And I still haven't got my visa! I went to the Questura at Siracusa this morning, just as my appointment letter told me to, and they said that the package with the actual application hadn't yet arrived.... from the post office 100 m away. Hmmm. Well, that's the postal service for you at Christmas. So now I have a new appointment for 13/1/10. The question is - will the Italy Immigration people at Catania airport let me back in the country after New Years???
A couple of weekends ago I went to Taormina. A very pretty town on a very pretty coastline but if the number of tourists there on a chilly day in December was anything to go by, I'm very glad I didn't go in summer.
One of the key attractions is an ancient Greek theatre, strategically located on a cliff with magnificent views of the beautiful harbour on two sides and looming Mt Etna on a third. Now you know an historic site is truly historic when your guide book laments that it was ruined by more modern construction... ie the Romans. The Romans had built walls around the theatre because they were less into Greek tradegies and comedies and more into gladiator sports. Fortunately these walls have crumbled allowing you to see the views as per the original Greek design.
Yesterday I went exploring the Valle dell'Anapo, a beautiful valley with (you guessed it) the Anapo river running through it. This place was remarkable though for the *truly* ancient Necropolis di Pantalica.
By truly I mean this site dates from as far back as the 13th century BC. In this picture you can see (even better if you click on it to open it to full size) many holes in the rock. These were carved out of the limestone by the civilisation of the day to rest their dead. Along the whole site there are about 5000.
Here's a close up of one of them. The door was a bit smaller than me. This one was a single little (man made) cave, but some of them have multiple chambers, presumably for members of the same family. Amazing. Particularly the ones right on the cliff face. Of course, I suppose the layout of this porous rock was a bit different 15,000 years ago, but still I wouldn't have wanted to be a gravedigger in those days!
Along the valley itself I had a lovely time rock hopping over the water and climbing along the path. This spot in particular struck me as the perfect swimming hole - I was pretty cold but even so mildly tempted to jump in. Just like home. All in all a great day, and I'm definitely going to go back one day and explore further. Although, my knees hurt a little bit at the end... hang on, I'm way too young for my knees to be giving way!
Speaking of cold though, I am absolutely going to freeze in a few days time when I return to Manchester for Christmas. It's been snowing and about -6 degrees. Of course, that's assuming that I get there - many delays at Gatwick airport already. England's absolutely useless when it comes to snow, a few flakes and everything shuts down.
To paraphrase our favourite 1980's commentator, Europes aint europes. You have of course the continent of Europe, although even that's a bit confusing with some countries (notably Russia and Turkey) spanning across to Asia. There are 50 sovereign states in Europe. Although an island, the UK is considered technically part of the European continent.
Then you have the somewhat smaller European Union which currently has 27 members. The EU is the current form of the club that was started after the second world war to "make make war unthinkable and materially impossible" (surely the most successfully accomplished mission statement EVER). Switzerland is not a member (those guys take their neutrality verrry seriously), but lots of other countries want to be still so we can expect the EU to continue to expand. The UK is a member of the EU.
Now we get to the Eurozone. The euro is the official currency of the EU and there are 16 member countries who have adopted it. Most of the other EU countries have to adopt but haven't got round to meeting the economic criteria yet. Some non-EU countries like the Vatican (because changing currency in the middle of Italy would be a right pain) and Montenegro (because when you're a tiny country who finally gets independence out of the mess that was the former Yugoslavia, what else are you going to use) also use the euro. But because the UK is oohhh soooo special, they got to keep the pound sterling and are thus not a member of the Eurozone.
We also (and now we are starting to get to the point of this blog entry) have the Schengen Zone. The Schengen zone (I am amused that this key accord was signed in a place that is virtually unpronouncable to the vast majority of Europeans not from Luxembourg) is an area where all of the countries have no internal border controls. So for a third country citizen (such as an Australian) being in France, for example, is the same (visa wise) as being in Italy.
As you can see from the map to the right, the UK (and Ireland) are the only EU countries that chose to opt out of this convenient arrangement. Why? I don't know, they're just "special". So the UK is not in the Schengen Zone.
Why does any of this matter? Well, I am an Australian. I have an Australian passport (and only an Australian passport). I am not English. My right to live and work in the UK is based on a 5 year "Ancestry Visa", so called because I qualified through my English born grandmother. So, does this or does this not mean that I have the right to live and work in Italy?
