BFT23 - Matera and Alberobello

 

There were basically three ways in and out of Irsina that we ever found.

One way was to turn left from our apartment to get to the main street and then turn left again, away from the medieval part of town. You’d go through the new part of Irsina and past any number of businesses – including the gas station where we would stop – until you got out of town, and then about a kilometer down the road there’d be a right turn that would take you down the mountain and toward wherever you wanted to go, or at least wherever we wanted to go. Google Maps almost invariably took us out of town this way. You can’t come back in this way without some serious dodging and weaving because when you’re in town that road would often but not always be one way against you so you’d best be prepared to come to an intersection and make some quick decisions if you want to avoid oncoming traffic. We discovered this on our first day coming in from Ruoti, much to our confusion, and while we eventually did make it to our apartment that night we saw a lot more of Irsina than we were thinking we would.

Another way was to turn right from our apartment and head down the mountain that way. You could do that coming or going, but for some reason Google Maps rarely chose this way. Not sure why.

The third way was to turn left as you would with the first option, go up the hill to the main street, and then keep going another block to the pub, where you’d turn left and go down the mountain that way. We never left town by this route, but invariably we came back that way. It was a narrow, twisty road up a hill that had any number of hairpin turns and steep drop offs and we were usually doing this in the dark, which is a very different experience in the back of the car than it is for the driver who can see what’s coming and has some control over the situation. You get used to it after a while, but it is quite an adventure. The view of the city all lit up against the night sky as you ascended the mountain was lovely, though.

On our last full day in southern Italy we left Irsina and headed off toward Matera.

Matera is one of the oldest continuously inhabited human settlements in the world. People have lived there for more than ten thousand years that we know of, and possibly longer. There are four parts to the place. There’s the modern city, which is the first thing you come to when you arrive in Matera. It looks like most modern cities and it is just as hard to park there as anywhere else. There is the medieval city known as the Civita, entirely built of stone like most places in Italy. And there are the two Sassi, which are nothing like anything and the main reason why Matera is famous.

The Sassi are networks of caves dug into the stone on either side of a ravine, and they encompass an entire multi-leveled city in themselves with shops, residences, and even churches carved entirely out of the stone. Many have facades to look like regular buildings, but once you go inside it’s clear that you’re in a whole other world. People lived in those caves until the 1950s, not by choice but by necessity. Matera was a region of intense poverty and hardship, and the average lifespan of the people living there was significantly less than anywhere else in Italy.

In the 1930s the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini got tired of being criticized by Carlo Levi, a doctor from the northern city of Turin, and banished him to the Matera region. He lived there for a year, in 1935 and 1936, and in 1945 he published a memoir about his experiences entitled Christ Stopped at Eboli (a reference to the idea that this was a region beyond the reach of religion, morality, or history, a place where even the Savior dared not tread and where all hope of salvation was therefore lost), as a way to condemn the Italian government for allowing this situation to exist and for treating its citizens that way. The book made quite an impression, essentially shaming the Italian government into action, and in the 1950s, with World War II over and Mussolini safely executed, the new Italian government began to remove the residents of Matera’s caves and resettle them into the growing new city around it.

Nobody lives in the Sassi now and as late as the 1980s they still had a fearsome reputation, but in recent years the local and national governments have worked to develop the area as a tourist attraction. It seems to have worked.

They have an Apple Store there now.

I’m not sure why that particular detail sticks with me, among all of the things we saw there, but it does. It’s good to see a city revive like that, though, and even better when can honor its past even as it moves beyond it.

We found our way to Matera and began the search for a place to park. We thought we’d lucked out right away with a spot right off the main drag, but it turned out those places were reserved for residents – there were several of us making that mistake all at the same time and we commiserated with each other for a bit before moving on – but eventually on the advice of the friendly staff of a nearby pasticceria we found a spot on the main road and secured the Speck for the afternoon.

There’s a very abrupt transition as you walk out of the new part of the city and into the medieval part, and it was a very hot day so the heat just radiated off the stones. Some days you just keep your water bottle handy, stick to the shade as much as possible, and rest when you can.

It has to be said that the views of the city are spectacular.

We stuck to this side of the ravine rather than try to get across to the other side, in part because of the heat of the day and in part because the ravine is full of snakes – some of which are considered dangerous to humans – so we figured we’d just appreciate the view from where we were. We didn’t notice many people making that journey, to be honest.

