Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily


Introduction

Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily adorn the western Italian coastline, basking in the sunshine of the Mediterranean. Whilst geographically close each island has a distinct identity. From the verdant mountains of Corsica to the sandy heat of Sardinia and the hustle and bustle of Sicily. From the calm reserve of the Corsicans to the gentle humility of the Sardinians and the rude and noisy Sicilians.

Nominally, Corsica belongs to France and Sardinia and Sicily to Italy. However each island has a history which in past years has departed significantly from that of its current motherland. Over the years, waves of invasion have pushed the indigenous people further into the interior of their respective islands, strengthening their sense of local identity, increasing their hostility to outsiders and promoting clan cultures which in some cases have evolved into independence movements.

The three islands are tourist hot spots during the summer. The populations of all three islands are generally poorer than most of Western Europe. The young in particular must look towards mainland France, Italy and Europe for work, money and a prosperous future. Furthermore, their societies are coloured and in the case of Sicily dominated by clans, which means that people in general sacrifice the interests of their island as a whole for local or familial interests.

All this takes place against the backdrop of the mountains of Corsica, the beautiful coasts and rugged arid planes of Sardinia and the dirty crumbling environs of Sicily. This journey starts on the West Coast of Italy in Livorno, before taking you across the Mediterranean to Corsica, south to Sardinia and then further on to northern Sicily.




Livorno

One of the most economic methods of accessing northern Corsica from London is flying to Livorno, a pleasant port town located on the west coast of Italy, before hopping across to Corsica on a ferry.

Livorno is an ideal place for easing yourself into a holiday. Whilst you cannot call it picturesque, its architecture, dressed in sunset colours, is pleasing to the eye. Secondly, it is generally speaking a safe and relaxing place, devoid of dodgy looking people and hordes of tourists.

Take a coffee or beer in the town centre and people watch. You’ll see that in the main, the denizens of Livorno are industrious, but also relaxed with a dash of elegance. When approaching them, you’ll find they are quite reserved, although engaging when they need to be. If you look into their faces you can see evidence of the fact that Italy, like all western European countries, has an ageing population. The young are conspicuous by their absence.

Because there are very few foreigners and tourists you can escape a malaise of tackiness and the interminable attention of the ‘sunglasses & lighters selling’ tourist mafias.

Livorno is crumbling to bits – walking around you’ll feel like you’re witnessing the ruination of a city. Certain places have seen better days, but with several regeneration projects taking places, it seems they have also seen worse.

A good example of this ruination is the beautiful octagonal church, which viewed from the outside looks like a cross between an army barracks and a lighthouse. Go inside, and you’ll see on first inspection that the church boasts a stunning interior with murals painted on the ceilings and several altars located amongst the church’s eight alcoves. Look a second time and you’ll find the paint is peeling off the murals, and scaffolding has been put up in several places to hold the church together.

Livorno is not paradise, it’s not a tourist resort, and it’s not even that beautiful, but it’s a good place to come to get away from the herds, and not a bad place to start a traveling holiday – kind of a warm-up town.




Leaving Livorno: Taking the Ferry to Bastia

One of the most beautiful experiences of the trip was the ferry from Livorno to Bastia. Some ferries are full of sweaty lorry drivers and Sicilian hooligans. Some ferries are just a bit scruffy. But the ferry from Livorno to Corsica was the best. It had lots of places to sit and eat. There was an open air bar on the top deck, with a canopy and plenty of places for sunbathing.

You could get a local beer for a couple of Euros or if you looked like a tourist and didn’t know any better you’d be served a Grolsch for 6 Euros. Being screwed by unscrupulous bar and restaurant owners was a recurring theme on this trip, one that occurred most often in Sicily.

The best thing about being on the top deck of the ferry was lying down, feeling the baking sun, being assuaged by the cool wind, and staring, mesmerized, at the surface of the sea, which looked like thousands of transparent eels writhing on top of one another.

After a few hours on the ferry, after everyone had fed and toileted themselves, and settled down, I noticed that several blokes, most of them in their fifties, would walk out alone on to the deck, lean on the rails and look out to sea to think, to think beyond the limits of what they could see, to hope.

