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Going to Rome

This is my only train ride that’s in second class and on a completely full train. I’m sitting on a 4-seat contraption with three other people. And they’re all really nice! The man sitting opposite me keeps trying to peddle his cookies onto us to stop himself from eating the whole box, and everyone relents with a laugh, and the cookies are good and the mood is great. I’m happy.

Finally, we get to Rome, our train 5 minutes late, which feels wonderful compared to the previous Train Ride of Hell.

In news that will surprise noone, my first notes about Rome are: « Orange city but bigger ». I’m fully equating Italy to these orange-tinted walls now.

At the hotel, I do some prep work:

I then go out for a little exploration, nothing big. With the Verona tour this morning, my feet are still sore even after these 3 hours of sitting on a train.

Openstreetmap is not up to date in this city. The ruins and streets are perfectly indicated, but the benches and shops are not reliable at all, so I take the time to cover a couple of streets – my small contribution to the city. Helping out even a little makes me feel better about being a tourist, especially in Rome, the second-most touristic place I’ve visited after Venice, although Verona was solid competition.

I go for dinner. The place I’m aiming for has closed indefinitely. I update it on Openstreetmap, and while I’m at it, also on Google Maps, and then I walk to a second place, which takes me through a bit more streets. Rome is gorgeous in the sense that there’s something to gawk at every couple of streets – arches, ruins, monuments, statues, churches, there’s always something.

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Finally, I get to pizzeria Berbero, a hip place with neat pastel aesthetics and a sanitized menu. I eat one of the best pizzas of my life (‘Nduja and burrata, of course.) and greedy old me also decides to try suppli, which are basically deep-fried risotto balls.

I roll back to the hotel.

Back in bed, I bring down the itinerary to 24 kilometers, which should be much more reasonable. The midway point is the Colosseum: on day 1, I’ll walk through non-touristic parts of the city, then enter the Vatican, and then make my way along the river to the ruins. On Friday, I’ll take the direct bus and start where I left off.

Stats

  • Train: 3h23 for 3 759km in total
  • Steps: 20 859

First full day

I wake up hoping places won’t be too crowded with the public holiday. It turns out that the neighborhood I’m in is very quiet; maybe everyone’s still blissfully asleep, or maybe my neighborhood is just nothing much to see. (Based on my map, both are likely.)

I walk for a really long time, taking the longest possible route to the Vatican. First, I stop at Villa Borghese. It’s warm and sunny, I’m able to shed the sweater for the first time in ten days, I’m delighted.

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I walk for another hour or so. From the moment I leave the park to then, I run into four, maybe five people. It’s peaceful and wonderful.

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I stop to chat with a friend (no walking and texting if it stops you from looking around for cool stuff!) on a bench next to a cute fountain.

And suddenly, I think I’m close to the Vatican, because the streets get crowded at once.

I whip out my restaurants map: it’s time for lunch. There’s Trattoria Dino e Toni close to me, and it looks pretty great, so I head there. Of course, they’re completely full and I should have booked in advance. Never mind, there’s a pizzeria (Lievito) just one street further, also on the list.

I get a supplo’ which is again excellent, but the pizza is honestly awful. A bad pizza is still an okay meal, and this is a rare miss over a month-long trip, so I won’t cry over it. Also, it means more stomach space for dinner. (This trip is basically eat pray love except I don’t pray much and my partner stayed home.)

When I get out of the restaurant, the weather is significantly worse; it’s now cloudy enough that I need to put my sweater back on.

Looking around, I see that postcard stands now mostly just sell photos of the Pope. Yeah, I must be close.

And there they are, the walls of the city – and a gigantic queue several hundreds of meter long to enter the museums.

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For a second, I think it’s the queue to enter the Holy City, and I’m ready to nope the hell (heh) out of this, but then I realize the gate to the city is further, so I go back to walking, following the dense flow of pilgrims and visitors.

Finally, I walk past the gates of the Vatican.

It starts raining.

Clearly, God did not get the Pope’s memo about me being allowed to exist now.

The temperature drops ten degrees.

I am wearing shorts and did not bring my raincoat because it was supposed to be warm and sunny.

I hurry out of the Vatican. I take a few photos, but the lighting is absolutely dismal and a million people have photographed the Vatican, so I’ll let you find a decent picture yourself if you want one.

I cross the bridge back to Rome.

It stops raining.

Message received.

While the Vatican was just as beautiful as expected, what I did not expect was the great Castel San’Angelo.

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From there, my exploration leads me to more churches, more ruins, more arches, more palaces.