We didn’t have any set plan when we got there beyond a few general goals, so mostly we started by walking around. We did stop for drinks and snacks at one point – there is a really good lemon soda that we found in a vending machine, as well as vast packs of pretzel sticks – but mostly we kept going.

One of our goals was to get to the rupestrian churches carved into the rock. The folks who run Matera offer you several different ticket packages – which you can buy at any one of the church sites and probably several other sites as well – and we went with the Three Church Option. They were spread out across the old city – two fairly close together and one completely on the other side – which meant a fair amount of walking, but it was worth it. You can’t take photos inside of any of them, which is a shame, but they were all uniformly marvelous and some were quite large. It’s a strange thing to realize that you’re in a space carved out of the rock over the centuries. There are all sorts of murals, often painted on top of one another as they deteriorated over time.

At one point we found ourselves standing on top of one of the churches, though that’s a relative measure – the actual church itself was quite a way down through the stone, and on top where we were (according to the tour guide whom we were eavesdropping upon) was a burial ground with graves carved into the stone and then sealed up the same way. You could just walk around and see them there.

We did a lot of walking through Matera and it is a place that rewards that – there’s a lot to see. It’s not really a place where GPS is going to help you much, though, as the streets are twisty and steep and you really do need to think in three dimensions to get some hang of the place. We had a big paper map that we’d picked up along the way and we spent a fair amount of time staring at it, trying to figure out if the road we wanted was the one that went up, the one that went down, or the one that kind of twisted and turned on the same level we were on. Or if that made any real difference, since in a few steps those descriptions would be switched around anyway. We got where we wanted eventually, but it was an adventure.

In the middle of all this we decided to go into a shop that had been set up inside one of the caves, just to see what it looked like. The people running it were very nice and let us look around for a bit. I don’t remember if we bought anything. You can see how whatever modern conveniences there are there have been retrofitted into place as best as could be done with a cave.

And sometimes we just stopped for a bit and caught our breath.

Matera also has a surprising amount of art, some it more highbrow than the rest. On the arty side, there are several works by the sculptor Andrea Roggi scattered about, and we enjoyed them when we saw them.

On the more kitschy side, the fact that it was about 38C (100F) that day did lend a certain cheekiness to this rooftop display.

Eventually we got hungry and found some good food in one of the piazzas where the tourists gather, which seemed appropriate, us being tourists and all. There was pasta and cold drinks and really what more do you need at a moment like that.

 

From there we fired up the Google Map machine and went to Alberobello.

Alberobello is about an hour east of Matera and it is stuffed to the gunnels with trulli, those dry-stone conical houses that we saw a few examples of when we were at the beach near Trani. You can find trulli all over that region of Italy – we passed more than a few on the highway there – but if you really want your fill of trulli you need to go to Alberobello. It’s basically Trulli Central. The ones there are fairly distinctive and consistent in their design, so the overall impression you get of it makes it an interesting place to visit.

You can’t actually drive into the Trulli Zone, so at the edge of it we stopped at an olive grove that had been converted into a parking lot, more or less – the trees were still there and thriving though they were clearly between crops, and you had to kind of work your way around them to park. Finding the guy to give him your couple of euros for the privilege wasn’t as easy as you’d think either, but to have a designated and easily accessible place to stash the Speck for a while was such a pleasant surprise that we were thrilled to do whatever it took.

Oliver was tired after Matera and wasn’t that interested in the trulli so he headed off on his own to find a place that would serve him refreshments and allow him to rest a bit – a noble goal in any vacation-oriented place, I think – so it was just me, Kim, Lauren, and about half of the tourists in southern Italy at that moment. It worked out pretty well, for all that.

From the olive grove you walk down the steep hill into the trulli zone and it really is something to see. The town is mostly painted bright white to reflect the sun, and the conical roofs of the trulli are their original grey stone so it is a nice effect as you walk in.

Each of the rooftops has a specific decoration at the top, and you could tell that someone had gotten tired of answering questions about them so they’d posted a handy guide on one of the trulli explaining what they meant. It was kind of nice, actually.

Most of the trulli are set up as shops, and you wander in and out as you go. We stopped in few of them to see what they had and it was always somewhat surreal when you managed to raise your eyes up to the ceiling sloping away from you to its point. One of the shops had a sign pointing to an observation deck so we made our way out back door and up a set of stairs to the flat roof of a neighboring building, and you could stay there as long as you wanted to look out over the town.

Of course there was a cat. There is always a cat in Italy.

