Walking Backwards. Mark Frutkin
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Название: Walking Backwards
Автор: Mark Frutkin
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Путеводители
isbn: 9781554889853
isbn:
“I’d like to see Greece, but I don’t have much money.”
“Me neither. But that’s a great idea. Let’s do it. I hear Greece is really inexpensive. We’ll hitchhike there and live cheap.”
So it’s decided. We make our plans and head off a few mornings later.
First we have to get from Rome south to the town of Brindisi, which is on the east coast of Italy in the heel of the boot, overlooking the Strait of Otranto in the southern Adriatic. There we will catch a ferry to Piraeus, the port of Athens. On the appointed morning, we polish up our thumbs and head off to the Autostrada on the outskirts of Rome. We begin by trying to thumb a ride south. After about an hour, we are just starting to question the wisdom of this approach, when a brand-new red Porsche squeals to a stop in front of us. We hop in with our knapsacks — I’m squeezed into a back seat built for a toy poodle — and we take off. We soon discover that a student from the school who recognized us — a rich Italian kid named Victor, from Cleveland — has picked us up. We know he’s rich because his daddy has just bought him this brand new sports car, and we know he’s Italian because he keeps telling us. But he’s different than the Italians we have met in Italy. It doesn’t take us long to realize he’s a capital-A Asshole — self-obsessed, arrogant, stupid. He thinks the Italians of Italy are fools and idiots.
“Why do you think they’re idiots?” I ask in my innocence, ready to defend a people I have come to love in a few short months.
“Because they’re poor. They wouldn’t be poor if they weren’t idiots.”
Michael and I scratch our heads. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sure it does.” He adds no further explanation, but goes into a long diatribe about everything that is wrong with Italy, Italians, Europe, the food, the beer, the politics, the postal service, taking every opportunity to praise every detail of the American way of life.
Because Victor has a heavy foot to match his fat head, we cover the nearly six hundred kilometres to Brindisi in record time, ripping past groves of ancient olive trees and quiet villages in a blur. It is clear he wants company on the long trip south so we oblige, but really what he wants is a captive audience he can bitch to. The price of admission for the hitchhiker. It’s a quick trip in his Porsche, but feels like a long trip, nonetheless.
We pull into Brindisi, buy our tickets for the ferry, and board. Because it will save us money, we have decided to get off with Victor at the small town of Igoumenitsa, on the north coast of Greece, across from the island of Corfu, and drive with him down through the mountainous countryside to Delphi and thence to Athens.
Once we leave the ferry at Igoumenitsa, the road south turns out to be a rougher ride than expected. About a hundred miles of the route is unpaved dirt and much of the mountain driving is Stairway-to-Heaven switchbacks, which Victor attacks like a dog on the hunt, driving his new Porsche as if he’s way behind at the Indy 500. Somehow I always get the back seat, which leads to what feels like permanent curvature of the spine. And Victor thinks the Greeks are even stupider than the Italians. Each time we pass country people walking along the road to their fields or tending their sheep, they wave to us with all the lovely innocence of rural people the world over.
“Don’t wave at those fools!” Victor barks at us when we obligingly wave back.
After spending a night in a sleepy hotel in a nameless Greek village, we continue the now-painful drive the next morning. Michael and I are happy to arrive alive in Delphi. We thank Victor for the ride but tell him we’re going to continue our trip to Athens by bus. Victor roars off in a huff and, although we see him at the school over the next several months, he never speaks to us again.
Glad to be rid of him, Michael and I explore the expansive ruins of Delphi. The location of Delphi, at latitude 38o28’, is one of the great sites of the world. As I peer out from the hillside to which the ancient ruins cling, on the slope of Mount Parnassus, I note that the view takes in two long wide valleys that meet in a T. This meeting point is where Delphi was built. If you look down the single leg of the T, the Gulf of Corinth is visible on a clear day, shining tens of kilometres away in the distance at the end of the valley.
Delphi, dedicated to Apollo, god of prophecy and patron of philosophy and the arts, is where the Delphic Oracle made her ambiguous pronouncements and prophecies at the behest of visitors from throughout the ancient world. It is said that even Homer himself once visited. Delphi was considered the omphalos, or navel, of the world, the centre of the Earth, and the stone that represents the navel was said to be the first thing that emerged from the waters after the great flood of ancient times.
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