I also run into a fascist bridge. (As in, the text on it, justifying why the guy it’s named after was so great, has a carefully scratched-out mention of « [l’Italia] imperiale e fascista », but the mention of the Italian East Africa just below remains. Can’t get ’em all.)

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Villa Farnesina sounds fun, but from outside, I can’t see anything at all. It’s unfortunate, and it keeps happening here – lots of places are protected by fences, and given how many tourists there are in these places, I suppose it makes sense, even though it’s sad.

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Speaking of tourists, I hadn’t seen one in a while, but I find a new pocket on via Dorotea. It seems like tourists travel in herds (well, most tourists – obviously I shouldn’t consider myself special). I think it might be because Rome is so much bigger than all the other cities I’ve visited (bar Berlin), people don’t necessarily walk from one place to the next, meaning that they disappear on public transportation and suddenly reappear at the next attraction.

I meet a friendly bird.

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I walk a bit more, crossing yet another bridge, then decide that this is too much. I’m tired, my feet hurt, my knee isn’t doing too well, and I’m almost at the Colosseum, so I can just come back here tomorrow.

I stop under the Mermen fountain (which, as far as I’m concerned, should be called the Thicc Thigh fountain) and read a book in the sun while waiting for a bus due twenty minutes later.

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At 4pm, the bus comes by. On the bus, I’m sitting next to a Floridian couple of retirees. They are absolutely unhinged in that unmistakeable American way. I love them. We chat all the way, of course.

I finally get home and drop into the bed, falling asleep instantly. Guess I’ll have to use the bus or grab an ebike tomorrow, because I can’t do a third 20k-step day in a row. My knee isn’t happy, my feet aren’t happy, my brain is delighted but it’s the only one.

When I wake up from my nap, I go eat carbonara at the restaurant next door (Al Piave). The other dishes are wonderful (artichoke and octopus) and the carbonara is divine. I’m a happy Alex.

Stats

  • Steps: 19 979
  • Friendly Floridians: 2
  • Friendly Floridians with a cowboy hat: 1

Day 2

I wake up with a screaming knee. The attempt to run in Munich, the hiking in Salzburg and the 20k steps twice in a row seem to have brought it to a point where it refuses to deal with anything anymore. I can’t blame it. I can still walk fine, so there’s a 50% chance it will get better as soon as I warm it up.

I don’t want to take that chance, so I look into hop-on hop-off buses. An online forum tells me they all suck because of the city layout. Bon.

At 11am, fortunately, my knee is feeling much better and I venture outside.

I start with taking the bus 80 to Piazza Venezia. It seems that bus stops in Roma are super far apart, although maybe it’s just this line.

I stop at Piazza Venezia, which is on the other side of the Colosseum compared to where I left off yesterday. That means I’m probably not missing anything huge, and I’m shaving off 4 kilometers from the original plan, not walking around the whole area.

On the bus, I look at everything with big eyes. Rome is a hard city to visit: nothing needs to be photographed, because either it’s very banal in a city of incredible things or it’s such a classic there’s no point in taking a photo just to prove I was there. (I’m really working on not taking random shots of super-famous places and trying to give some personality to my photos, but the old « Oh I need to show Instagram that I’ve been here! » reflex is deeply ingrained in my mind, even though I don’t even use Insta anymore). So I just look around and enjoy the glory of this city.

Piazza Venezia is an example of a place that can’t really be photographed unless you have a drone, access to a high balcony at 3pm or on a day where the public is now allowed, or a VR set, so I don’t even try.

I walk up a short flight of stairs to the ruins of the Roman Forum.

Sorry for the Colosseum spoilers but… these ruins are the best thing I’ve seen in Rome. They’re incredibly cool. I love them.

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Then I follow the crowd (bleh) towards the Colosseum. The street musicians are all good. The street « statue impersonators » are all surprisingly bad. One guy is spray-painting small Colosseum stencils and that’s pretty cool. I keep my phone in my bra (that’s the one perk of having breasts) and my fanny pack under my sweater.

Of course, there are so many people, and so many bright yellow fences, that the Colosseum is very underwhelming.

I get to a higher point, where I finally get a decent photo.

Remember what I said about not wanting to take the photos everyone always takes?

Yeah nevermind.