Alberobello is one of the most Instagrammable places in Italy, and we did our part to contribute to that. Might as well.

It wasn’t much cooler in Alberobello than it had been in Matera, so after a while we sought refuge in a pasticceria. They had places to sit but you had to have table service to use them and we thought that was a bit excessive so we went elsewhere.

After a while it was time to meet up with Oliver and go back to Irsina, to pack up our stuff and clean up the apartment and get ready for the next phase of the BFT.

BFT23 - Bari

 

We saw and did a great many wonderful things on this trip, but when we planned the BFT each of us had a certain number of things that were Required Elements above and beyond the rest. As far as I could tell we got to all of them, and that’s just one more reason why we had such a lovely time.

By the time we left for Europe, I had three.

I wanted to go to Ruoti. I wanted to walk across the Charles Bridge in Prague. And I wanted to meet up with Anita in Bari.

I’d gotten to know Anita on a professional level as we worked on a long-term project together (more on that as it nears completion in the coming months), but over time I have come to consider her a friend. I always enjoy hearing from her and sharing stories. Once it was clear that we were in fact going to Italy again I checked to see if it would be possible for us all to meet in person. And it was! In the end we agreed to meet in Bari, where she would show us around the city.

Win!

Bari is a port city on the Adriatic that has been there for at least two thousand years, and it has an odd reputation in Italy from what I could tell. Every time we would mention that we were going there people would get this concerned look on their faces and tell us to be careful. We’d tell them that we were going to be there with an Italian friend and they’d look sort of but not entirely reassured and then they’d tell us to be careful again. On the one hand I suppose I get it – cities often have areas where the unwary should not go and port cities are perhaps more susceptible to this than most, and we did walk by at least one very loud bit of street drama in our time there. But you’d find this sort of thing in most cities really and I’m not sure why Bari gets singled out the way it seems to be. In the end it was a lovely place, at least the parts we visited, and we had a very good time there with Anita.

We drove out of Irsina fairly early one morning, turned right at the fork to go down the mountain, and headed toward Bari, a bit over an hour’s drive away.

Anita suggested we meet at a particular coffee shop which was easy enough to find, though as always in European cities trying to locate a parking place nearby was challenging. Kim and I dropped Oliver and Lauren off at the coffee shop in case Anita got there before we found one, and then we headed out on our mission. We thought we’d scored fairly quickly only to realize as we got out of the car that it was a bus stop, so we got back in – the only time I ever managed to sit in the front seat of the Speck – and eventually found a spot a only block or two from where we needed to be. We carefully checked all of the nearby signs to make sure that we could in fact legally park there – a complex task requiring us to parse out several Zones of possibilities – and then discovered that in order to pay for the spot I’d need to download an app onto my phone and spend several minutes entering all sorts of information into it. I still have the app, though, so if we ever get back to Bari we’ll be set.

A short walk later we settled in to our seats at the coffeeshop, and a minute or two after that Anita arrived! There were coffees, pastries, introductions and stories all around.

Our initial plan was simply to walk down to the harbor, a couple of blocks away, and just see what there was there. Like all of the days we spent in Italy it was hot and sunny with bright cloudless skies, and the waterfront was sparkling.

When we got to the pier we ran into these guys, who were cleaning fresh-caught seafood. The guy in the lighter blue shirt with the dark blue stripe greeted us with a gravelly and enthusiastic “Buon GIORRRRRNOOOO!” that seemed to echo for a full minute, and really what else could we do but go over and see what he had to sell? Neither Oliver nor I are really seafood people but for a couple of euros the guy opened up an oyster each for Kim and Lauren and they agreed that it was worth the price.

Sticking mostly to the shade whenever we could, we walked over into the old part of Bari to look around. This piazza is built on top of an ancient road, apparently, and at one point someone dug out a part of it so you could see the original stones underneath. I’m always amazed that anything gets built at all in Italy, because everything there is built in layers, each one further back in time as you dig down, and how do you disturb any of it to make anything else? It’s a place that has been inhabited for a long time. People figure out a way, though.

It was a gloriously aimless day without too much in the way of specific plans – the best way to get to know a city, I think, especially in good company – and mostly we wandered around just seeing what there was to see. The old section of Bari is lovely and not very crowded with tourists, though we were hardly the only ones there. But you could move at whatever pace you wished to move and stop whenever things looked interesting. I was often at the back of the group, which is why you see the back of everyone’s heads so often in the pictures I suppose.

