The Galacon/Sicily trip, Part 7: Taormina to Trapani: raising a carabiner crop · 4:57pm February 29th

I'm launching the 2024/5 all-followers MLP convention poll tomorrow. This is going to mean struggling with Google Surveys. And I've been wondering: would I rather battle against a program which is designed to torment the user, or try to cross Sicily via mass transit again?

...
...I swear I'm thinking it over.

September 24th

Hello, insomnia. So much for hoping you'd gotten stranded on the other side of a border.

It's 3:17 a.m. in Taormina, and... yeah, this is my own fault. As in 'I wrote something'. I've always had problems with sleeping, but -- writing is one of the things which sets my insomnia off. Add this to post-composition exhaustion and I am quite literally capable of writing myself sick. So yes, Hatedom: writing this stuff does in fact make me feel exactly the same way you do in reading it.

I'm trying to get everything charged up, and I swear there's a voltage limiter on this stupid outlet. It's the first time the charging brick has sputtered along, and it's also going to be the last. Once I leave the hotel, everything goes back to normal. And I'm trying to get cleaned up, then use what little remains of my clean clothing because between climb, heat, and sea dip, there isn't much left --

-- but to get cleaned up means using the shower.

It occurs to me that under normal circumstances, to gain the honor of using a shower like this, I'd have to kill twenty people.
Also, no one has put a clean towel in this room since I checked in.
...three-star hotel, they said...

It's Sunday. My bus for Trapani leaves from Catania at 1:30 p.m, and there is exactly one of them. I booked this in advance ($20.11 -- I did it from the States, and made sure to get a window seat) and have the ticket scan code called up on the tablet. If I miss the bus, then I get two choices: try to rent a car -- gawds help me there -- or about nine hours of cross-island train transfers. My only comfort is that it's not the same company which goes up and down Etna. This is FlixBus and upon my return to America, I'll discover they are now on both sides of the Atlantic. The horror doesn't take long to set in.

But for now, I'm waiting. There isn't much to do in the hotel at this hour. The story is posted, but readers are slow to come in: not much point in sitting around and reading comments. I can pack, make sure everything's put away, and plan. I can't leave for the train station before -- call it 6:15 a.m. The first train back to Catania isn't until 8 and it won't take me anywhere near that long to get there, but at least I'll be waiting in a different place. I want out of this room. Permanently.

The goal is to get into Catania early enough to find that laundromat again, then head for Trapani with clean contents in the suitcase. Beyond that, it's just 'catch the bus'. Pure travel day. All I'll be doing is moving between places, and that should at least keep expenses down and cycle some money back into the budget. Taormina was not cheap. Even with the gift of the opera ticket, I still have to be very careful.

Watch the sea from the balcony. Eventually, sunlight touches the horizon. The world starts to turn rose.

Let's move.

The highway shoulder is, of course, intermittent. I try to stay on the side where a passing car will just knock me over the cliff and into the water. Pass some old buildings, note that people are leaving parked vehicles anywhere and everywhere, and pass a lot of hotels. This includes the entrance for the one built into the lower cliff, and I automatically assume it was better than mine.

(I was very polite at checkout. There's nothing wrong with the desk staff. They didn't design the room.)

No one stops their car to say how they think I'm going to die in this walk. It's a Sunday morning, and there aren't many cars. Once the train station slips into sight, I get a senior on his balcony who is no more than 98% nude, and he stares at me with open suspicion as I pass. I don't really bother looking at him. There's a little too much to see.

Speaking of seeing too much, here's an email from Apple. I've hit the limit on picture free cloud storage. $0.99 for the next upgrade. Fortunately, I have a gift card balance.

...train station. Automated machine is running, and I pay 6 Euros for the trip into Catania. There's water in the ticket tray.

I really hope that's water.

There's a cafe built into the station, and it's closed. The nearest vending machine is locked away behind a fence. All of the food is around the curve of the highway. Hungry Sunday. Maybe once I get back to Catania --

-- train. There's no tables on this one, the charging ports don't work, and it's a slow runner because there's less trains on a Sunday and we are making every last local stop. Over an hour to get back down the coast, and then I'm glaring at bus stop benches on my way out of Centrale. Laundromat first. It's late enough after opening that the computer may have bothered to unlock the doors.

It has. What it hasn't done is reboot the bill acceptor, because everything I try to feed into the slot gets spit back. Fine. I'll just use coins --

-- I'm almost out of coins.

