir again after some walking.  My messenger bag was packed with dictionary, lipstick, water bottle and a snack pocket with a napkin cushion where a little baked good could be cradled perfectly away from all the other things.  In one day my map was dog eared and worn on the folded edge from going in and out of my back pocket and covered in check marks and scribbles noting what I had done and what I saw.  At some point I had the full collection but as my compulsion to lighten my luggage weight mutated this map along with others had been placed lovingly into a recycling bin.

Todays agenda Etruscian ruins, and Greek theatre and the civic museum.  The sentence structure was metaphores.  Parlo come una bambina.  I speak like a baby.  My goal was to be able to make up ten of these sentences before I fell asleep that night.  Entertaining myself with this verbal game I set out.  Orienting myself from left to right on a map for me is tricky when I am first getting to know a place.  Sounds silly but I tend to go backwards when I want to go forward and left when I want to go right.  I think it is because I can read something written backwards and upside down as easily as I can something that is written normally.  Maybe it sounds like it would help but it actually doesn't.  I usually take a little longer and the process completely consumes me when I orient the map in the direction that I am standing.  This map was one of the bright ones with silly drawings of things that are pretty irrelevant, torn from a pad like a piece of theme tablet paper.  The proportion of streets to one another and the images were completely inaccurate.  And remember, The other challenge is the street names are all in Italian.  Everything you look at is in a italian.  Signs on doors, Signs on the streets, Signs in the windows.  A bakery does not say bakery it says pasticceria. The book store says Libreria, Suonare, as store that sells musical instruments.  .  One could look at this situation and turn around, go home OR one could look at it as a live language teaching machine.  The reality is that the name of the street can be different only by one or two letters so you really have to concentrate every minute and this can make you very tired.  In no time I was lost.  I found a friendly looking motorcycle guy and asked him.   Excuse me sir, I speak italian like a child and I am lost.  Practice sentence number one.  Where am I .  Dove sono? and then handed him the map.    Where to do you want to go.  Hah I understood and I pointed.  He seemed a little nervous and sweetly spoke incredibly slowly, instantly starting Italian charades with me.  Long arm gestures as if he was helping to direct a plane to a gate.  Smiling and pausing to make sure I was understanding.  "A piede?"  (on foot) he asked.  "Si, Si."  "It would be better to take the bus."  Ha ha  again I understand.    He told me the bus number and where to get it.  I knodded but ignored him thinking about my snack and wanting a nice walk to work up a good deep hunger for a luscious sweet treat.    Thanked him, flipped the map around to orient myself and went on my way.  Walking and looking for landmarks as I went, insuring that I was still on the right path I realized pretty quickly I did not understand a thing he said.  I liked the hand gestures and the slowness of his speech but I was back where I started and was hoping he did not see me.  I think I was so excited about the few things that I did understand that I failed to listen to everything that was being said.  This made me laugh out loud at myself as I walked and read the map in the hope that I could be redeemed.

I found a small row of fish markets, had a look and then asked a man in one "dove sono?"  handing him the map.  He too asked where I wanted to go, I pointed and again this man said  "A piede?"  "Wow where the hell is this place", i thought.  I ignored too his suggestion for the bus.  Being less surprised by my understanding of some basic things I paid much closer attention to the directions he was giving me.  This time when I set out I was hitting landmarks that he pointed to on the map when he was moving his arms as if he was directing the plane to the gate in his big rubber boots and apron.  Cute.


It took me about 40 minutes to arrive.  It made me smile that this seemed too long to walk.  The walk was completely uneventful.   The Greece theater once had the capacity thousands of people.  Today some performances are still made in the summer to a much smaller audience.  Along with the theater were some ruins and some botanical gardens.  The gardens were not in full bloom but had a lush green foliage that bent over creating a tunnel.  This place was acres and acres but every where I went was an  Asian woman wearinga red t-shirt and baseball cap lugging her rolling black bags all over the park.  " Assomiglia come Tic Tac dei cannella sulla scala."  (She looks like a cinnamon Tic Tac on the stairs)  I said watching her on the sun bleached theatre holding her camera out at arms length to take a picture of herself.  "Ha sentence number two." I said feeling extra satisfied because it was kinda funny.

The day was glorious.  I was enjoying my day without conversation.  I hummed in my head, strolled at a comfortable pace and stopped when I wanted.  The afternoon was the civic museum.  Dark low ceiling, sound fell silent a short distance from its source, a calming retreat from horns and chatter.  The galleries were a maze of black fabric and glass cases displaying a wonderful collection of etruscan pottery and jewelry, tools and cookery that I had encounted so far in Sicily.  My favorite was the installed animal skeletons.

After returning from my day,  I opened a bottle of wine, made a salad with meat and relaxed.  When I was eating the Cinamon Tic Tac arrived,  red clothes and her black suit case. Standing next to her luggage the top was above her waist.  If she bent over she could have easily placed into it.   I listened to Max orient her in the same way he had me.  He tore the map from the pad, marked it with the arrows to the grocery store and the bakery, noted the hours of operation, the run down on the kitchen rules and check out times.    Also over packed, I watched Max  lug her bags up the stairs, winded he inspired my third sentence for the day.   Ansimare come una mucca che partorisce.  Panting like a laboring cow.