Part One

As in anywhere else on Earth, the mass of people now go about their day glued to their hand-held devices. Where once the skyline boasted medieval towers and noble Renaissance church domes, now it is raked with cellphone towers and 5G masts. And kiwi fruits are everywhere. Otherwise, Italy and Italians remain recognisably the same as they did in the 1980s, when I was a regular visitor.

This is, I readily accept, an enormous generalisation; it is based upon the week I spent in north-east Italy in mid-April. Like any generalisation, it will be imprecise, probably superficial, and include large numbers of exceptions. But, given all that, I shall continue to generalise.....

It was an enormous relief. I didn't know what to expect. As I wrote in Blog#75, 'La Serenissima', back in February, I last visited Venice, and Italy, near the end of 1990. Plenty of water to pass under the many bridges straddling the narrow backwater canals of the city since then.

Italy came under some of the harshest 'measures' when convid arrived in town. You don't want to read about it. This was under nasty-man-disguised-as-liberal Conte; like many of the other most vicious convid zealots, he has since departed the scene.

Cast your mind back to those surreal days a little more than four years ago. Northern Italy became the initial hub of horror in Europe, as convid arrived, hospitals got overrun, and people started dropping like flies. This was focussed on Lombardy (Milan, Bergamo, for example) and Veneto; precisely the area that I was now visiting. It was eerie to imagine all this.

It is, of course, pure coincidence that this part of Italy is notorious for its poor quality of air in the winter months anyway. Cold air sinks down from the Alps to the north, and sits stagnating over the Po Valley and Lombardy Plain, while the pollution and smog emitted in this industrial area gets trapped and hangs around for days on end. The result is a soup that is toxic to the human body, especially to the lungs, and this part of Italy suffers high levels of chest and lung diseases at the best of times.

I also believe that this is precisely the time that the 5G emitters were turned on in northern Italy. 

Even at the time, those who were not completely blinded by fear and panic were noting how most of the 'victims of convid' were aged over 80 years old. But, after people dropping dead spontaneously on the streets of China, northern Italy was the scene for the next phase of convid rollout in the western world.

Part Two

To me, it is all surreal. I saw no signs. Superficial maybe, but the Italians seemed to have recovered from 'the horror, the horror' inflicted upon them.

Venice being a bit too expensive for us to stay, our first accommodation was in Padova. I woke to a sky criss-crossed thickly with what some people believe to be chemtrails, and a hazy sun battling to get through. Needless to say, the sunshine eventually won out. It was Friday, and by the time we managed to get out, school was clearly out as well. The riversides, the cafes in the parks and side streets in the city's medieval centre, were overflowing with residents, visitors, and students eating, drinking, and talking. And, as this is Italy, it is mainly talking....

Italy has a problem, at least according to the paradigms laid down by the socio-economic structures of the day. It is a seriously ageing population; nobody's having babies, which means that eventually nobody's there to make money and be fit and active enough to look after all those old unproductive people. That's the story that's woven, anyway.

It's ironic in the land that's given us Casanova, Don Giovanni, the music and language of love, that there just aren't enough babies being born. But in Padova, you'd never guess. It has a large student population, and boasts the second oldest university in Italy, after Bologna. The place seems to breathe the essence of youth.

And on to Venice. You walk the narrow winding streets, cross countless bridges over tiny waterways; you feel a bit knackered; and then sense that the physical world is dissolving away, or evaporating before your eyes, or melting into a spiritual nothingness that contains everything. 

It is the least physical, the most ethereal, place I have ever been, by miles. You sit by the water and merge with the water spirits. Something in your soul emerges, or comes into play, that otherwise lies sound asleep and unacknowledged. It is unique, enchanting, and I feel as if under a magic spell. Time begins, not so much to stand still as to simply fade away You feel extreme reluctance to leave, instead preferring to sit beside the waters of some back canal and just die there and then. 

Treviso. Here things are a bit less Italian, and the people are slightly less beautiful. North of Venice, closer to Austria, Germany, and the Alps, and en route to Slovenia, Croatia, and points east. But it has its own pretty waterways and lively historic centre.

And Castelfranco. The town of Giorgione, with the sweet little museum, the Casa Giorgione, and the Giorgione altarpiece in the Duomo, the cathedral. Like most of Giorgione's art (and there isn't very much), it evokes strange feelings should you spend any serious time in its company. A puzzled shake of the head and a 'don't know what that's about'. For people who insist on 'knowing' and 'understanding', Giorgione must be the most frustrating painter in the history of art.