...yeah. I still have 0.01 and 0.02 Euros in plenty, because no machines take them and I can't pass more than five to a human cashier. But the larger denominations are nearly gone. I wind up crossing the street and break a bill at a pastry shop just so I can finish my laundry. Another person comes in while I'm folding, and -- that's it. I'm starting to wonder if this place is a money laundering operation set up by someone who appreciates an English pun.

Next step is to check the location of the bus stop. It's not at Centrale itself -- but once I tow the suitcase in that general direction, I can see it from there. This is a good-sized parking lot with buses scattered within, none of which are mine. Directly across the street? Several little shops, all of which sell bus tickets as a sideline. Seedy little shops. This looks like an exterior establishing shot of a documentary. 'The last place any of them were seen before the entire bus vanished'. As much as anything else, this section reminds me of the area around the Manhattan Port Authority Bus Terminal before it was cleaned up. There's even a sex toy shop, seven blocks away. Love, Sicilian style.

Move around, as there's still time before it leaves. I go for pastries again, finally find the chocolate dome that's too rich for my blood and when I try to sit down on a park bench, the food drops. The pigeons won't even touch it. There's a little halal place near Centrale, and I try their chicken. It's cheap, flavorful, I eat it on site, and then a woman standing outside the shop sends in her daughter to beg from me.

It takes a few seconds to realize what's going on, because I didn't initially spot the adult. (Turns out she's giving hand signals from the doorway. Coaching.) My first thought is that I've got another potentially lost kid, and I'm trying to figure out what to do about it and if she needs a drink first -- but that's when the owner comes out from behind the counter, yelling. He chases them both off.

...and now I feel like trash. But hey, I did recognize part of the intent. The goal was, in fact, for me to buy her some water.

I can't help everyone. There's been times when I feel like I can't help anyone at all. I exist on an income level of 'sorta functional borderline poverty', and I usually feel like I'm one bad week away from being the one hoping for a drink. I'm only here on the donations -- the charity of others.

And now I really feel like trash.

...finish the chicken. Back to the bus stop. Pace up and down the block a lot. People are slowly beginning to trickle onto the sidewalk. Most of them go into the lot, trying to see if any of the parked buses are theirs. The heat is coming up again, and I'm just hoping the bus has some air conditioning.

I'm starting to spot the downside of pay toilets now. If you're homeless, then -- where do you go? How do you even afford it? Getting into a bathroom without paying is a national sport, and I watch a teenage girl shamelessly flirt her way into a free flush.

I review my ticket. The bus should be leaving around 1:50 p.m. (Arrival time in Trapani is set for 6:30. I tried to tell the next B&B about that via email, and warned that I might have some travel problems.) I'm apparently supposed to print out a luggage tag now. ...really. Well, until the day comes when someone builds that into a tablet...

Still waiting.
Still --
-- and here's the bus.
My ticket gets scanned. The suitcase goes into the underhold. I step in, and air conditioning is present.

There's also something else present. Or rather, someone. Two people are sitting on the passenger side near the front, and one of them is in my seat.

Excuse me --
-- we're sitting here.
This is my ticket. I have an assigned seat. You're in it --
-- we're married and we're sitting together. Go away.
Show me your ticket --
-- @$#% off --

--- take a breath, me. I am the foreigner. Therefore, in any review of confrontation, the local authorities are probably going to decide I was in the wrong. And this is the only bus to Trapani today. The problem is that if I try to sit anywhere else, then someone's going to have a ticket for that seat and I'll get kicked off the bus. So in the worst-case, I no longer have a ride.

Can't exactly walk to Trapani. Or rather, I could, but it'll take nine days and I sort of have to fly out on the 30th.

I'm briefly reminded that the desk clerk asked me where I was going next, I said Trapani, and he asked if I was taking a plane...

(It's possible. I looked it up after. You have to use Sardinia as a transfer point. One could start to wonder if the buses have a reputation.)

Okay. Worst-case is that I've lost the bus ticket. Let's preempt it.

I get off the bus, head directly to the driver (who's still scanning ticket codes), and ask for a refund.

...why do you want your money --
-- I have nowhere to sit.
Ticket says where you sit.
I point. The couple glares at me from the window.
Oh.
Right. So either you move them, or you hand over some cash. Quickly, please. I have a lot of trains to catch.

He doesn't make them move, perhaps because they're clearly spoiling for a fight and in Sicily, that could turn into a group participation activity. Instead, he tells me where I can now sit, and that I won't be asked to move. So naturally, I've lost my window seat.