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A street vendor tries to sell me a bracelet. I say « no ». He says « are you French »? He’s from the East of Senegal, some of his cousins live in Paris, we end up chatting for a while, I’m impressed that he speaks French, Italian and English, we talk a bit about the job. When I start to move he fastens a bracelet on my wrist and wishes me a nice day. I wish him the same and we part with a smile. I know these bracelets are normally a scam so I’m pretty confused by what happened here: he never asked for money and I kept a firm hand on my belongings the whole time, so maybe, just maybe, he was just happy that someone was decent to him. Anyway, that’s the version I decide to go for, because I like to believe that the universe rewards me for being nice.

I accidentally walk past the seat of the government. It doesn’t look bad. I’d have been disappointed if I had planned to go there and see the building, but this is a nice surprise (in terms of architecture, not of the people inside). I go through an indoor passage with a cute ceiling.

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I walk past half a dozen restaurants and they’re all full. I’m hungry and grumpy and tired.

I see the Pantheon. It’s like the Paris Pantheon but older and less shiny and with a bigger crowd in front of it. I tell myself I’ll come back and check it with a more neutral mindset after lunch. (It’s still boring after lunch.)

I end up at Trattoria Il Lucano, where I have a basic salad (love it, haven’t had a simple salad in ages) and absolutely wonderful rigatoni alla grigia. I’m never choosing carbonara again if I’m given a choice. This is life-changing.

The street from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain is how I imagine purgatory. Just a very loud, very slow crowd with no end in sight. On my side, I glimpse a souvenir shop that sells calendars for three very different audiences.

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(Are you more of a priest calendar, smiling biceps-y gladiator calendar, or cats in the city calendar person?)

The trip from the Pantheon to the Trevi fountain is short, and soul-sucking. I keep thinking that yesterday was a much better day, and think it’s very probably simply because there are so many people in the places I’m visiting today. Today, I’m in one of these tourist pockets I was talking about yesterday: I took the bus several times so I don’t get these moments of quiet to recharge between monuments.

I get to the Trevi fountain and well… It delivers on my expectations, and more. It’s truly gorgeous. It’s too crowded to see in full but everything I do see it extraordinary. (Again, I encourage you to find a high quality photo if you want to immerse yourself in the story.)

That’s it for today. I’m done with super-touristic places. I see a small street that goes uphill. I’ve been very good at avoiding castles on hills recently, but this is one hill too many, and there I go…

At the top, there’s the gorgeous Trinità dei Monti. It’s busy, but not too much for me to feel at east.

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From there, I also have a beautiful view over the (actually crowded) Piazza di Spagna. I’m glad I took the way uphill rather than staying in the crowd, and the view is neat!

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Today was a relatively quiet day, and I’m only at 9 000 steps or so. I could stop there and enjoy the end of the afternoon in peace.

I could.

I don’t.

I keep walking and end up in front of the Villa Médicis, which also seems to be the French cultural institute in Rome. I keep walking and end up… on Piazza Napoleone Primo. Dammit!

The park is nice, there are free benches in the sun, a band is covering American-Italian classics. It’s the perfect place to spend an hour reading in the sun, and that’s exactly what I do. I’ve missed this so much during the past ten days!

I finish my tour by going downstairs to the gorgeous Piazza del Popolo, where I get a bus.

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Half a dozen stops later, I get off the bus, cross the street and take the bus in the right direction.

Finally, I get back to the hotel.

I could have spent a full week in Rome and still not seen everything I wanted to see, and I’m not even talking about unplanned discoveries and new experiences. But these two days are enough to make me feel good about the visit and about what I did get a chance to see.

Would I visit Rome again? I’m not sure, actually. I loved my visit, but outside of Venice, this was the place that made me feel most uneasy about overtourism. I felt bad about taking a photo of the Colosseum in the same spot as thousands of people. I didn’t enjoy the slow procession from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain. And I’d like to not keep being part of the problem, so maybe I’ll come back, but I’m not sure.

Stats

  • Steps: 13 072
  • Buses: 4
  • E-Bike: 1
  • Carbs: 💀

To Milan!

This morning is easy: I get up, pack my bag, check out of the hotel and jump on a train to Milan, to meet my very dear partner who will arrive there half an hour after me.

I’ve decided not to post about Milan – I’ll just make a mini-post recapping my favourite restaurants, probably after coming back to France.

So this is almost the end – there will be a recap post, and there’s a lot that I want to do with the blog series in the weeks to come. I want to add text to the images (alt text and captions, that is), to have one page recapping the trip and linking to all the posts, to add geotagged markers, to rank my favourite cities and to say which ones I think you should or shouldn’t visit… but that will come later.

The trip isn’t over, and I still want to make the most of my time in Milan. I’ll focus on that for now.