Generally speaking, people in this corner of Italy seem pleased to see you. It came home to me one time we boarded a crowded train and sat down next to a couple of men who, it was clear from their appearance and emotional demeanour, were not Italian; in fact, their language told me they came from a nation, let's say, a bit north of there. Anyhow, when my wife and I sat down next to them, one of the men cast me a glance which said, put simply 'Go away or I'll kill you.'               

Part Three

One thing which confused me when I first spent time in Italy in the 1980s was that many things seemed to work quite efficiently and well. In fact, they appeared to work better than they did in Britain.   

This was quite a shock because, while growing up in southern England, I had been inculcated with the idea that things work best in Britain - or at least in England - or at least in the southern bit of England. In fact, everything was best in England. While somewhere like Italy was a dirty, chaotic, backward mess.

This is one of the  big lies perpetuated by Anglo-Saxon cultures, and it stinks.

So this is another thing that I discovered hasn't changed. Plenty of things still work better - and are generally better in all sorts of ways - in northern Italy than in Britain. As an example, I offer the rail service. It is frequent, and well-used by all types of people. The trains are clean, bright, fairly comfortable, and even if they get crowded, peoples' behaviour makes the inconvenience easier to accommodate.

Part Four

" 'Ello. Can I a-elp you?" I turn to see a rather beautiful woman with a shopping trolley speaking to me with a look of friendly concern on her face. I am standing in the middle of the fruit and vegetable section of the Co-Op in Padova. It is the size of an ocean, and my bewilderment is clearly obvious. I want to buy some bananas, but before I can do this I have to master the system of purchase. Select product - bag - remember product code - weigh - punch in product code - label - place in trolley - hope you've done it right and don't need to go back to square one.  

Convoluted systems seem to be a feature of life in Italy. They are, I imagine, due in part to an endless wish to ensure that people pay for things that they should pay for.

Another example: buying a train ticket at the ticket machine. Not only do you need to state your destination, you have to choose a particular train to catch - the ticket is valid for that train only. Careful scrutiny of the trips on offer is also required, as different rail companies have different tariffs. The machines tend to be a bit slow, but you get there in the end.

And before you board the train, it is necessary to validate the ticket. This requires finding a ticket-validating machine, which might be on the platform, or in the subway between platforms, or near to the ticket machine. Being in a hurry is not a recommended option. The trains that we caught from Padova were to-the-second punctual; the ones on the line from Treviso were sometimes a bit late. "Still, at least you know they are coming" commented my wife, who has a degree in public transport use in the Highlands of Scotland, and bears the scars.

Planet Earth might be, as Howdie Mickoski puts it, the suffering pit of hell to inhabit. But in Italy the suffering can be at least slightly more bearable....    

Part Five

I went to Venice because some time in the winter months I felt that I needed to go. I didn't know why. Now, after the trip is over, I still don't know why. But it was the weirdest thing....

I hadn't set foot in Italy for over thirty years, but the moment I arrived I felt at home. It was the same feeling that I experienced the second time I visited that place, a sense of homecoming, something that I have felt only a small handful of times in this lifetime.

Despite living nearly all my life in various parts of the UK, I have never felt that I am at home in the same way. I never 'belong', always remain a bit strange, outside it all.

The sense of not-belonging reached an explosive crescendo in the early weeks of convid. An acute realisation washed through me that 'this is not my place'; 'I do not belong here'. Where I do belong, if anywhere, remains a moot point, a mystery. I immersed myself more seriously in the lore of starseeds, those who sense, or know, that they do not really come from, or belong, on planet Earth at all. They are visitors from other planets or galaxies or star systems. Some can tell you precisely where their true home is, and what life is like there.

I have no such conscious memories. I do not look nostalgically into the sky and wish I was somewhere up there, 'back home'. If anything, I would fancy myself to be a wandering soul throughout the entirety of creation, dropping in here, dropping in there. But I don't know.

In Italy this time I didn't know how things work. My knowledge of the language, always rudimentary but once passable, is now almost zero, and any that remains disappears in interference from Spanish. But I felt at home with the places and the people. It is bizarre.

My wife noticed. Used to my tentative attitudes in visits to Colombia, where I would wear a barely disguised discomfort, she was amazed to see me going around confidently, approaching strangers for information with ease, engaging in conversation freely despite having no language with which to do it.      

It doesn't make sense; I shall therefore need to step outside 'common sense' if I wish to shed light upon this strange set of circumstances. And shedding that light seems something of an imperative for my future, both in what remains of this life and in what is to come beyond.

And there will most likely be another couple of blog posts coming, related to this time south of the Alps.

Images: Padova, Venice, Treviso, Castelfranco