The title of this blog entry refers to how long it took me to answer that question... on day 89 of my time in Schengen zone! An Australian is allowed 90 days in any 6 month period, and with various holidays I hit that number this weekend. The majority of the problem was that the local immigration authorities (not the brightest bunch of beaurocrats) thought that my UK working visa wasn't valid because the UK is not part of the Schengen Zone even though Regulation 286/1998 Article 27 1-bis clearly refers to memer states of the EU and not the SZ. Bof.
Finally, after getting this piece of paper and that piece of paper and contracts between different companies and letters from the union and the passport of the directors of the Italian and UK companies and my entire life story in triplicate and filling out this application and that application and talking to all sorts of lawyers.... I went to the post office on Friday, filled out a form (with an Italian assistant), gave a copy of my passport and received my receipt. Done.
Well, sort of, I still need to go through some more hoops. So, if you don't hear from me again you'll know that I've been thrown in gaol as an illegal immigrant!
If you notice a new little logo on this blog, it's because I'm flirting with the idea of calling myself a humanist (although of the small h variety). This is despite a general reluctance to use such labels. Humanism explained
I passed a very sad day a couple of weekends ago. An American lady on holiday in the apartment next to mine had awoken to find that her husband had passed away during the night. So this blog is my lesson on what to do when this happens. I imagine that the process is reasonably similar in any western country, but as I’d never so much as been to a funeral before, I had no idea what to do. I am writing this because I think that anyone travelling should have some idea of what happens so that they can talk to their partner and think ahead in advance.
First, somebody called the ambulance, who then called the police, who then called the coroner. Everything was point on hold waiting for the coroner, who announced that it was death of natural causes, and so the body could be released into the custody of an undertaker. (Otherwise, he would have kept custody until an autopsy was performed). During this time, while the lady was talking to her children, I had a brainwave and called the American Embassy in Rome to ask for help. Unfortunately they didn’t have any travel insurance, otherwise I would have called them as well.
Now comes the tricky part when you are overseas, don’t speak the language and are in shock – finding an undertaker. In this case, the police called a local man who was the most slimy, horrible person I’ve ever met, considering his position of dealing with the (very) recently bereaved. Meanwhile, the American Embassy had called someone that they considered reputable and hence were surprised and suspicious to hear that the body had been given over to someone else.
Lesson number 1 – no one asks for your permission at this point. However, I could have stopped the process if I’d realised what was going on because to complete the paperwork it was necessary to have the address of the final resting place of the body. In this case, I looked up the lady’s home town on the internet and found the local funeral home with their address. (This is where I went wrong – I should have asked for proof that this person was from the company the Embassy had recommended before giving him an address).
So this character followed the ambulance to the hospital where the morgue was located, and no doubt completed some paperwork. At the same time, we went, with the lovely and english speaking owner of the apartment, to the funeral home where it turned out we had to pick a coffin.
Next lesson – in Italy they don’t embalm the body. So when the policeman had come into my apartment to give the lady her husband’s wedding ring, and to ask if she wanted to see him before they took him away (she absolutely did not want to, not having yet passed from the horror stage into grief), it really was the last opportunity she would have had to see her husband.
Because we were so far from the capital of Sicily or any other really big population centre (and it was a Saturday), the deceased’s preferred option of cremation was out of the question (ie no crematoriums in the very Catholic Siracusa). So there we were, not 4 hours after waking up and finding that her husband had died, having to select a coffin and negotiate the price of transferring the body to the USA. A grim experience.
The gentleman in question had been a fairly large man, and so the selection of coffins was limited. Knowing him, the lady was sure that he would have wanted a plain coffin, and being a protestant meant that carvings of the Virgin Mary were particularly unwelcome. However the only plain coffins that were large enough were much more expensive. Fixing a price was also problematic because the undertaker would only know the final cost once the body and coffin were weighed at the airport. I wanted to find away to pay a deposit then only settle once the final price was known as I’m sure this undertaker would be padding the price to be sure. But that turned out to be too difficult…
Because finally there was the matter of payment, as the undertaker would not take credit card and bank transfers from the US would have taken quite a long time (presumably he would have wanted to keep the body until the transfer had come through). Personally my credit card limit wouldn’t have been enough anyway. I think that this might have been where the travel insurance would have come in – hopefully they could have arranged the payment of the €7700 thus avoiding the pain. Fortunately in our case the lady had a friend in Rome who was able to arrange the transfer. My goal had rapidly become to get her the hell out of that awful place with the loud arguing in Italian (our friend the apartment owner was absolutely invaluable here) at just about any price.
The final hurdle was in determining whether the lady was free to go home to her family. There’s a bit of an Italian trait to just say no, or we need more information, or you have to wait for someone else to approve if they don’t know the answer to the question. However the helpful Embassy said that they couldn’t think of any reason why not, so we booked her a flight the next morning home. Another lesson – just go, they can’t stop you. If something goes wrong you’ll be better placed to deal with it from home.