As for you: thanks for following me through this adventures, and see you soon for the wrap-up post!

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As I leave Salzburg on an very comfy ÖBB train at 11am, I’m ready for a 6 hour long journey. I am young and innocent and naive.

When I left you yesterday, I was stranded right outside of the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof station. We were brought back to the main station after three quarters of an hour, with no explanation. Another half hour later, we were finally given some news: our locomotive had an issue and needed to be changed.

So we waited.

We left Salzburg 90 minutes after the official time of departure. Of course, my dream of getting the immediate transfer in Innsbruck was shattered. But not all was bad: I learned a bunch of swear words in Italian from the older man sitting in front of me, who insulted the train company, their staffs, and their mothers under his breath for a full hour. A free language lesson!

Also, the toilet was fun.

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Four hours after boarding our train, we arrive in Innsbruck (that’s less than 200 kilometers, if you were wondering). I love Innsbruck and don’t really mind spending more time there than planned. Innsbruck is everything I love about Grenoble, with added Austrian architecture. Also, the nerd in me loves the train station (because from the quays, you can see the Olympic ski jump).

I walk around for a bit, looking for something to eat, and end up at a vegan fast-food place called Cigköften. It’s a Turkish chain and makes absolutely glorious vegan wraps. I hope they’ll make their way to Grenoble soon (they seem to have a few franchises in France already, the closest one being in Lyon). The employee is really sweet and we talk for a bit.

I realize that while Berlin and Munich are terrible cities for speaking German (Berlin because they assume you’re an English speaker anyway, Munich because they will use any occasion to shit on you), practicing elsewhere, like in Innsbruck, is just fine. Maybe I should come spend a few weeks here, or in another mid-sized German or Austrian city, to improve my language skills. My accent is horrendously French, a problem I don’t really have in any other language I speak, and makes me really uncomfortable to the point that I have avoided speaking German more than once just out of self-consciousness. But here, I decide to ignore the accent and focus on what I’m saying. It works wonders and we have a nice conversation.

Finally, I am on the train to Verona. We pass by the border and then to all these places where the signs are in Italian and German. The train stops at Bolzano (also known as Bozen) and I look around. Honestly? I don’t think I would have really enjoyed a day in Bolzano. It looks like a town with not much going on, in a pretty setting that probably can’t be accessed by public transportation. No regrets here.

Trento looks better, though, with a castle colosseum? on a hill and a slightly more active city center (from what we see from the station, that is). I tell myself Verona will probably be nice too, and not to regret anything.

Eight hours after leaving Salzburg, I finally get to Verona. The train station is outside of the city center. When I get out of the station, what I see is a huge bus parking that’s mostly empty… and a church, for some reason. No houses, no buildings.

I have to walk on the side of a busy road (the sidewalk is large, which is good) under the rain for a little while, until I run into a giant red brick door, or castle, or something.

That’s going to be the Verona experience.

I cross a bridge and suddenly I’m in a regular Northern Italy old town with its paved streets and its orange-tinted walls (not nearly as much as in Bologna, of course) and its churches and ruins. It feels just like home again.

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On my way to the hotel, I do not meet any French speakers. (I’m not counting the guy who mutters « merde merde merde » next to me, because for all I know he just likes to swear in foreign languages, and because I have a narrative to push here.) I also call (on the phone!!) a fancy restaurant in Milan to book a table for when my partner joins me there. I’m so excited – but right now, I’m mostly proud that the call went very well, all in Italian, and that I’m back to a world I know and love.

I realize as I get to the hotel that I got a really, really great last minute deal. Last minute hotel searches are usually hit or miss – either you overpay for a tiny room or you end up in a hotel with frescoes on the ceiling and a valet who insists on carrying your backpack and pushes the elevator buttons for you. This time, I got the latter.

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A normal hotel lobby.

While I booked a « single room with single bed », the single room in question has a dressing the size of my bathroom at home and I’ve had more than one apartment smaller than the main bedroom. My favourite find, though, is not luxurious, just Italian: all Italian bathrooms have bidets, and I’m happiest with a clean butt.

It’s nearly 8pm, but not nighttime yet, and I will be leaving in the early afternoon tomorrow. I decide to walk around.

Verona is gorgeous. Honestly, for a city that I’m visiting exclusively because it’s on my way, I’m truly glad I didn’t miss it. There’s a big castle and tiny cobbled streets and I feel at home here.

