Salerno

Pulling into Napoli. Got an earlier train from Siena to Florence and the earlier Florence-Salerno train was late in leaving. Out the window, Vesuvio looms with its perpetual cloud.

This highspeed trrain is fun. An hour from Florence to Rome and another hour from Rome to Salerno.  I have a feeling the train slows down after Naples.  The people already look like the cast of The Godfather. Now I’m looking forward to some zuppa de pesce or something equally maritime. My cold is better, thanks to Prof. Dr. HadI Newmark’s suggestion of zinc and echinachaea. The Bolognese Rx compounded it with vitamin C, the one in Siena substituted papaya.  

 It seems to be getting warmer – and I am getting happier. My cold is on the ropes, too, despite a chilly room in Salerno. The Polo Nautico is right on the water, not far from the station. But then, nothing is far from the station in this little backwater city. Among backwaters, however, Salerno has to be near the top of the list for spectacular settings. 

The large, deep bay is bounded on the north-west by the Amalfi coast, on the other side of which is Sorrento and the Bay of Naples. That road is one of the great, mountain-cliff-seacoast drives. (in ’78, Eric Monrad and I stayed in Amalfi and took the bus to Ercolano –  the excavation of a smaller city also destroyed with Pompey) In many places, the steep mountainsides are terraced for cultivation, from bottom to top.

This is also the home of the Sorrento lemon, which is hard to find elsewhere, although products made from it are sometimes available. Its sweetness  is what is special about it: people eat them like apples. This is thought to be the result of the unique combination of volcanic soil, mountain shelter, and the unique microclimate.  I may have had one last night – with my miserable, little slice of grilled swordfish. I bit into it, and – sure enough – it was sweeter than an ordinary lemon: still tangy and sour, but a different flavor. (It was also green on the outside, but it was not a lime.) 

The Polo Nautico is a small conference center, and I recommend it highly. Though not in the winter, when it is kind of cold. It seems to be designed to be cool in the summer, with big, high-ceilinged, spacious rooms and lots of marble and ceramic tile. The nautical theme is carried out pleasantly, with delightful terrazzo decorations everywhere. And it is a bargain [but maybe not so much of a bargain in season]. A terrace for dining and hanging out stretches the entire length of the low building, right above the beach. I conceived the theory that usually the main concern here is staying cool. There was no heat at all in my room, until I got the nice desk clerk to show. Me how to turn it on. Then in the resturant, they left the door open to the bar, where there was some kind if party and lots of coming and going to the terrace, all of which produced a draft and I might as well have been sitting outside. They were very happy to close the door when asked, but they kept forgetting.

The southern Italians live up to their reputation – happy and laid-back. I went across the street for a cassoni, which I discovered is an Italian quesadilla. A couple, apparently regulars, were yelling at each other and the manager. No one was really upset, but an Anglo-saxon could never tell. I have witnessed a fair amount of yelling in my few hours south of Rome. But the people are kind. 

The young guys in my compartment, for example, fed me lunch. They were on their way to Catania. It seems the train divides at the big toe of Italy’s boot – a place called Villa S. Giovanni. Half goes to Catania and Siracusa and the other half to Palermo.

I was lucky to even get on the train. I almost cancelled Sicily altogether in favor of a train back to to Genoa, when I learned that the Palermo train was “full”. This, it turns out, was sheer disinformation (the dark side of the southern relaxed attitude). No one thought to tell me that what “full” meant was that all the reservations the station was permitted to issue were taken. I found out by accident, from a nice woman to whom a very harried ticket-seller referred me, that I could  “just get on and sit anywhere; the only difference is that it will cost you EUR 8 more than if you could have booked with me.”  In the event, I found a seat, a free lunch with the nice, young Sicilians their way home to Catania, and the conductor was utterly  uninterested in my Eurailpass. “OK, Good!” said he with the briefest of glances, not even taking it out of my hand. And not a word about a surcharge. They are relaxed here. If they HADN’T been “full”, it would have cost me $13!

On the other hand, I could easily have found myself in Siracusa. I just happened to sit in a car going to Palermo. The sign on the quay monitor said “Palermo”, but as I found out, the train divides before crossing the Strait of Messina into Sicily. Anyway, this appears to be one reason the trip takes so long. The ferry was so smooth I thought we were waiting in the station for a new locomotive or something! I even went and looked out the front and saw a strangely-shaped door at the end of the track, but it didn’t dawn on me that this was the bow of a ferry until we moved off and I saw the another one!  No problem. I have the compartment to myself – now that my cheerful young companions changed cars – and a good thriller to read.

I got most of the way through it after it got too dark to look out the window. The train from Messina to Palermo is VERY local – and almost completely empty, in first class. What I was able to see of Sicily is quite beautiful – lots of citrus trees. Forests of them, actually, crowding up the mountainside, I got another one of those lemons tonight. The waiter assures me that it is Sicilian, not Sorrentino. Anyway, I saw a bowl of them on the serving table. They are small and almost spherical – as opposed to oblong  - and they have a remarkable, spicy flavor. I have the feeling that I ran into something rare. I’ll bet they are what Costco’s Sicilian lemon juice comes from – but, of course, there’s nothing like the fresh juice out of the lemon itself.

Then there was the cannolo for dessert. The waiter said it was the Sicilian specialty, so I had to try it. I have had something like this before [creme-filled crêpe] called cannoli.  Anyway, the fillings vary, I guess, but this seemed to be kind of zabaglione or something similar. The crème was quite firm, though, not at all runny. The crêpe was large, thick, and chewy. Very satisfying.