Every now and then a whirlwind of children would disturb the peace. They played running games – they’d start by exploring the ship to see if it was possible to circumnavigate it. They’d then compete to see who could go fastest. No-one would ever go fast enough to detach themselves from the group. A human race.




Bastia

Pulling into Bastia was the closest I’m ever going to get to the biblical experience of entering the gates of heaven, or if not the gates, then at least the port.

Bastia is a rustic town, not really big enough to be a city, nestled on top of a meandering hillside. The buildings, rather than destroying the local environment, seem to co-exist with it. When we pulled into port, several thin clouds, which were located at different levels, and which sat just above the buildings, announced Bastia to us.

Bastia has a citadel, a labyrinthine concoction of old houses, built on top of one of the tallest hills in the town. Come up here for a great view, and a chestnut beer, a Corsican speciality.

The main street in Bastia is a ramshackle affair. It’s nothing special. However, despite its rusticity, the design of public spaces and the local housing is refined and pleasing to the eye. Wake up early to see marvellous views of the town centre (see four photos above).




Le Trembloteur

There are two major towns in Corsica. Bastia is one and Ajaccio is the other. Ajaccio is located in the south west of the island.

Before we set off on this tour, I’d read about a special tourist train called ‘Trinicellu’ (Corsican) or the ‘trembloteur’ (French), which apparently whisked its passengers off on a jaw-dropping journey through the mountains of Corsica.

The ‘trembloteur’ is not however the tourist train of Corsica. It is the only train in Corsica. The word ‘tourist’ is a misnomer. The word ‘ramshackle’ is probably more appropriate. It’s basically a pretty old, pretty small slip of a train whose heyday was back in the nineteen-sixties. They should call it Cilla Black.

Not that I was complaining as I got on it, with the mouth-watering prospect of the train journey ahead of me. I was a bit disappointed when with only thirty minutes of the journey done, we were told to get off it and get on to a coach. The coach journey wasn’t bad though – you still got to see quite a lot of Corsica’s mountains.




Ajaccio

Ajaccio, birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, is a town with no coherent identity. It’s a battlefield, where style crosses swords with an architecture and city planning philosophy inspired by the ugly triumvirate of functionality, economy and industry.

The Ajaccio coastline is articulated with big buildings, ports, marinas and skate parks. In places Ajaccio can almost feel slightly glamorous, with its plethora of palm trees, bright red flowers, and café bars. Ajaccio also has plenty of pleasant side streets and small bars.




Bonifacio

Bonifacio is a picture post-card town located at the southern tip of Corsica.

The old town is sited on an imposing 9th century citadel, built on top of a peninsula overlooking the Mediteranean Sea. The citadel is soaked in restaraunts and hotels.

Bonifacio has some glorious rock forms – white rock, eroded by time. Some of it sits in the sea. Most of it forms the border to a fjord-like inlet that provides a natural harbor and port for a large number of fishing and tourist boats. It’s an incredible place, and one can only imagine what the first settlers thought as they steered their boats into the narrow but imposing inlets one eerie summer’s evening.

Bonifacio has been hollowed out by mass tourism, to become what is, in effect, an open air museum. Outside of the tourists and weekenders that were beginning to arrive in May, it seemed to lack very little life of its’ own.

In fact, in some way, the white chalk cliffs which engulf you at every point and the endless stream of tourist oriented restaurants are quite suffocating.




Sardinia - Santa Teresa de Gallura

It was the three to four thousand people of Santa Teresa de Gallura who were the lucky hosts of our entry into Sardinia.

Santa Teresa de Gallura is a town which is growing to cater for the tourist market. Whilst its downtown is an ordinary looking, almost scruffy looking place, as you work your way up to the crest of the hill, which sits overlooking the coast, the housing, most of which is new, takes on beautiful orange and yellow hues, and is adorned by beautiful flowers.

This town, which for three quarters of the year has a population of just four to five thousand, swells to ten times the size during the summer months. In May it’s still quite quiet.

Once you’re over the crest of the hill, you work your way down to a perfect, petite beach cove. The beach is small, perfectly formed, with white sand and gently lapping clear water.




Sardinia

Traveling through the arid landscape of Sardinia makes you feel like this land has been baking in sun for years and years.

The landscape looks like the torn face of an old sun-drenched farmer. There are innumerable cacti and dusty roads which have been driven across the landscape. Rubber burns, exhaust gases escape and the heat continues to pound like a hammer.

Sardinia’s mountains are scattered, one here, one there. The interior is green, but it also seems quite harsh.

Sardinia has a heat which pushes your eyelids shut, which sticks your arms to the sides of your body.





The Foor Moors

According to the Lonely Planet Guide to Sardinia, the 'heads of the four Moors' was officially adopted as the flag of Sardinia in 1999. Its not clear whether the flag is supposed to represent a begrudging respect for Sardinia's Moorish enemies, or a desire to see the Moors enslaved and dominated. Either way, you'll see this flag all over Sardinia, a strange sight in what on the face of it appears to be a white European island.




Cagliari

The girls in Cagliari are so elegant. Their faces are well rounded, delicate and pretty. They are slim without being massively svelte. They have black hair, wear black clothes and invariably have sunglasses perched on the top of their heads.

Funny that I noticed quite a few locals, looking and dressed like English tourists, just because of their oversized clothes and unkempt figures.

The men were dressed in the classic – black jackets, white shirt and blue jeans – or were wearing jeans with brightly coloured t-shirts with the usual slogans, images and icons.

Cagliari is a modestly sized town with a humble population. The few people, mainly young, that I met were conscious of their relative poverty and the limited chances they were going to have staying on the island.




Miss Sardinia

We’re sat in our hotel room in Cagliari, tired, exhausted but restless. We take in some Italian TV and tune into what looks like the annual Miss Sardinia competition. It’s being hosted by two local celebrities both of whom look like they’re speaking in public for the first time, and both of whose talking is being randomly interrupted by the unwelcome music of a clumsy sound engineer. One makes an unscripted joke, the other doesn't understand it.

The worse thing is the prospective Miss Sardinias, who seem to have been selected on the basis of being just slightly less than average in their looks. How sad for them, that for some time leading up to the competition, and maybe even for a small time during it, they were under the illusion that they were true beauties. For a few seconds, or a few minutes, they must have thought that all the self-doubt they had had when they were young about their looks, were bizarre self-made myths.

What am I doing here, in this skimpy swimsuit, in this stuffy auditorium, with these people who haven’t got anything better to do than stare half-heartedly at a herd of poor to middling women, competing for recognition as beauty queen of Sardinia, as queen of nothing.




The Embittered Men of Sardinia

I met a man who gave me a lift back home one evening. He talked of how Sardinians were hard people. He said that the capitalists treated the men like slaves in the factories, and Sardinian women tended to boss the men around at home.

The Sardinian man was embittered and tended to treat other men in the same as he was treated. There was no tenderness in public life. So why had the guy giving me a lift escaped this? He said that his life experiences, which had seen him spend many years working abroad, had enabled him to see the possibility of living life otherwise. So are Sardinians consigned to being disingenuous and unhappy?

Sardinia is triste, triste, triste.




Knackered on a Ferry from Sardinia to Siciliy

On the ferry from Sardinia to Sicily, I suddenly got a taste of what was about to befall me in Palermo. Lots of uncouth people in groups, slightly overweight, looking like they might try to thieve my wallet and throw me overboard later on in the evening, running around, smoking, swearing, shouting and spitting.

Welcome to the Sicilians!

The Sicilians were exhibiting the kind of dress sense that is common to the UK, and is influenced by the Americans. The lads were wearing clothes which were stripped, shredded, numbered and soaked in icons, logos and a confusing mess of symbols. These icons call your attention, however they are mostly abstract, hinting at cultural references, leaving a casual observer, should he care, to do a lot of interpretative work.

