REKAWA, Sri Lanka — I am normally a lousy target for street hustling. My street instincts are pretty accurate. Through 37 years of international travel, I can tell when a “special price” isn’t special, when a “tour” is short for “tourist trap.” The last time I trusted a cab driver was in 1997 in Rio […]
The Fort is huge. And it’s not just a log-cabin structure with a flag sticking out of the top. It’s like a city that still functions. The stone walls stand about 30 feet high and stretch along the odd-shaped peninsula sticking into the Indian Ocean. I walked through a huge gate that immediately separated me from the grime of South Asia and introduced me to clean, colonial 19th century Ceylon. Everything in the Fort is spotless. It’s like the Fort is Galle’s one gem and they polish it every day. Even the souvenir hawkers look cleaner. You could eat off the narrow roads that meander past the Dutch colonial-style buildings.
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A narrow path leads from the dirt road outside my guesthouse down through the jungle for about 100 meters. At the end it opens up to a spectacular perfect half-moon bay, lined with palm trees facing a turquoise sea. Gentle waves ripple against sugary white sand without a pebble in sight. A few comfy, cushioned lanais chairs sit under umbrellas next two little beach bars on stilts. I grabbed one lounge chair and a friendly, pot-bellied man said hi.
“KEY-a-duh?” (“How much?” in Sinhala.) I said, pointing at the chair.
“You eat here lunch, it’s free,” he said.
Deal.
I spent the next six hours going from gorgeous sunshine to under the umbrella to a sea as warm as bath water.
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It took us one hour to get out of Colombo. I saw nothing appealing. Not one nice park, a pretty building, a nice restaurant. It’s like a city designed to sell electronics and cheap clothes. I haven’t seen a postcard. However, once we cleared city limits the country opened up like a flower. Giant green palm trees were everywhere. Entire forests enveloped small houses where people gathered and chatted on bicycles. Houses stood on stilts where people on their balconies could touch the palm trees that were nearly as big as their decks. Red clay roads snaked up into the jungle. I saw a sign reading, “DANGER: PEACOCKS AHEAD.”
On the coast road I saw the moon, full as a big wheel of cheese, shining above a relatively clean river as it flowed toward the sea. It screamed for a photograph. Instead, I screamed for a beer.
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As I embark on a dream month-long journey to Sri Lanka and India, Sri Lanka is six years removed from the longest war in Asian history. People are smiling again. The roads are safe again. India’s economy is booming and I am headed to Kerala, the sliver of a state that hugs India’s southwest corner and is the most educated, safest and least densely populated state in the country.
Yet I am faced with no Internet, no Facebook photos, no Whatsapp. The prospects are numbing. I have become so modernized, so chained to my iPhone, it’s like losing my backpack or passport. How will I survive?
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I took a guided tour today of three of Rome’s oft-overlooked sites, all of which remain close to my heart: Teatro di Marcello, the Jewish Ghetto and Tiberina Island. Since I moved to the nearby Testaccio neighborhood a year ago, Teatro di Marcello has been my bus stop where I oft wait until the wee hours of the morning to be whisked along the Tiber River and home. I’d stand there with a collection of Bangladeshi kitchen help getting off work and tipsy teens and look into the darkened windows of the old theater. But not all of them are dark. The top floor is now apartments. Talk about a room with a view. Conducting the tour was Massimiliano Francia, the best guide in Rome, a man whose vast knowledge makes me wonder if he actually knew Nero personally.
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However, last night I saw Rome all modernized and glittery. And I liked it. A lot. It’s not in the form of a water park or a business center or a god-forsaken mall. It’s a stadium. My beloved A.S. Roma, which started in 1927 in old Stadio Testaccio near my apartment the next year and has played in iconic Stadio Olimpico since 1953, is moving into new digs. Stadio della Roma will be the envy of every stadium in Europe. Fans of cross-town Lazio may as well hide their eyes when they drive by it on the way to the beach. It is going to combine the visionary trappings of modern commercialization with features from the Roman Colosseum. Considering the Colosseum was built in 79 AD and the stadium is tentatively scheduled to open in 2016 AD, this project is taking “back to the future” to a level never seen before.