The woman who has the window seat on my new row gives me a funny look as I sit down. Two miles later, I make friends through giving her the one workable underseat charging port, and we ride in peace thereafter. The couple, who are now in the row behind mine, just keep glaring at me.

...and we're going to the airport. One more person gets on.

Get onto the highway. The bus accelerates --

-- one hour into the trip, it pulls over at a rest stop. Just about everyone gets off. For a fifteen-minute stop, a mere hour into a trip, and if you think herding cats is an easy non-challenge, then I invite you to get Sicilians back onto a bus.

Finally, we pull out again. Etna starts to drop away, and the last I see of the old god is Deity Vs. Cloud. Etna's two miles high. The cloud is a little lower, and vapor goes directly into the peak.

(In one day, that'll be a preview.)

I miss it already.

(Still.)

Geography is destiny.

I need to show you something.

That's a relief map of the island. What don't you see?

Sicily's landscape buckles like a car in a compactor. Active volcano: it's something which sends the terrain towards the dramatic. And what you aren't going to find in this kind of environment is a whole lot in the way of level surfaces. Most of the flatland is near sea level. There's some level-topped mountains and that's where people built cities, because defensive positions.

The farming areas exist in two states: either in the rare level areas, and people fought to get those -- or on slants. Angles. Hills and mountains. Your apple orchard is 60% vertical.

The highway is elevated. It's built about two stories above the ground at a minimum, because that's the only way to keep it level. Beneath the road, the land warps and quakes. And everything around us...

...it's a game, really. Here's a shed on the side of a mountain, barely managing to hang on against gravity. It isn't wood: it's built from small boulders piled on top of each other. Balanced off. It looks like it's at least six hundred years old, it's probably older than that, and here's the game: is it still in use? Probably. The homes are ancient, the storage moreso, and if it isn't solid rock, then it's farmland. Fences don't separate patches of earth: they provide a place to attach climbing equipment. You need to go up to your crops and there's places where a safety line will be a help. Something may look ancient, abandoned, and then you start to spot the tagged sheep wandering across it. Hiking paths abound, and they're present because reaching that one section of fertile earth is going to take a hike.

Sicilians farm on the mountains because there's just about nothing else.

This island was invaded, over and over. Even the farms seem to have battlements. Every crop is a defensible position...

There's one lane on this side. A truck, about ten vehicles ahead, is going well under the speed limit.

And thus ends all hope of getting to Trapani on time.

It gets worse. We keep diverting to drop off passengers, pick up a few more. I'm getting to see a few small towns along the way and at one point, I know we'll be passing through Palermo. I'll be back there in a few days, taking some time in the capital. But right now, it's just one more stop to make and we're already running behind.

Miles are going by. It's hard to take pictures when someone is sitting by the window, especially when I want to grant her some privacy. She's reading. I keep checking the GPS. Getting near Palermo now --

-- the bus takes the ramp, and Palermo turns into multiple giant heaps of garbage.

It takes a second to realize what's going on. This is a bulk pickup day. Toss out your old furniture, your appliances: someone will be along to collect them. And mostly? That's your neighbors. People are touring the heaps, seeing if there's anything they might want. Take away, then drop off whatever the find is replacing. But everywhere I look, there's endless trash -- and I'll be back here in a few days. It's not the best first impression --

-- Palermo's bus stop. My seatmate gets off. The 'married couple' leaves, glares at me, and I smile.

"Kenyet dinyda corest, tanilas?"

Nonsense syllables. They mean nothing at all, and I get to watch those two argue about how horribly they must have been insulted all the way out of the lot.

No one's taken the window seat. I slide over. Back to the highway...

...traffic jam.
We go down to 10 mph.
5 mph.
There's horse carrier trailers around the bus. I wave. Hello, equines. Do you want out of there? I want out of here. Maybe we could work something out.
Sixty-nine miles to Trapani. Not nice. I check the tablet and learn that Usher will be performing at halftime during the Super Bowl, so his career is clearly over --
-- a tow truck just tried to pass on the minimal shoulder and in doing so, nearly went into the bus. So there's an accident up ahead. Somewhere. Hopefully no one's hurt --

-- they aren't. Two cars, with everyone standing around outside the vehicles and taking up that much more roadway. The bus barely slides past.

There goes my arrival time.
Followed by a lot of minutes right behind it.
This is going to be a problem...

...the Trapani bus stop is located behind the bulk of the city. Siri says it's about a mile to my B&B, and I'll be passing a sports arena along the way. The nearby ticket building has closed for the night, which means there's currently nowhere to get a drink.

