Month: March 2017

Also the journey to Vienna is fantastical: I start to ask myself whether this adventure has started under an unlucky star.

The nocturnal train departs with a delay of 2 hours let prognosticate nothing good.

However, the good is always to be looked for and I am obliged to do so if I want to continue this adventure.

And I find the good in my travelling companion: Matteo from Bologna who is going to Vienna for a conference.

So, the long hours on the train become enjoyable: we talk about our lives, and also the first impact with Vienna is simpler. In fact, we help each other with the first practical tasks, like two old friends travelling together.

Iris too is an unknown person, but she hosts me in her house. For the first time in my life I used couchsurfing: I knew that five months in hotel would have been impossible for economic reasons, I used couchsurfing and I trusted Iris. And it was a good choice: Iris’ house is in a crucial position and her couch is very comfortable!

The reason why my trip starts from Vienna is to know the places of Ida Pfeiffer, who was Viennese and from Vienna departed for her first trip around the world, which I am doing.

Petra Unger, a teacher well informed about Ida’s story, accompanies me in the exploration of Vienna.

I meet her in the national library, she is a beautiful and dynamic woman, perfect touristic guide, explaining in the details the story of Vienna and of the monuments we encounter.

She talks me about Ida Pfeiffer, about how she was a forerunner of the feminism, a mother who worked to gain money, in a time where women generally did not work.

We arrive to the house where Idea is dead, which is exactly in front of that where Beethoven composed the ninth symphony.

Hymn to joy.

Nothing happens casually.

Our walking concludes in a narrow and picturesque street, entitled to Ida Pfeiffer, Petra explains me that it was not easy to give the name to this street and to others entitled to women.

Before taking leave, Petra instructs me about how to find Ida’s grave and she explains me that the monument was realised thanks to the collect of women right after the death of the explorer. It is singular, again, that women only contributed to the realisation of this work.

I get the cemetery at the sunset, not without some anxiety I come in, but thanks to the indications I was given I easily find Ida’s tomb.

When the distress of being in a cemetery during the sunset vanished, I look around myself and I see the tombs of Bayer and Czerny, and inevitably I think to the thousands of hours spent to study piano, a whole life, a life ago

Only now I realize that I am in a monumental cemetery, I overcome every obstacle, I don’t care anymore of the dark and I explore. Since I am in Vienna in a monumental cemetery, I want to greet the great people who are here.

I find Strauss, Brahms, Schubert.

In reverent silence I approach the mausoleum of Beethoven, I patiently wait that the girl who is making a selfie with the tomb goes away, and all I can say is just “thank you”.

And thanks to Ida too who is accompanying me in this journey.

Nothing happens casually.

Suddenly, the scenario I look at gives me peace and serenity: snowy mountains overlook the lake which reflects the azure of the sky.

I am very tired; I spent the night in the airport, and the night before I woke up at 3 o’ clock to take the plane from San Paolo to Buenos Aires. I have to look for an accommodation, at the cheapest price, but I soon understand that here is not easy: one of the most beautiful locations of the world, and also of the most expensive. On the other end, if you want to reach the end of the world you must pay! I try to move to pity the Salesians with my letter of the curia, but nothing; so, I choose a cheap hostel. And it was a good choice because Paola, who works there gives me all the indications to visit the Tierra de fuego.

Here, in Ushuaia, they live thanks to the tourism and everything is to buy, but I don’t go away without having sailed the Beagle canal, having a discount on the trip.

They offer me a place in the VIP cabin because for a technical problem I was about to miss the trip.

It is in this way that I met a family of South American dandies, bringing any kind of clocks and jewels and I ask to myself how they must feel in such a place. They are not my types of people, so I go down amongst the “plebs” and I meet Juan Pablo, curious about my hair now green. He is an Argentine agronomist, in Ushuaia with his colleagues, and who does not speak English. However, we talk for a long time, speaking slowly, me in Italian, he in Spanish, and we understand each other.

The navigation of the Beagle canal is for me moving as few other things: looking so close sea lions fighting or the penguins walking in single file are priceless things.

I travel to find myself, but there is a part of me that I know very well also staying at home: the love for nature and the desire to study animal behaviour. It could have been my job, but it is left only the regret and the books by Lorentz on my library.

Juan Pablo reminds me one further time how people met travelling are more important than monuments or other things; he does not take photos, but take them for me and for my blog; for himself, he prefer to look and to bring in his heart the remembrance of what he sees.

Juan Pablo is widowed from ten years, his beloved wife died at only 48 years old, leaving four children.

However, he accepted life as it came because life is one and we need to make of it a masterpiece, however brief it can be.

That is one reason which encourages me to continue this journey around the world: “is this what you want? Do it. Life is too short to not doing what you like”.

Getting a coffee to say goodbye to Juan Pablo tells me that he would have preferred to go on a ship and go down to the island to spend some time with the penguins, but he took this other ship and it was a good choice because he met me.

Coloured hair don’t attract only perverted men looking for extra-conjugal sex, but also men from everywhere who want to know and to talk.

It looks like the sky is dark, seen from the space.

Don’t let the Brazilian know that.

For them, everything is blue, the sky, the sea, the entire world.

They have in their heart the joyful azure of the sky in a summer Sunday morning. Always.

It doesn’t matter if the day has started crooked, later it will be better.

It doesn’t matter how many zeros has your bank account, if you have a bank account, the world stays azure even if you live on the street and you must carry a trolley to gather trash to recycle in order to survive. In that trolley you feel like a prince and you are the king of the entire world!

Brazilian people are warm and hospitable, like the sun who warm them during all the year; they are generous, like the luxuriant nature that surrounds them.

When they see you, they don’t greet you by shaking hands, all of them, they hug you, even if you are a stranger met by accident.

And they kiss each others. Oh, how much they kiss each other! They hug themselves and kiss each other even if they will be separate for a few hours. In Italy, we were like them. Where did we lose ourselves?

I knew this generous Brazil, happy and extroverted , I saw the Paulista on Sunday morning, 3 km of pure joy, people of any kind, young, old, children, poor, rich; they had fun, danced, sang, played and ate all the time.

And I thought of  Naples, the Naples of a lot of time ago, the rowdy, joyful, happy Naples, the one of the “pizza a portafoglio” ad of the “ferrata” in piazza Dante, of the rowdiness of the markets and the one more intimate of the bassi, the Naples which sold you a brick as it was an ingot, but that help you if you were in trouble.

I knew this warm and hospitable Brazil, even though padre Vittorio told me that there is also another one, with criminality, of people wont to live without State, which use a gun to have few coins; and the television, here, reminds you of this every day, and show the photos of a completely flooded San Paolo , impractical and unusable when it rains because the sewers are blocked because of the trash which from the favelas go into the waterways. Everybody talk about the corruption which is going into light in a sort of gigantic “mani pulite” which shows bribes which used billions of Euros in a nation where millions of people are hungry.

Ok, I know this, and I believe this, but I want to bring in my heart the smiles and the hug of the people who received me here.

Tudo azul, tand everything will be all right.