Hypnotized by You if I Should Linger

In the ancient epic poem, The Odyssey, the Greek poet Homer tells the tale of Odysseus’s journey home from the Trojan War. He became lost on the way and had to brave numerous trials and dangers including the brutal cyclops, the sirens with their bewitching song, and the Scylla and Charybdis. As the story goes, […]

You Should Watch Cinema Paradiso

I love volcanoes – I’ve always loved them, for as long as I can remember. There’s just something about the power, the destruction, the unpredictability, and the intimate association with our history. They have always had some sort of meaning. Seriously – when I was a kid and my dad had to go to Sicily […]

Forgotten Histories

When I came to Calabria I knew I was coming someplace smaller, to a place most of the world doesn’t know about, and if they did they have already forgotten. I knew transport in this region is limited and many places are impossible to reach by train. I don’t have a car, so I’m more […]

Leaving Guidebooks Behind

Lurching left and right in an unpredictable manner, the train hurried forward, going ever downward. We were in a hurry to reach our destination, so didn’t bother stopping at Napoli Centrale, which would have lengthened this already long 5-hour ride. We stopped at Salerno, the site of my infamous loss of consciousness, and I glanced […]

Diciannove

The last whispers of daylight were quickly disappearing into a rainy evening when the wheels of the big A330 skidded on the tarmac and I finally landed at Fiumicino airport after too many hours of travel. The night had, then, fully settled in as I stepped off of the Leonardo Express train and onto the […]

Exploring Asian Istanbul

I read somewhere that the Kadikoy neighborhood of Istanbul was once home to some of the oldest settlements in the area, with evidence of human occupation dating back thousands of years. It was the Greek colony of Chalcedon long before the Romans established New Rome (later Constantinople) on the opposite side of the Bosphorus. I […]