Even with all of the problems, I love being on the island. I would also like to have a place where I can sleep tonight, and I'm getting a little weary of towing this suitcase.

Stomp on. Sidewalks only begin to appear once I pass the small arena and once again, they are so narrow as to mostly put me in the street.

My first impression of Trapani? Shore town.

And I mean that in the classic sense. It's a full city, but buildings run towards pastels. It's quiet as the sun goes down, along with being utterly clean. I can't see graffiti anywhere. The streets are clean, the walls are pure, there's a military base built into the city and a fortified compound almost comes across as being Just Another Shop. And for the first time all trip? That's a pizza place.

It's... pretty here. Subtle tones and welcoming buildings. Once I spot the main street, there's all sorts of shops -- and none of them come across as being a tourist pen trap. There's one ceramics place: the proper number. Almost no restaurants, but -- all the basics, in silent quantity. As I'll discover on the next morning, it's almost a perfect walking city: you genuinely never know what's going to be around the next corner.

Right now, I just need my B&B. And the GPS isn't sending me around strange curves, or telling me to climb into Erice. (We'll get to Erice.) Just keep going down this street --

-- there. The building on the left. I manage to get through the front doors when someone else is in the middle of leaving, and then it's more marble steps. Or I can just take the elevator, which is one of those types where you have to close two layers of doors in order to get the thing moving at all. It's slightly larger than a Taormina shower.

Ride up. It's night now. The B&B entrance is on the left side of the fifth floor. The right is someone's very large apartment, and I find that out because a repair crew arrives to work on their inner lights. I check my email. Nothing from the B&B check-in, and no one answers when I knock on the door. Call the number: equal lack of pickup.

Sit down on the floor. Wait.

All of the lights go out. I am now sitting in the dark.

...get up. Try to move around a little...

...oh. Switch on the wall. I hit it. Go back to sitting down.

Five minutes later, the lights go out.

It's a motion detector system. You can get the power going, but unless it registers people moving at all times, it's shutting down again.

I am hungry, tired, thirsty, I need a bathroom, and I can't go anywhere.

I've spent a good part of the trip wondering about my lack of wisdom in booking so many B&Bs. I'm half-convinced that at some point, no one's going to let me in. It almost feels like there's something to be said in giving up now and just looking for a hotel. Double-cost, yes, but all I can do right now is sit here and if no one ever comes --

-- the door opens.

...oh. Other guests. Hi. Sorry: didn't want to be an obstacle. Is the owner in there? ...no. Do you mind if I...?

I go inside. There's a very small table, chair, and maps of Trapani, plus a credit card reader and the wifi password. So now I'm waiting at the front desk, while sitting behind it. I call the owner's number again and try to leave a message, telling them I'm inside. Maybe I can just sleep in the chair. Sadly, all of the toilet facilities are attached to the rooms, but...

Keep waiting.
Just keep waiting...
It's nearly been an hour --

-- the outer door opens.

I am checked in by a twenty-something small Sicilian woman in glasses who is currently cosplaying as a Japanese high school student.

That's the outfit. That is the only way I want to describe it.

Welcome to Trapani.

I'm here for two nights. The bed is a decent size, I have a remote control for the AC, the desk is small while remaining an actual desk, and the bathroom beats out Taormina in one glance. (I take pictures for comparison.) The only fault is the view, which is just the building across the street.

There's apologies on all sides. She was late, I was late. This place has five booking rooms, and they want to keep people happy. I get a card which entitles me to use a local cafe for breakfast. One drink, one food item, and that's another sneak preview: I just don't know it yet.

No time to settle in, though. More new guests come in, and she happily scurries away to chirp at them. I need food, and most of the places I passed were closed on a Sunday night. Now that I have building keys...

Wander out to the main street, and... it's quiet. Pretty. But it's also mostly closed. I need to go twelve blocks before I find anything beyond basic coffee service, and that's a bar with some food service at the back. I'm also not in a position to be very choosy, and go in.

My company is three slot machines. There are four tables for customers to eat at, and if you get bored waiting for your food -- well, there's your entertainment. Also a bill breaker, so you can get the necessary coins. The bill breaker is sort of tempting.

Veal ribs. Nothing special, but they'll get me to tomorrow.

...so tired.

Technically, almost nothing happened today. But I'm worn out and stressed, and...
...still on the island.
I've never been to Trapani or Erice.

Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

On the 25th, I'll climb into the sky and spend some time walking within a cloud.
The 26th is for meeting the gods.
I crossed a world for that.
Atlas awaits.

From Estee's Photo Non-Album: