First week in Floridia, my home town

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Trip Start Jan 25, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Jun 30, 2007 Next
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  Floridia, Sicily, Italy
Thursday, May 17, 2007

Hello everybody, hi y'all, ciao a tutti, hola todos mi amigos, hallo allerseits, halla (now that I have an International readership I thought I would try to greet everybody in their own language - Ida-Maria can you help with Swedish?)

Hopefully with my postings from Italy I will be able to give you something of a view into the country that you wouldn't normally get as a tourist.

Here I am settled in Floridia, the town where I was born. Floridia is a busy town of around 25,000 people about 12kms inland from the ancient city of Siracusa. It's located in a wide valley between the Monti Iblei and Monti Nebrodi (low mountain ranges to the north and south respectively) and is set in an ocean of citrus groves, and almond and olive trees.
The land is dry and rocky and gives up its bounty only with hard work and knowledge of its climate and workings

01 Flag of Sicily

. Everywhere the fields are bounded by fences of grey, crumbly stone, over which large cactus plants grow. The Ciane and Anapo rivers flow through the valley, surrounded by giant canes, and in the lower reaches papyrus (the only area in Europe where papyrus naturally grows I believe). The land oozes this feeling that people have been cultivating the soil for thousands of years.
Floridia has grown considerably in the last few years, mainly because Siracusans have moved in, as the cost of housing is much cheaper. It was founded in 1627 when Sicily was ruled by the Spanish Bourbons and was originally called Xiridia. When Sicily joined Italy the name was Italianised to Floridia but it's still called Shuridia in the local dialect. It's amazingly like Carmelo in Uruguay (the Spanish must have had a standard town plan for all their dominions), except most of the buildings have been extended and renovated in a modern way unfortunately. It is a working town, not a tourist place - so as I walk down the main street I pass by the butcher, hardware store, fruit and vegetable shop, etc. The streets are narrow and with parked cars against the footpath, there's barely space for a car to get past.
I'm delighted to inform you that the stereotypes of (Southern) Italians are for the most part true, and with Sicilians even more so - laws and rules are only recommendations, speed limits are ignored, you park wherever you find a spare scrap of space be that on the footpath, a corner, or double-parked, you drive down streets the wrong way if necessary, pedestrians walk across the street wherever and when they like, you don't wear helmets on motorbikes (except if the police are about), you have a long lunch and a siesta, you talk volubly and with lots of facial expressions and body gestures, etc

02 Foundation house Floridia 1627

.
It's so good to be in a place where I can speak the language after not being able to express myself as well as I wanted to in South America. I thoroughly enjoyed learning to speak Spanish and hope to study it in the future, but for a wordy person like me there was real frustration sometimes, and it was hard to make jokes and say witty things.
Most of the people in Sicily speak dialect on a day to day basis and it's music to my ears. Although related to Italian (more than Spanish, but not that much more) it sounds very different and it would be difficult for someone from say, Florence, to understand it. When I have travelled around Italy people can tell straight away that I'm Sicilian because of my accent when I speak Italian. In fact the Sicilian language (or variants thereof) are spoken throughout Southern Italy. The language is very expressive and somewhat rustic and earthy and imperative.
The first thing I try and find is almond granita and a ricotta pastry for breakfast, which is the best summer breakfast in the world - sorry to be so parochial but you will just have to try one yourself and you will agree. No luck first day with the granita as they are not making them yet in many bars - it's a seasonal thing and I'm just a few days early.
I start organising my life as I will be here for nearly 2 months - I have a house (an aunt has senile demetia and is in a rest home and her house is empty), I buy a local mobile phone, and I shop around for a motor scooter