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I look for somewhere to have dinner. My Internet connection is down (I don’t know what’s with Verona, but my 4G will be spotty at best for the entire stay), so I have to go fully old-style and find a random restaurant called Enocibus (45.43941° N, 10.99046° E). I end up in a completely empty place with yellow painted walls in the Southern Europe style, where an old couple is having dinner upstairs. They hand me the menu, a small sheet of paper with a bunch of listings but no categories or description. I’m so confused I just ask the man what I should get, and he points me to the primo of the day, « taglierini alla bottarga di mugillo ». Whatever that is.

It tastes a) very good and b) very fishy. I love it. The radio is playing Italian love songs, a wall is covered in wine bottles, a counter shows charcuterie and cheeses of all kinds.

My secondo is carne sala (I believe – I forgot to make her repeat), which looks a lot like carpaccio but is actually cooked beef from what I understand. It’s served with a simple green salad and it’s excellent and light.

When the couple asks me if I want dessert, given how good their first two suggestions were, I ask for another recommendation. I decline the first one, Tiramisù, because I don’t like coffee, so they bring me « salame di cioccolato » – which, as the name suggests, looks a lot like salami, except is chocolate and biscuit.

These people are truly kind and sweet. The food is extraordinary. The ambience is quiet and soft. I love everything about this place.

As I walk back to the hotel, wandering in the dark city, I think to myself that I should take (way) more Italian vacations. Especially now that I’ve moved close to the border, going to Torino is only three hours away by bus. Italy feels like home, and I could do a week of remote work with my mornings and evenings free. Hmm… I’ll need to consider that.

My hotel room is wonderful and I sleep very well.

Stats

  • Train: 6h52 for 3 330km total
  • Steps: 7 673 /word

Half-day in Verona

Now that I’ve walked around a bit, I am very sad that I’m not spending a full day in Verona. The city is beautiful and if yesterday’s meal is to be believed, the food is incredible.

At breakfast, I have a nice conversation about jazz with the maid. I can’t really find her to send her recommendations anymore, but if you have some, post them int he comments, I’d love to listen to more jazz, especially if the artists are still active!

I start walking towards the big castle I glimpsed yesterday.

Yep, it’s big.

Next to it is an arc de triomphe. I’ll let you guess who got it built.

Then, there are several gorgeous bridges.

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These bridges go over a river. You know what that means, right?

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Yes, there’s a castle on a hill. The hill is far away, so I’ll be able to rest my knee, which is great! But wait… what’s this? As I take a turn to follow the river, another hill appears…

Time to climb.

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My 4G is broken again, which gives me a beautiful moment of solace. I have my offline maps, and my offline dictionary, if I get in trouble, but that’s about it. I wish I had some level of self-discipline, because being forced not to stare at my screen is great.

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I pass the antique theater, or Teatro Romano. It looks cool, but is mostly hidden by various fences, walls and bushes, which is a shame.

I then take the old bridge back to the main chunk of the old city. Everything is so beautiful! Unfortunately, the people who designed Verona failed to take into account the needs of twenty-first century photographers. Given the terrible taste of all the postcards I find, it seems that postcard photographers agree.

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Between the gates and fences and the narrow streets, that’s the best I can do.

Juliet’s house (from Romeo and Juliet, as Shakespeare lived in Verona at one point and was inspired to write several of his plays based on real places here) is a big attraction of Verona, that I don’t care much about. Yes, there’s a balcony. I’ve seen a few photos on postcards and thought « okay, sure ». When I see the size of the queue to enter the courtyard of Juliet’s house, I give up without any regrets.

I walk in small streets, finding the jewish ghetto and a bunch of indie clothing shops of all kinds that make me really happy to see. They make me want to get a new, non-Decathlon, wardrobe, until I remember I’m going back to Grenoble soon and never have any reason to wear non-Decathlon clothes.

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So it’s noon, and I make my way back to Piazza Bra, in the old town. It looks like every single child in Verona is on a class trip to the old town today and the plaza is crowded. A discussion with the hotel receptionist will bring everything to light: on April 25, the Italians celebrate Liberation day, the day in 1943 when the people turned against Mussolini and the Americans considered Italy free. It’s on a Thursday, so Italians are bridging their time off to the weekend, like we do in France: we’re about to have a very busy few days. Roma and Milano may or may not be nightmarish, we’ll see!

