Feast or Famine

7/31 - Torino to Poirino (hey, that rhymes!) - 15.00 miles

Before I start recounting the last eight days of my travels, I feel the need to excuse my silence over the last few days. It would give me great pleasure to be able to wander in and out of internet cafes, spending a half hour here and there updating the blog, and thereby keeping everyone current.

What drives a merchant to open an "internet point," as they are called in Italy? Obvious as it may sound to you now, I have slowly learned that the primary reason one opens an Internet Cafe in Italy is for tourists. The secondary reason, and also a valid one, is for immigrants who do not have enough money to subscribe to an internet service where they live.

Anyhow, I have traveled from Torino to Savona over the past eight days, and the towns that I have passed have been small and off the beaten path. As such, there have been few tourists, and fewer immigrants; therefore, there has also been no internet access. However, having arrived at the large(ish) port town of Savona, I am now surrounded by both tourists and immigrants, and as a result, internet points!

Those of you who have been following this blog on a regular basis will have seen that, as the title of this post suggests, it is either feast or famine. One day there are so many photos to see, and pages and pages of descriptions, and one simply cannot get through them in those 15 minutes (or, for some of you, oh so much more) of work time that we devote to leisure (Gasp! We have been discovered! Alt-tab to that email you were sort of writing before the boss sees you!). Then, for days and days, the blog falls silent, and not even a comment (hint, hint) causes a ripple. In order to avoid these oh-so-agonizing periods, I would gently suggest that you read only a bit at a time. This way, the feast won't cause you indigestion, and the famine won't cause you to starve.

Okay, now that I have wasted everyone's precious time, I can finally arrive at the topic at hand, namely, a log of my travels.

We left off in Torino, which was commonly known as a "liveable city." Pleasant, industrious, newly revitalized (thanks to the 2006 Winter Olympics), and centrally located in the Northern part of Italy, I am inclined to agree.

The morning after the storm (which made me question, if for only a few hours, the livability of said city), I arose early and eagerly resumed my journey. After all, I had been stationary for 4 days, and was itching to get on the road. Though it was very hot, and humid as a result of the recently fallen rain, I made very good time, and was outside the city limits before my first stop.

In fact, the day passed extremely quickly, and by the end of it I had reached my destination, Poirino.

It was in Poirino, that fateful city, where I first experienced the dreaded "sorry, we're full" phenomenon. The one hotel in town was full, there was no internet point that would allow me to research other possibilities, and the next town on my itinerary was at least 3 miles away, with no guarantee of having hotels. After asking around the town, my only choice seemed to be a return of 2 miles to Marocchi, which I had already passed.

Still, I bit my tongue and, smiling rather ironically the whole way, I finally made it to the hotel in Marocchi... and found that it was closed.

I would have collapsed on the spot, or at the very least illegally camped in a cornfield, were it not for a very helpful person who came to my rescue just in time. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to give details, but suffice it to say that I was fed dinner, driven to a 3-star hotel another three miles back from where I had already come, and given a special deal on the room.

Now, the next morning found me five miles back from the point I had already reached, so it was necessary for me to take a bus back to Poirino, so that I could resume my walk without having to waste precious energy walking the same road.

By now, it was August 1st, when the entire country slows to a crawl: necessary government services disappear entirely, hotels close down for the month, and, most significantly for my current predicament, bus schedules are either slashed to the bare minimum or completely halted.

Of course, nobody knew exactly how the schedule had changed for the bus I needed to catch. I figured it couldn't be more than 15 minutes, so I waited, reading my book, and sure enough, here came an orange bus.

45 seconds and one brief conversation later, I was dropped off at the next stop: apparently, I had boarded the wrong bus. Since the driver could not provide any detailed information about the bus I needed to catch, I started stopping every orange bus, only to learn after the 4th attempt that the "orange" bus drivers didn't know anything about the "blue" buses. "That's a different company," they'd say. Nevermind that they have been driving the same damned route for years, seeing those same damned blue buses every day, multiple times a day. Nobody knew anything.

Now, I gather that a few questions pop up. First, some of you may ask "Why didn't you just read the timetable, Pat?" to which I would respond "because there wasn't one!" Another question might be "why didn't you just walk a few blocks away to see if other stops had the timetable?" to which I would (as patiently as possible) respond that there was one road, farmland in every direction, and only one way to get where I needed to go. My last pathetic attempt was to call the 800 number provided at the stop, more to pass the time than because I actually thought it would be helpful. After waiting 5 minutes with disturbing silence, it became abundantly clear that the operators had also taken the month off, and had not bothered to change the welcome message.

So, with 90 minutes of my life wasted, I began the slow five mile trek to my starting point.

Less than ten minutes after I had started, what should pass but a blue bus? I ran like a madman, forty pounds bouncing hard on my shoulders, trying to get to the stop in time. Part of me fancies that I would have made it, too, had my GPS not flown out of my pocket. As I have said before, this thing is a brick, so I immediately felt it pop out, and instintinctively stopped to return for it. No bus is so important that I could leave my GPS, after all. I looked up just in time to see it speed off, leaving me heaving for air in the 90 degree morning.

An older lady had just gotten off the bus, so after catching my breath for a minute, I approached her and asked if that was the bus to Poirino. So satisfying was the answer "no" that I began to laugh, and seeing that I had frightened her a bit with my laughter, I explained my situation.

Mariella, two weeks a widow, recalled with a far-off look of nostalgia the days when she and her husband would wander around the region, catching rides with the farmers and raising hell in wine country. As we walked toward her car, she said with a resolute nod of her head that her husband would have wanted it that way.

A 90 minute walk was therefore transformed into a 10 minute drive, and before I knew it, Mariella had dropped me off right in front of the hotel at Poirino. This story, undoubtedly lovely on its own, comes with a twist, a little "screw you" for the road: as we drove to Poirino, what should we see but that cursed blue bus, smug and sanctimonious in its air-conditioned glory. Mariella must have sensed the resentment I felt toward that blue bus, because she passed it (on the one-lane road) and cut it off just as we approached a roundabout.

Moral victory complete, and right on time, I posed for a quick shot with Mariella, and was on my way.

For the next five hours that comprised my walk, that same bus would pass me at least once every 10 minutes. I can only surmise that service was cut off before noon, but resumed again between noon and five. Of course!