03 Chiesa Madre Floridia

. This all takes a little while but within 3 days I have everything. I find a local internet cafe 100 metres away, an Aikido dojo (Iwama style - same as I've been training in for 17 years), a tango school and milonga in nearby Siracusa (through a Siracusan girl I met in BA I am put in contact with a musician from the next town 3 kms away who dances tango and takes me there), so in short order I am all settled (or sistemato, as they say in Italy).
My cousin Franco is a great help in finding the scooter - he knows everybody and drives me around and tells them not to rip off his cousin, in his raspy gravelly voice. We have to register and insure it in his wife's name as I don't have a certificate of residence and a fiscal code number.
It's council election time and there are over 400 candidates for the 25 places - this in a town of 25,000 people! The streets are awash with candidate's flyers, cars drive by with megaphones on top exhorting people to vote for them, and every night there are speeches in the piazza outside the town hall. My cousin Gaspare is a candidate so it will be interesting to see if he gets elected. No doubt there will be massively complicated negotiations to form an alliance, as in Italian politics there's so many parties. Makes Australian council elections seem so tame.
I go to the cemetery with my father and Maria Grazia on a quiet weekday, and we do the rounds of our relatives, putting fresh flowers in vases and cleaning the tombs as we go. Saturday morning is rush hour, especially at large cemeteries like Siracusa, where hundreds of cars are parked and there is almost a festive atmosphere with all the colourful flowers. The Floridia cemetery is on the edge of town and the dead have a lovely view over the Monti Iblei. Maria Grazia and Dad tell me a saying that many people used to say when they came visiting the cemetery:
Vi saluto cari morti
A chi statu siti ridottu
C'iate state como a nui
C'i saremo come vui
I'll attempt a translation from Sicilian to English:
I greet you dear dead
To what state you have been reduced
You have been like us
We will be like you
There's so much to tell you about the customs here but I'll just give you a few examples: in the old days, when young people got to their teens and started being interested in each other it, was very difficult to make contact, and they often had to use young boys as messengers, or go-betweens who knew the girl's family and so could visit without causing any suspicion

04 Interior of Chiesa Madre

. When, somehow or other the young couple made contact, there came a time when they would let their parent's know, and they could become officially 'fidanzati'(engaged), but only if their parents agreed. Fortunately, there was a safety valve 'fuire' (literally fleeing, but in English it would be called elopement) - the couple would run away to some nearby town and after a decent period had passed (3-4 days) they came back and the parents had to accept the situation and organise the wedding. As I have listened to the stories over the years I have found a quite significant proportion of couples got married this way :).
One of my aunts asks Dad about when he used to sneak away from home late at night, and she finally finds out now that he was talking to Mum over the wall at her house at 2am, because that's the only time they could talk to each other, without other people present.
One night we watch the pilgrims leave Floridia at night to walk 15kms to a neighbouring town called Melilli for St Sebastian's birthday. People from all the towns around do this (from as far as Rosolini 50kms away) and they all reach Melilli at 4 to 5am, when the church doors are opened for them. We go to Melilli the next day to attend a special mass, and the faithful line up to touch the statue and say a prayer, and to kiss a relic of his (part of an arm bone I think).
It's interesting being born here but living my whole life in Australia, and visiting here now. People see me wandering around and are wondering who I am, who I'm related to, etc.
Well, I fitted a lot into my first week, so I'll finish here for now, and hope you enjoy this little slice of my life.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

05 Pulpit in Chiesa Madre	06 Side door detail	07 House where I was born	08 Typical small old houses
09 Typical double storey old house	10 My mother's family home	11 Carved stone detail on terrace support	12 My cousin Franco is an equine butcher
13 Franco hard at work	14 Main street of Floridia at lunchtime	15 Baptist Church in Floridia	16 Groovy lampshade at Maria Grazia's house
17 Main piazza Floridia	18 View down a typical street, to Monti Iblei	19 Beautiful old house - now belongs to a doctor	20 View from Franco's rooftop
21 My aunt's house where I'm living	22 Franco's granddaughter and rabbits	23 Almond granita	24 My family around 1957 in Australia
25 My Aprilia 150 scooter	26 Typical parking	27 Facades of houses	28 Detail of stone carving above door
29 Board with death notices	30 Another example of traditional house	31 My cousin Gaspare's house	32 Gaspare's council election poster
33 Gaspare's beach house at Fontane Bianchi	34 Outdoor shower at summer house	35 Coastline at Fontane Bianchi	36 View across the valley to Floridia
37 Fruit shop in the back of a car	38 Immaculate Fiat 500	39 Fresh sheep's milk ricotta	40 Council election rally
41 Green lizard	42 Pizza in Floridia	43 Pilgrims walking to Melilli	44 Floridia Cemetery
45 Floridia Cemetery 2	46 Concetta Bombaci	47 My grandparent's grave	48 Traditional horse and carriage
49 Church of St Sebastian, Melilli	50 Traditional candles for St Sebastian	51 Ex Votos	52 Religious kitschery
53 Statue of St Sebastian	54 Melilli cathedral	55 The congregation with pulpit in background	56 Kissing the relic
57 St Sebastian's cathedral at night

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