It is July 1990. It is hot. I am jet legged and travelled for 24 hours. First by train from Cremona to Roma. Then with an Air Jordan flight to Amman and connection to Delhi. I am with a group of four other friends and for me is the first time outside Europe. I am 23. My blue Invicta rucksack is the first to be delivered by the belts so I am sent out of […]
When do you leave?. The question, when asked in English, has a broader meaning than the Italian: Quando parti?, which clearly refers to a trip, a travel, a rucksack which is being lifted on the shoulders to go to a railway station or an airport. I think that Quando parti? (both in English and Italian) has been the question I have been asked the most after: How are you? Is this good? Is this bad? […]
“Welcome,Sir”. “Good evening,Sir”. I take a deep breath. End of today’s trip. I am home. But is it home? No, but these greetings are reassuring and familiar by now. They remind me of the country where I live now when I enter the lobby of the Marriot airport hotel in Manila. I recognise some of the staff as I have been here a few times now. Always arriving in the evening and leaving very early […]
It is 7:00 in the morning. Sunday morning. We have Dumaguete, Manila,Hong Kong, the skies on China and Russia behind us. Helsinki is like a ghost town. As if all its inhabitants would have suddendly left or would have all be taken away during the course of the night by a alien forces from an unknown dimension leaving behind broken glasses, empty McDonalds paper cups swept by the autumn wind on the pavement. We walk […]
We just started our descento into Manila. Pressure is changing in the cabin. This the first leg of the long journey home, or better said to our homelands. We will fly tonight to Helsinki via Hong Kong, then after 10 days we will go to Italy. That will be the first time for Venla who is now 3 and 1/2 and the third time for Olga. Olga has been worried about travelling to Italy. She […]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0&fs=1&hl=en_US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0
25 min e 43 sec. Questo e’ tutto quello che ho in questo momento. Corro a passo lento sulla camminata in riva al mare qui ad Hai Phong. Il mare e’ mosso, di un colore marrone fatto di sedimenti. Il vento umido e caldo. In lontanza il profile delle isole di Ha Long Bay si confonde nelle nuvole basse e grigie del monsone. Corro. Musica nell’ iPod. Il concerto a Slane Castle vicino a Dublino […]
How can I feel nostalgia for a country I have never visited? And yet, that is how I feel. Some ingredients help of course: the never satisfied enough need to see new places and observe how people live, the need for new landscapes, the nervous excitement that precede the exit from the airport of an unknown city. The most important ingredient, however, remains music. Music makes you travel ahead of time, make you jump from […]
I am at the entrance of the pagoda of Gangaramaya in Colombo. As in the the pagoda compound everybody is walking barefoot, I take off my shoes and walk towards an old man sitting a table. Old style, black framed glasses. He sits at a table and issues tickets to foreign tourists. ‘100 Rupies, sir’ he says and opens the receipts book to issue mine. I put my shoes in a plastic basket and pay. […]
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