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I went to the Vini Vulcani wine tasting at the Cavalieri Hilton in Rome to ask the gathering of learned sommeliers one question: If you were going to be executed Monday morning, what’s the one bottle of wine you drink Sunday night? The cost and location are not obstacles. Here’s a collection of opinions:
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Every morning I wake up to see a map of Italy hanging from my closet door. After living here a year and witnessing the fractured relationships between men and women, I now understand why the Italian mainland is shaped like a boot. It’s actually a woman’s thigh-high leather stiletto and the island of Sicily it appears to be kicking is a man’s testicle.
Italy has a vicious war of the sexes. In Rome it is especially savage. The modern Roman woman has transformed from a stay-at-home cook and mother into an independent, career woman in need of a man about as much as a poodle. Most men are stuck in the early 20th century. In a woman, they want a cook, a mistress and a barista. She must look especially hot when making him that morning cappuccino.
Here in Rome I have many friends, both male and female, and have been fascinated by the sexual dynamics in one of the world’s sexiest cities.
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One year ago today I landed in Rome, a roller bag in hand, a duffel bag and backpack draped over my shoulders and a boarding pass from a one-way ticket in my pocket. Today marks my one-year anniversary of retiring to Rome and it has simply been the most amazing adventure in a life full of them. After 94 countries, I finally found the one I want to live in the rest of my life. Yes, I know I ranted in my blog two weeks ago (https://johnhendersontravel.com/2014/12/31/public-services-make-italy-resemble-a-third-world-coumtry/ that some of the more advanced tribes in the Amazon Rain Forest have better public services than Italy. Look, I’m a retired sportswriter. I have to practice my whining.
But the positives of this culture far outweigh the bad. Living in Rome and putting up with its public services is like living with Kate Upton and putting up with her eating Clif Bars in bed.
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I went to a spectacular show called “Luce — Diversita e’ Energia” (Light — Diversity is Energy). Every year at this time, a group of young urban artists from around the world gather and produce a light show. Tuesday’s theme was their own interpretation of popular language. You could tell by the artists’ names that their interpretations would be somewhere in the vicinity of Pluto. There was Jblock, HALO HALO, Teddy Killer and, my favorite and no doubt soon to become a household name, USELESS IDEA. They held it in Piazza del Popolo, a massive piazza designed in 1538. Still standing on the north end is a massive gate called the Porta del Popolo. Until the railway arrived, this gate was visitors’ first view of Rome upon arrival. In the center is a 120-foot-tall obelisk brought to ancient Rome from Egypt and which once stood in Circus Maximus, sight of Ancient Rome’s chariot races. They held public beheadings here until 1826 on behalf of one of the most ruthless forces in world history.
The Catholic Church.
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I am here because in Italy’s never-ending quest to become the most backward industrialized country in the world, my Internet shut off Monday night. I had finished a phone interview, and my laptop screen just zapped. No warning. No explanation. Nothing. Just SNAP! Gone. On my screen appeared vague instructions to type my name in a little box, an act that produced nothing but my expanding vocabulary in Italian profanity. I called Roberto, my advisor in the WIND Internet office, as he readied to lock his office door. He looked up my account. It said I hadn’t paid my bill.
Huh? My records showed I paid my bill in November. So the next day I crossed the Tiber River to the WIND office near the Vatican and Roberto looked at my account again. Yes, I paid my November bill. I didn’t pay my August bill. I never GOT a bill. Even if I did, why didn’t they warn me? Send me an email? Send me a text on my cell phone it also provides? Roberto laughed with open arms in that Italian way that pretty much says, “My friend! This is Italy!”
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