Another meal, another gem. This time, I go to the more touristic and well-known Osteria Casa Vino close to the city center. The waitresses are very helpful and nice, and the meal is absolutely divine. I start with courgette flowers filled with ricotta, then tagliatelle with asparagus. I skip the secondo and move straight to dessert, a delicious chocolate cake. The entire time, not only am I having the best meal of my trip (with some very serious competition from yesterday’s dinner), but I also have a brilliant conversation with the polyglot German couple next to me. Their French is flawless, we all speak English, the lady also speaks some Italian, we mix the four languages until our conversation makes sense. They’re super sweet. I’m having a wonderful stay. They offer to take a photo of me, so here’s a photo for those of you who have missed my face (what can I say, I don’t selfie much).

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I’m a bit heartbroken to have to leave the city so soon, even though I’ve seen all I wanted to see (Verona is quite small). But Rome awaits me, and this train should be on time!

My next update will be on April 27 as I leave for Milan, and I haven’t decided yet whether there will be a Milan update, so this next one might be the last one (outside of the recap that I’ll write sometime in May).

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Read Le rêve du pêcheur by Hemley Boum
Zack a fui le Cameroun à dix-huit ans, abandonnant sa mère, Dorothée, à son sort et à ses secrets. Devenu psychologue clinicien à Paris, marié et père de famille, il est rattrapé par le passé alors que la vie qu'il s'est construite prend l'eau de toutes parts... À quelques décennies de là, son grand-père Zacharias, pêcheur dans un petit village côtier, voit son mode de vie traditionnel bouleversé par une importante compagnie forestière. Il rêve d'un autre avenir pour les siens...

Zachary a abandonné son Cameroun natal et toute sa famille pour venir étudier la psychologie à Nanterre, en région parisienne.

Il s’intègre bien. Il a une copine métisse d’origine martiniquaise, mais ça se passe mal : il n’est pas assez conscient du racisme systémique aux yeux de sa copine, elle est trop énervée et radicale pour lui.

Il rencontre une femme blanche. La première fois qu’ils se voient, elle le prend pour un sans-abri. Il est charmé.

Mais doucement, la vie toute propre de Zachary s’effondre. Sa femme et ses deux enfants s’y perdent.

Zachary se souvient de sa mère, Dorotée, qui se prostituait pour le nourrir et s’enivrer. De son meilleur ami, Achille.

Il ne se souvient pas de son grand-père, Zacharias, de qui il tient son prénom. Pourtant, Zacharias est essentiel – en filigrane de l’histoire de Zachary, on découvre les terribles destins des pêcheurs de son village et on découvre pourquoi Dorothée a fini par s’enfuir à la ville, sans avoir les ressources qui lui auraient permis de s’en sortir.

Zachary doit faire face à son passé avant que ce dernier ne le consume.

Un très très bon roman.

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Read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go is a classic of the dystopia genre.

It’s quiet, soft, heart-wrenching. There’s not a lot going on in there, to the point that the novel, no matter how horrible its premise, feels quite cozy at times.

Knowing the main twist may have made it less memorable for me, or maybe it’s the very old and faded memories from the movie – which I loved whenI watched it as a kid, to the point that I remembered scenes as I was reading them. (Carey Mulligan was definitely one of my queer awakenings.)

It’s a classic, and it’s soft and sad, but something was missing for me and I don’t know what. Maybe if I had read the book without knowing the premise or remembering vague aspects of the movie, it would have hit different.

While I loved the spoken-word style or the rambling narrator, something was amiss and I didn’t fully enjoy my read.

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Read The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.

Everyone seems to agree that The Rachel Incident is a funny novel.

I don’t get it.

I couldn’t stop reading The Rachel Incident. It was gripping and relatable and I felt the confusion and despair and hope of our young trio – because, as much as the narrator wants to tell us otherwise, Carey is part of a trio.

Everything in this novel felt like a subplot. There is no overarching story – just the normal life of a normal 20 year old. There is just pile of side stories and narrative arcs that you may or may not be invested in. Abortion in Ireland, finding a job in the middle of a financial collapse, trying to make sense of the world straight out of your teens, first love(s), being gay when you can’t afford to be gay… a bunch of themes, all well-covered, that make up a whole web of stories with the same 4 or 5 main characters.

A glorious novel.

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Read Where the Dead Sleep by Joshua Moehling
When an early morning call brings Deputy Ben Packard to the scene of a home invasion, he finds Bill Sandersen shot in his bed. Bill was a well-liked local who chased easy money his whole life, leaving bad debts and broken hearts in his wake. Everyone Packard talks to has a story about Bill, but no one has a clear motive for wanting him dead. The business partner. The ex-wife. The current wife. The high-stakes poker buddies. Any of them--or none of them--could be guilty. As the investigation begins, tragedy strikes the Sheriff's department, forcing Packard to make a difficult choice about his future: step down as acting Sheriff and pursue the quiet life he came to Sandy Lake in search of, or subject himself to the scrutiny of an election for the full-time role of Sheriff, a job he's not sure he wants.

