The Latest at Goethe

In addition to my work in Palermo, there has to be a little sightseeing. So, at the weekend I drove a hired car (at the station, I was asked, more symbolically: “What do you want: a Volkswagen Golf or a Lancia? Well, you should prefer the better Volkswagen”) to Catania and from there to St. Alfio, where I spent the night in a beautifully altered farmhouse. The next day, I visited Europe’s largest and sometimes most active volcano, Etna. Fantastic! Then, after a side trip in Taormina, I viewed two small villages that recently were badly damaged by the major earthquake around Messina.

I saw completely demolished cars, pressed together as if they had come out of a scrap press, all standing in a row in a parking zone by the seaside esplanade. A few metres away, the Sunday strollers ambled past; a very absurd situation. In the late afternoon, I drove back to Palermo through countless tunnels, which I at some point stopped counting, thinking to myself: On hilly Sicily there must be far more tunnels than in all of the Alps.

Shortly before Palermo, began the Sicilian capital’s constant problem – besides the mountains of rubbish –, the snarl-up. There is not one time of day in Palermo during which traffic rolls smoothly – perhaps with the exception of after midnight or one o’clock in the morning. It is absolute madness. You need to have a very level head to keep from leaning on your horn at some point in frustration. But, this, too, is astonishing: the otherwise spirited Sicilians sit stoically in their cars, smoke and gaze in boredom at the vehicle ahead of them. Then, in between the bumper-to-bumper cars – standing in two rows on wider streets – the scooters, mopeds and motorbikes squeeze through. I have not yet seen one of the cyclists even touch a car with their vehicle. You need a good deal of practice for that, which I, as a motorcyclist can by all means appreciate. Sometimes, streets in Palermo have an additional lane, which, however, is only permissible for taxis and authorized vehicles; at least officially. And the parking is anything but accommodating. There are self-appointed marshals, migrants, who are given a little money (one euro at most, otherwise the prices here are “ruined”) for “minding” a car. Whether they would also defend my car from officials who write out “tickets” now and then here in Palermo, I cannot judge. At least I have never received one, and certainly not because it was a “Volkswagen”...

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