The body did make it home as well after what I suspect was a lengthy chain of custody process involving much paper (somewhere along the line the Embassy in Rome had to issue a special “passport” – another reason to have got them involved as early as possible).
So there you go. Tell your travelling friends and family – be prepared.
But here's my apartment:
But now this car is really cool… (a site vehicle for the maintenance team with their tools)
The name of this blog has temporarily changed from Jos City (reflecting the lesser known Manchester football team). Ok, Mt Jos-na is a pretty poor effort, but it got stuck in my head. But flying into Sicily for the first time on a rather cloudy day, I looked out of the window and saw a sea of white with one ominous black peak looming over the plane. Mt Etna is a mere few hundred kilometres north of where I am now, and it certainly dominates the surrounding landscape. I’m looking forward to visiting it. Although with the sudden spate of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and dust storms around the world, I’ll pick a clear day!
Sometimes there’s a long time between blog entries because nothing much is happening in my life. Sometimes it’s the reverse. Before heading off on holiday in Eastern Europe, I blithely said “sure, why not” when someone at work asked me if they could send my CV off for an assignment in Sicily, not expecting anything to come of it (ha!). As previously mentioned, I had also got cracking, finally, on my cellar.
My house consists of 4 storeys, like all the others in my row of terraces. People in my village say “I can’t believe you live in that massive house all by yourself!” to which I typically respond “But it’s ONE ROOM wide! That is NOT a big house!!!”. Still, if you add up all of the available floor space, it does come to a reasonable amount. I’ll finally take some proper photos next weekend (ironically, just as I’m leaving for a while). But up until now the cellar has been fairly damp, so I didn’t really count it except as somewhere to store my treadmill.
I've heard it said, from citizens of those very few countries in the world that don't think football = soccer, that soccer is boring. Well, I challenge you to watch a traditional Manchester United - Manchester City derby in a crowded pub full of rabid fans with the score at 3 all into injury time when one team scores the deciding goal. Wow.
Later, I went and watched the line dancing in Manchester's gay and lesbian quarter. That was a) great and b) kind of funny when you remember that line dancing originated from America's ahem "country" (read redneck) regions.
Cellar renovations are proceeding a pace. The team has expanded, and evenings in the local pub now sound like an episode of Home Improvement.
I don’t have any decent photos really of Montenegro because my little phone camera’s no good at capturing the Best Sunsets Ever. Because that’s we watched each night, sitting on the tiny pebbly “beach” that we’d found, sipping on a cold, cheap beer in the balmy evening.
At first I was disappointed – this was meant to be the beach part of the holiday after mountains and cities, castles and museums. The newest country in the world (remember it only just split from Serbia), surely we could escape the crowds? Nope. No chance. Plus, the mountains plunging into the turquoise water of the Adriatic was spectacular, but not beach forming. Every tiny patch had a ridiculous number of people, and the whole thing just caused my Australian heart to shudder in horror (when you grew up within an hour of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts… well).
But after a fortuitous detour to look at an old monastery on a cliff, we noticed a monstrosity of a hotel being built down below. When it’s finished, there will probably be about 20 rooms per square meter of pebbly beach, but for now it was our own little heaven with a perfectly reasonable number of people having discovered it.
When we left Montenegro and the lovely lady who had rent us a room in her house with whom we had several conversations in sign language, we headed (sadly) north (and towards home). First stop, the famed Dubrovnik. Once again I defer to the excellent article and photos here at the ever-wonderful Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik.
After Dubrovnik, we headed north along the coast to land at a little town called Biograd. Lots of reportedly wonderful places like Split were missed along the way, something for another day. Biograd was one of those lucky strikes you get sometimes when travelling randomly. I was using the Eastern Europe Lonely Planet book, as before going we weren’t even sure which countries we were going to, so the details on Croatia were limited to the major locations. Biograd was just big enough to be shown on the map; it looked around the right distance and so that’s what went into the GPS.
The next day we went out on the boat around some islands (Kornat), where I swam for the first time in a super salt lake – 5 x saltier than the ocean. It was like swimming in soup! The density was so high you couldn’t have sunk if you’d tried. Otherwise it was just a lovely day out on the sparkling water
Then there was Plitvice. A supremely beautiful national park full of waterfalls and lakes, which due to some sort of geological thingy are constantly changing. The waters were a clear turquoise. Take for example this idyllic scene…
Of course, pan out a little bit and you see what it was really like. Add this one to the list of places to see but not in August.