I got Where the dead sleep because it was part of the Lambda Literary shortlist, without realizing that it’s book 2 of a series of which I read the first book. I realized that when I saw my own review of Book 1 on The Storygraph from a while ago (when I still said ACAB): « ACAB but especially this one ».

My expectations were pretty low for this book.

In Where the dead sleep, our main character, gay police officer turned interim sheriff Ben Packard is not nearly as unlikeable as I found him in the first book of the series. Maybe it’s that he isn’t closeted anymore and that he lays on the self-hate way less thickly.

The story is pretty classic: man dies, wife could be the suspect, or wait maybe it’s the ex-wife, oh they’re sisters, oh affairs and gambling are involved, more people die, genius detective solves murder(s), all is well in this quiet little town if you don’t count the several murders of the past few months spread across two novels.

The thing with formulaic crime novels is that they’ll either be boring and satisfying, or actually good. I think Where the dead sleep was truly enjoyable, and might read book 3 of my own volition, even without an award to go with it!

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I will spend slightly less than 48 hours in Salzburg, the last city I’m truly excited about – Trento and Bolzano are nice enough but they’re mostly stops along the way to Milan, as I talked about in my last post.

My hotel, Markus Sittikus, is really lovely. After a flight of stairs, you get to the reception (and to the elevator for the rest of the building); the receptionist shows me the garden, the living room and the « bar », which is a glorified living room with a self-serve fridge for drinks. It’s a proper (and fancy) hotel with the socializing possibilities of a hostel. This, and the really comfortable room, makes me forgive them for my horrible pillow.

What I like the most about the photos of Salzburg I saw online is the mountains. It’s cold and rainy, and for the whole duration of my stay, I’ll only get occasional glances of the summits. Sad times.

While lying in bed after my afternoon nap, I think about my future plans… and completely change them. Bolzano and Trento don’t excite me? Fine. I’ll remove them completely. I’ll stay in Verona for an evening and a night, and then I’ll jump on a train and enjoy two full days… in Rome.

What I thought to be incredibly far south is, thanks to the amazing Italian railway network, exactly the same time as the small jumps I wanted to make along the way to Milan. It’s just a 3-hour ride to Rome from Verona, and a 3-hour ride to Milan after that. By my new standards, that’s almost a short commute!

But first: the present. Salzburg awaits, so I force myself out of bed and start cruising the city.

While freezing under the cold rain, I remember when I packed for this trip, bought a fleece sweater just for it, and then removed it from the backpack based on the weather forecast for the first two weeks. I regret everything.

As I walk around to the Mirabell gardens, I start hearing French everywhere. There you go: Munich had one good thing going for it, the absence of obnoxious French tourists everywhere. This era is over.

The Mirabell gardens are adorable, and I accidentally deleted my photo of them, which breaks my heart. Just imagine French gardens with multicolored peonies making swirls on the grass, with a few neoclassical sculptures and buildings on the sides. Imagine a small hill, just a few steps on a great stone stairwell, where you can hop to take your photo. Imagine, far away in the background, a fort on a hill. It’s pretty good.

I keep walking, which brings me to the river. Believe it or not, Salzburg has a river in its middle and a castle on a hill four castles on hills.

The closest of these hills is my target for today. On top of this one is a small church, but when I get there, I discover a Panoramaweg, which of course, I follow. The ground is very squishy under me, and I’m glad I have proper hiking shoes, because sneakers would not have gotten me (and my knee) far on this kind of slippery ground.

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Speaking of knee, I can feel that I’m pushing it a bit too hard. It hasn’t hurt for a solid week, but in Munich, I ran after a bus; or rather, tried to run after a bus, felt a spark of pain in my knee and immediately stopped (and waited 10 minutes under the sleet for another bus, bleh). The knee has still not forgiven me, and it feels sore and fragile, without being as painful as earlier this month. I’d love to give it a break, but I’m on top of a hill right now.

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When I get back down, I cruise through the old city center. It’s really beautiful, in that Viennese Austrian marmorean way.

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It’s not yet exactly dinner time, so I find a coffee shop with severe New Age vibes. One guy stares at me while I come inside. There are many white women wearing harem pants. The walls are covered with quotes. They’re all from the same person. His portrait is plastered over the wall. A man in a corner is reading his biography.

Yep, that’s a cult.