For example, there’s this group of twenty something guys, who all look like prospective contestants for Big Brother. One in particular is wearing blue jeans and he’s wearing this pink cap which has the word ‘England’ written in black handwriting covering the surface of the cap. Why? Why would you want that cap? What is the significance of having a cap with England written all over it, of the fact that it is pink, not a colour traditionally associated with England or with caps in general? Another lad is wearing a yellow t-shirt with the words Italian Stallion on the back – this is rather predictable – although it is written in English and not Italian. Italian Stallion is a cliché, a sexual one – and he’s wearing jeans which shout out ‘I’m D&G’. The jeans and t-shirt combo are the classic image of a cross-eyed fashion sheep – one eye on sexual clichés and the other on the label.

I’m knackered, still awake on the ferry. I’m never going to sleep. Most people are bedding down on the lounge seats. I’m thinking the leader of this flock of Sicilian fashion victims is the marketing men, and it’s the owners of the clothing manufacturers who ultimately sacrifice these guys - killing them – so the banks and credit card companies can consume their blood, sweat and tears.




Palermo

Palermo, like Livorno, feels like a city that is heading for ruination. There are so many classical buildings which are old and crumbling. The Palermitans, unlike their northern cousins, the Sardinians, are not so slim, slight and simple. They tend to be fatter and burlier.

The citizens of Palermo are a disgrace. They have no respect for their environment or for each other. Policemen on motorbikes drive on the pavement when they can’t get past the traffic and throw cigarette butts on to the street. The city is full of litter – the citizens of Palermo treat their city like a rubbish dump – they seem to think the litter will magically disappear. Most Sicilians drive around as if they own the place – beeping at each other – and swerving all over the place to get an extra bit of space. One in every three cars has a serious dent or scratch mark.

Sicilian bus drivers seem to see speed bumps as things which are to be driven over at full speed, irrespective of the damage that might be done to the bus or to the passengers.

Palermo is what the UK would have turned into if Thatcher had been in power for another twenty years. The nepotistic Sicilians don’t care about anything beyond the boundaries of their four walls.

This attitude explains why their city, which has so much potential, is actually falling to pieces. If people don’t care about each other, then things get broken more easily, and are less likely to get repaired.

I met a lady who had been living in Sicily for twenty years who said that within Sicilian culture there was a culture of nepotism and corruption. The ruling political elites are not bothered about improving Sicily for the sake of the people, but rather improving those bits of the country owned by their families and supporters. She felt that Sicily, if properly developed, could be enormously attractive to tourists, but that it had not been developed to its potential.




Mondello

The beach resort of Mondello, on the edge of Palermo, is a hell hole. Don’t go there unless you enjoy being surrounded by empty coke cans, cigarette butts and fat teenagers kicking balls in your face. This resort even has one of those awfully depressing fun fairs and an endless number of bars and restaurants willing to rip you off.

Mondello’s redeeming feature, if you care to walk past the tacky peer, and a number of trattoria, is a coastal path that leads round the cape – which gradually diminishes in size from something cars can travel on – to a path – and then to a rocky costal area – where you can watch the waves crash on to the rocks. All of a sudden you are transported away from the Palmeritans and the humus of litter, sand and seaweed to a beautiful marine vista.

Sitting there watching the sea, and thinking of the desecration of Mondello, I’d like a big Mediterranean wave to sweep through Palermo and rid it of all the clans who are responsible for its ruination. However, as has been pointed out, quick fix solutions like the use of tidal waves to cleanse an area, don’t work. Within any society controlled by nepotistic and corrupt leaders, you find that almost everyone is implicated in the great crimes that you wish to rid the people of, such that if you applied the solution there would be very few people to hand the city back to. So maybe I don’t mean what I said, but you can’t help but think these things from time to time.




The Helenic Ruins of Solonto

Solonto, a twenty-five minute train ride out of Palermo, is a pretty extensive set of Hellenic ruins – apparently dating back from 2000 years ago. The general site is magnificent – set in coastal hills, and if tonnes of grey ruins don’t get you aroused, then there’s always a marvelous mess of wild flowers, bushes, lizards and insects.






References






Other Related Links






Travel on Vanguard Online



So what do you think of what you've just read? Please write and tell us!