One slightly bizarre night in a town called Bizet (the “Town of Truffles” with its fabulous Stari Grad perched on a hilltop where we got a taste of Croatia outside of peak season – come early if you want dinner!) and then it was back into Slovenia.
The Scojcan caves were certainly impressive, although more for their size and depth than the stalagmite formations. The picture, taken on the way up and out of the caves, is me exploring my vertical panorama capabilities
And here we see a lifelong dream – I was really meant to be working on a Lipizzaner stud farm not tripping the world fixing power stations…
Then it was time to say goodbye to Slovenia and head back west again, this time through Italy. We stopped for the night at Fair Verona, saw Juliet’s balcony and many other marvellous things, before going on to Milan where I was to fly out.
Now I didn’t particularly rate Milan. But they did do a pretty mean cathedral. Of course, I had to spend €5 on a scarf thingy to get past the “shoulder police”. No, literally – the police were checking bags and shoulders…
Inside was spectacular but the only picture I talk was of the confessional below because it tickled my sense of humour. You might have to click on the photo to make it bigger and spot the sign saying this priest has lots of languages. You see similar signs all over the place, but normally in restaurants or tourist shops!
The following series of photos represents each corner of the main plazza in what is clearly the poshest shopping district in Milanao. See if you can spot the anomaly....
Finally, a picture from our stay in beautiful Innsbruck, Austria.
By the way, this blog might need a new title before too long...
On Friday I got home from a two week holiday. Europe does (to my Australian eyes) strange things with holidays. It seems to me that the entire continent just picks itself up and goes somewhere else over July and August. Many people will take almost their full year’s allowance of holidays in one hit. Sure the weather’s nice, but I don’t really understand why they don’t spread themselves out a bit more, particularly those without kids on school holidays. One possibility is that they have a use it or lose it system for annual leave, unlike in Australia where you can usually roll it over.
Whatever the reason, it’s kind of hellish around all the best spots. But despite that, we had a lovely time. The itinerary was:
Fly into Geneva
Drive through Switzerland and Austria
See Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro
Drive back through Italy
Fly out of Milano
I had barely heard of Slovenia before going there, but it was probably one of my favourite places on the trip. And the road from Innsbruck in Austria over the Dolomites was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever taken, absolutely stunning. I think one of the themes of this blog entry is going to have to be: “the photo doesn’t do it justice”.
Bled was the first destination in “Eastern Europe”. That by the way is more of a political designation than geographical, as Greece is certainly further east than Slovenia. My Lonely Planet described Bled as appearing to have been created by some god of tourism, with its magnificent lake, the monastery on the little island in the middle, the imposing mountains all around (one with an imposing castle)… It must be spectacular in winter covered in snow and removed of so many tourists!
We stayed this time in a private room. Lots of local people have converted spare space in their houses into hotel-like rooms. This was definitely one of the cheapest options around, plus you got to see where people lived, enhancing the travelling experience. It was mainly feasible in the touristy places. Away from Bled, we found charming little mountain top dairy villages, more stunning scenery, just everything you want from the Julian Alps really (named after Julius Caesar himself – I had plenty of driving time to read the history sections in the Lonely Planet).
But I’m getting well ahead of myself. Bosnia of course hasn’t long recovered from the war between the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats. I must say, of all the ridiculous wars this one seems particularly stupid. As far as I can tell, Serbs and Croats are ethnically the same, speak the same language and have roughly the same history. The only thing is, one bunch goes to a Roman Catholic church and the other to a Christian Orthodox church. The other group in the country are the Muslims (same ethnicity, same language, they just happened to find it expedient to convert during the Turkish Ottoman Empire days). Lots of chaos all round.
The first thing we noticed on the way south from the border was the number of unfinished houses. Large, two and three story buildings had been constructed but never finished. However people were obviously living in them (you could see rows of washing for example, and pot plants). I think that after the war, people were donated money for building materials but then the money ran out.
Next up was Mostar. Again my camera failed to produce the required quality images of this amazing place, so I direct the interested to the images at the bottom of this site (I know, slack, but hey this blog entry is probably already too long!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostar.
Next time: the road west and north and then west some more.
Here's a close up of one of them. The door was a bit smaller than me. This one was a single little (man made) cave, but some of them have multiple chambers, presumably for members of the same family. Amazing. Particularly the ones right on the cliff face. Of course, I suppose the layout of this porous rock was a bit different 15,000 years ago, but still I wouldn't have wanted to be a gravedigger in those days!
