Bergamo

On the bus from Lucco to Bellagio, I caught a glimpse of my reflection when the careening bus narrowly missed a grove of trees rather than narrowly missing another car, its usual skill. The reflection I saw was beaming. I think I’ve had that stupid look on my face since I got off the plane in Milan. I keep saying, I’m in ITALY.

Thursday afternoon, after a day in Milan, I arrived in Bergamo Basso (the lower town, bigger and less lovely) and took a bus to the funicular station to the lovely Bergamo Alta where I’d be staying. I am trying so hard to be the independent traveller and not rely on all these semi-bilingual strangers. So I watched carefully until we got to the funicular station, and I struggled to get my bags off the bus and watched it drive away. I had carried a too-heavy backpack too far on Thursday, and now I’m in silly amounts of pain and am walking a little like my grandmother just after her hip was replaced. So I gimped up to the station, to see a sign in Italian that looked suspiciously like it said that the funicular was closed starting in May. There were folks in there, painting and talking to one another. So I called out. “Excuse!”

“Is closed,” one of the guys told me.

“How do I get to the top?”

“You have to take a bus,” he said, heading out of the station and toward me.

“I just took a bus,” I told him, sighing. “I really wanted to take the funicular.”

He looked at the fellow he was with (who now joined us outside the station), and they talked quickly in Italian for a minute before gesturing to me. “We have to do a test run,” he said. “You want to come with us?” I beamed at him (did I mention that I’m doing that a lot these days?) and followed. He carried my bag to the funicular, and banged around a little on it and then the thing started to move. He noticed something was wrong, we stopped again. More banging, and we were off, up up up to Bergamo Alta, the high, old city.

I was utterly charmed by my test ride and the fellows who offered it, so I was feeling most cheerful when I got out of the station. I stopped short, because it seemed that I had wandered onto a movie scene. I actually swore outloud with amazement, surprising the already-surprised people who had watched me get off of a closed funicular. I was standing in the most beautiful, most perfect town square I’d ever seen. From the cobblestone streets to the high stone buildings to the sweet cafes everywhere. I have never been anywhere like it, and it makes me happier just knowing that it exists in the world.

I checked into my little hotel (coping with the frustration that this little two star place was the same price as the swank 4 star place in Milan). Then I was off, wandering streets little changed in the last four hundred years. The cobblestone streets were just barely wide enough for a single car to go by a single pedestrian. If I had been with a friend, we could easily have held hands and spanned the street (probably even Aidan and I could have done this). In the relatively monotone stucco and rock buildings, there were patches of bright flowers hanging from balconies. A woman shaking out a blue rug from a 3^rd floor window made me think of women for centuries shaking out their rugs (and worse) and surprising unsuspecting people below.

I ate alone, my first dinner in Italy, sitting in a curved brick restaurant, eating the vegetarian choice of the fellow who waited on me (and who was maybe the cook and/or the owner). He brought me a big platter of grilled vegetables, arranged in wheel spokes with a lovely centre half-sphere of soft polenta and a big piece of grilled and melty cheese. I sat alone in this room (very early for dinner at just 7pm—the first customer of the night) and drank my Italian red wine (which I wouldn’t have ordered, but he looked so stunned and disappointed when I said only water) and savoured the mix of textures and flavours—smoky and salty and creamy good. There was no conversation, not even a couple at the next table to distract me, so I sat and felt each of my taste buds alive, each moment a taste of Italy on my tongue. I sometimes closed my eyes to heighten the sensation, and once, when I opened them again, there were two women staring through the window at me. I laughed out loud and they laughed too—all of us caught in the enjoyment of my platter of grilled loveliness.

And now that town is behind me and I’m here in the pouring rain in Bellagio, a magnificent little village on the banks of Lake Como. More from here tonight. Bon appetito.

(All pictures from Bergamo except the one on the water from Bellagio. The town square, the view from my room, the restaurant where I ate dinner, and other town shots. None of the pictures do anything any justice because the weather is so grey. But they give at least a tiny sense of things…)