What to say about Palermo?

What to say? It's raining here, and chilly. Not exactly what I expected in the south. Sitting around the breakfast table at our funky b&b, the couple from Germany and the two students from Firenze, another couple, all expressed their surprise at the weather. Everyone is going to Agrigento, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and we all wished each other a sunny day for hiking the Valley of the Temples, where the largest collection of Greek temples, in Italy and, who knows, maybe everywhere else, is located.

Getting to Palermo was relatively easy, but exhausting, hence no blog yesterday. I got up at 6:30am, packed my bags (thank God, most of my clothes were finally dry), ate breakfast, paid my bill and then trotted down to the train station to catch the 8:33am local to Bologna. Shuttle bus from Bologna Centrale to the airport, checked in about 45 minutes to spare, and flew to Rome. Killed an hour-and-a-half there, people watching, eating a panini, trying to chat with some American teenagers from Connecticut who were taking the same plane as me. "So, what are you going to do in Palermo?" Kid looks at me like I'm a ridiculous old person and says, what do expect? "Gee, I don't know. We're just doing this for school."

Flight to Palermo pretty easy, though air traffic so heavy at Fiumicino that we didn't leave until almost a half-hour past our departure time. And now we're in Sicily. The airport faces an incredible mass of rock, yesterday covered in a rain cloud, moody and dramatic. How do we know we're in Sicily? Everything seems to move at a different pace here. People from my flight started getting frantic when none of our bags showed up at the baggage carousel. Then they started coming, three at a time, long lags in between. Mine was one of the last. But not the last. Found the shuttle bus to get into town and then we sat there for about a half-hour. Time to eat an apple and think about how I finally got to Sicily. I now  have about 12 days left in my trip.

What to say about Palermo? Watching the streets whizzing past the shuttle bus windows, I was thinking of New York. Very cosmopolitan shops, nicely dressed people, streets a little too narrow for all of this traffic, motorcycles flying through pedestrian walks, almost hitting elderly people, young folks everywhere, lots of hip-hop vibe, kids with odd haircuts and punk caps, running through the traffic against the light at intersections, hordes of young people on the streets, raw energy. And the closer we get to the central train station, the more humble, if not humiliated, the streets feel. Old, old buildings, feeling neglected. Strange, strange mix of raw energy and abandonment in the Kalsa area, where I'm staying.

Today took a walk through Kalsa, not so much to visit churches -- they are everywhere in Italy! -- but to get a feel for this world. It was the center of the Arab occupation back in the, let's see, 9th or 10th century? and then the Normans came in, in the, let's see, 12th century? And so the guides I looked at described things to look for -- Romaneque-Gothic churches with Norman and Arabic influences. At first, all I found were narrow, narrow windy streets, and then parks. I found Piazza Marina, a nice old park with gigantic alloro (bay laurel trees) and an open air market. Lots of curiosities: an old book of court records, imitation Byzantine icons and crucifixes, a table full of Nazi war medals. And then the rain clouds drifted in. I found myself under the portico of an official looking building and waited out the rain. Reading the graffitti. Calls for a demonstration to free a student activist imprisoned last October to keep him from leading more student protests. Satirical pictures of Renzi, the current Italian Prime Minister. A hand-written offer for oral sex by someone claiming to be a real princess. Only 10 Euro. Started taking pictures of said street culture and when the rain let up, continued on my way through Kalsa, feeling more and more uncomfortable as I found myself being the only person walking down narrow streets leading to very large abandoned buildings and modern ruins everywhere. It's pretty crazy. I spent some time trying to find the Arab Gate, which marked a certain era in Palermo's history, and instead found this amazing graphic, covering the entire corner of an abandoned and collapsing apartment building. A giant pink man-pig with a dozen dried up teats. Wow! I saw some amazing wall frescoes in the north, but nothing as wild and in your face as this. This area had the feel of a bizarre time warp, as though packed apartment buildings, balconies filled with laundry getting soaked in the rain, shared the same space with ancient Roman ruins, except these were modern, abandoned ruins. And then there's the giant man pig. Couldn't think of a better way to express the disgust, despair and anger that people must feel here. Like I said, I actually started feeling uncomfortable walking by myself in this area and I haven't felt that way anywhere else in Italy. Once in a while, I would see two people, maybe a group of four French people, maps in hand, stumbling out of wet alleyways, and I'd think, what do the locals think when see this bizarre parade of foreigners looking for Romanesque-Gothic churches when their neighborhoods are in such a state of decay?

Started to rain again, so being the seasoned traveler that I am, I found the take-away window of a restaurant and ordered a fried eggplant sandwich which I ate, standing under their canopy to avoid the rain. God, that sandwich was great! I ordered a bottle of water and when I was fumbling to get a Euro out of my pocket, the guy at the counter said, "Hey, don't worry! Mangia, mangia!" I've noted in other places about Italians and bel figura, looking good no matter what. Well, these guys never heard of the concept. They were all short and tubby and grimy looking and talked a mile a minute and every once in a while, they'd break out in song they all thought was pretty goofy and they'd break up laughing and teasing each other and singing as they worked. There are sometimes when I wished I brought my audio recorder and this was one of those moments. Standing under an awning, wolfing down a fried eggplant sandwich and listening to some untranslatable Palermo dialect spoken by people who are engaged in life, no matter how raw and different it seemed compared to other places I've been to, especially in the north. Come to think of it, Palermo reminds me of Mexico and Tijuana, and I think its that 3rd world vibrancy that puts off Italians from the north. But then, what do I know? I'm just passing through.

Anyway, that little bit of raw Palermo got me out of my existential nowhere place and got me laughing. It's a good thing to laugh in the rain. It really doesn't care how you feel, so just go with it and know you can always change into something dry later on. That's what I have to say about Palermo so far. Let's see what tomorrow brings!