<< back

Actually, since this particular day happens to be the first day of August--and a Saturday to boot--approximately half of Europe has officially started its vacation (the other half starts on August 15). Since "vacation" around these parts means "beach," and Greece is full of such things, Brindisi has become quite the popular town for the day. By early afternoon, cars start arriving from all over Italy and points farther north. On the TV news I glimpse while lunching on some surprisingly decent pizza at La Pergola, they show live images of the 10-mile backup (no exaggeration) clogging the tollbooths at the Brindisi exit of the Autostrada.

Many of these travelers aren't merely Italian vacationers. A good percentage are Albanian, Turkish, or Greek immigrants (or, often more accurately, birds of passage) who spend most of the year working in Rome, Milan, Germany, Switzerland, or France to scrape together some hard currency. With their vacation, they're flocking back to the homeland, entire family in tow, the women wrapped in black and white babushkas, shirtless boys in shorts, girls in dirty dresses, and men with their shirt sleeves rolled up.

Most of the backpackers embarked at 10pm, armed with Eurail passes guaranteeing free passage, and a predilection for sleeping (again for free) out on the ferry decks. Most of the Albanians and Turks and Greeks arrived in minivans, each stuffed with eight to ten people plus what appears to be all their worldly belongings stacked up around them and squoze into every corner of the vehicle. Ship berths are already all booked up, and they won't be able to make it out until tomorrow.

By the time I'm walking back through town after dinner--a classy joint named Pantagruele where I was introduced to a surprisingly succulent ostrich steak--the main street has become clogged with a perfectly motionless traffic jam, a minivan caravan. Those extended families are attempting to sleep sitting up in their vehicles, jammed against one another, every car door open to try to catch what small breezes tease this high 90s heat, bathed in a combination of the searing chemical light of street lamps, the nudie-girl neon of pizza parlors, and the pale wash of the dirty tangerine slice of a moon, which looks like its about ready to give on the whole evening and drop out of the sky like an overripe fruit.

I climb the stairs to my room at the Hotel Regina, flick on the ceiling fan, and peel off my sweat-soaked clothes to soak them in the sink (in this kind of heat, I have to do laundry every night). I'm happy, though, sitting on the bed and typing up the day's notes into my laptop, glad to have found at least a few diversions that can amuse ferry-bound readers who are stuck in Brindisi for the day.

The next year, they cut the whole section from the book.