This particular photo, taken by Oliver, seemed to capture a lot of the place – the sun and shadows, the random shrine, the resting man, the living city with its laundry and machinery. It’s good to remember that people actually live here and you’re just visiting.

Apparently these little Nativity sets are fairly common, though not so much in the hotter weather. It was just there, in a little alcove. Anita explained some of the background to it, and we watched it for a while. The whole thing was maybe a two meters across, and it was kind of peaceful in a way.

We stopped at the Basilica of St. Nicholas, which is dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra – an early Christian bishop in Asia Minor (what is now Turkey) who is perhaps best known these days for being the inspiration for the modern character of Santa Claus. He was neither fat nor jolly, did not live near the North Pole, and likely never saw a reindeer, so some liberties have been taken with the story in the intervening centuries, but they’re hardly out of line with the oddities of his actual life and afterlife when you get right down to it. One legend says he was briefly defrocked for slapping the heretic Arius. Another says he resurrected three children who had been murdered and pickled in brine by a butcher who hoped to sell them as pork. You have to respect the chutzpah behind both of those things. Also, in actual recorded history, about 750 years after he died a group of merchants from Bari broke into his sarcophagus in Myra and stole most of his bones but not all of them. The ones they stole ended up at the Basilica of St. Nicholas where we were. The others ended up in Venice somehow. How the merchants decided which bones to take and which to leave behind is not recorded.

At some point we got hungry and Anita led us to lunch at a place called Osteria le Arpie, which had marvelous food though we did have to wait a bit for it. It was very handy having an Italian friend with us to ask them about when our food would arrive, as I suspect they took Anita a lot more seriously than they would have taken us trying to ask about it in English. On the other hand the wait did mean we had more time to sit and talk together, so I can’t say I was bothered by it. It is a lovely thing to share stories over a good meal, and in anticipation of one.

Bari is apparently known for orecchiette, a kind of pasta distinctive to the Puglia region where Bari sits. It’s shaped like little ears – thus the name – and I figured “when in Bari,” and all that so that’s what I had. My lunch also came with several small braciole. This word apparently refers to a number of dishes depending on where you are in Italy, but in southern Italy and Sicily (i.e. the regions of Italy where my family came from and also where we were in Bari) it usually means thin slices of meat covered in a cheese and breadcrumb mixture and then rolled up and either pinned with toothpicks or tied with string and then browned. My grandmother would make these and then let them simmer in with the gravy (spaghetti sauce for the non-Italian-Americans out there) until they were done, but this was not a dish my mother would make so I’d never had them before. I have to say they were really good. I will have to figure out how to make them myself.

Bari loves its orecchiette, to the point where there is kind of a grey market for the stuff. We’d be walking along the narrow streets of the old city and here and there we’d see these tables with bags and bags full of orecchiette as well as other stuff. Invariably inside the house there would be women rolling out the orecchiette by hand to put out on the tables. This is not really legal, but nobody seems to get all that bothered by it (it’s pasta, what harm can it do?) so these tables are pretty much everywhere. We ended up buying a couple of bags to take home. Lauren has already made hers, but the rest of us still have to get on that sometime soon.

Bari is not just the old city. There’s the modern city as well, which is full of shopping, eateries, and public art. We did a fair amount of walking through the streets and poking into shops here and there, taking it all in. At one point we stopped to get something to drink and find a restroom we could use, and while waiting in line I ended up talking to an Italian guy who not only was a member of the carabinieri and could therefore confirm what we’d been discussing among ourselves earlier about what the differences were between the various types of police forces that we saw while we were in Italy – who has what jurisdiction where, and all that – but had family in Wisconsin as well. You can’t get away from Wisconsin no matter how far you go.

Our time in Bari came to an end around 6pm as Anita had to leave to pick up a friend from the airport and we needed to get back to Irsina in time for Lauren to have a Zoom interview for a job for the fall, so we said our goodbyes and headed off, though perhaps we will see each other again sometime soon. That would be lovely.

It was a nice drive back to Irsina – we’d gotten used to the ride by now and didn’t end up getting routed through the middle of cities on the way back the way we randomly had done on other returns to Irsina (Google Maps works in mysterious ways, sometimes) – and we arrived while it was still light out. We pulled into the little parking area by our apartment and were greeted by the downstairs neighbor’s dog, who seemed happy to see us.

Lauren eventually did get the job, by the way.