The chai’s good.

I get dinner at a hotel restaurant, which I’d normally avoid if I had found any restaurant that doesn’t have a hotel above it. It’s called Imlauer Brau and while it’s a bit expensive, the food is good. I’ll second LittleMissLing’s advice here: the Knockerl, a kind of giant île flottante without custard and with red berry coulis, is absolutely delicious. I realize it’s the first time since the Struklji that I feel like I’m eating something truly foreign and new. It’s nice!

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Stats

  • Train: 1h47, 2 972km
  • Steps: 12 216

Full day

I wake up feeling good. I feel like I should have left for Verona tonight, but it is a 6-hour train ride and I do want to enjoy my day here without arriving in the middle of the night, so leaving tomorrow morning is still the best scenario, I suppose.

I grab brunch (that is, a sandwich and a cinnamon roll) at BackWerk, a café that looks suspiciously like a huge chain with no personality. Maybe that’s what I need after the cult café, though, and it tastes nice enough.

Today, I have my sights set on another castle on a hill – a higher one, too, because I’m an idiot who doesn’t listen to their body.

On the way there, I run into… is that a sewer fountain? Sure looks like it.

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I then start the long ascent to whatever is waiting for me over there. The path is slippery and wet, like yesterday; there are many, many cement stairs that are safer but more taxing on the knee, so I alternate between both and take several long breaks. (While these breaks are ostensibly to rest my knee, I can’t say that my lungs and heart hate them either.)

Finally, I make it all the way to the top.

There is no castle.

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Well, there’s a castle, but it’s on another hill. (Your castle is in another princess!, my inner Mario guffaws.)

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The mystery is solved a few hundred meters further: there is a fort on this hill too, it’s just not at the highest point. And it’s small, but I wasn’t too interested in visiting it either.

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I finally, finally make it back down, absolutely knackered. But the old city is still there waiting for me, and it’s still so beautiful!

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I round it off with a Bosna from a kiosk ran, from what I understand, by the same man for the past forty years. A Bosna (Best Of SNAcks) is two low-fat sausages in a bit of flatbread, with onions and mustard. It’s extremely simple and just as satisfying, a quick snack for all occasions.

I feel like Salzburg isn’t a two-day visit, unless you want to visit a museum (I happen to not care for Mozart and not have seen The sound of music so my cultural choices are very limited) or you want to hike for good, which is more fun with decent weather.

I decide to finish my day with cheese Spätzle (a true classic) and a Kaiserschmarren (it’s a fancy name for, essentially, pancake pieces with red berry coulis).

feel guilty about not doing much in the afternoon… but then I see my stats!

Stats

  • Steps: 16 153. It’s funny: I felt bad all afternoon for finishing my exploration so early, but I actually did a full day’s worth of walking and some pretty serious elevation gain at that!

To Verona

I have written this entire blog post as the train was stranded less than five minutes outside of the Salzburg train station, still within the city. The train is now announcing a one-hour delay and we have no news whatsoever.

I’m vibing: I have my books and my keyboard and I can keep myself busy all day if I have to. I’m just bummed that I’ve missed my connection in Innsbruck and I’ll have to book another ticket (booking is mandatory on high-speed Italian rail), which might be a logistical nightmare given how last-minute it will be.

Ah well, we’ll see! Adventure!

(Between writing the draft and the publication steps, we’ve had news. As in, no news, but the screen now says that our next stop is Salzburg and the train has started going back. The old Italian man sitting in front of me is throwing his stuff in his bag and muttering « Madonna, MADONNA », while the Austrian couple behind me loudly comments on how nobody’s even telling us what’s going on. I’m having a great time.)

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Liked Lettre ouverte de contributeurices LGBTQIA+ de Wikipédia (Friction Magazine)
Car si l’encyclopédie est un projet qui a bien évidemment ses limites, qui viennent de ses choix radicaux d’être sous licence libre et de fonctionner selon la « neutralité de point de vue », mais aussi des imperfections des personnes qui s’y investissent, elle est précieuse. Wikipédia reste l’un des rares espaces en ligne qui soit non-marchand, non soumis aux censures néfastes qui s’exercent sur X/Twitter, Instagram ou Tiktok, et préservé de la médiocrité de l’IA générative. Wikipédia, c’est aussi un espace multilingue par nature, permettant de sortir de l’unique référence à la seule perspective venue des États-Unis qui est si prégnante dans les milieux queers. Nous voulons la préserver. Tout en restant lucides quant à l’état de nombreux articles de l’encyclopédie, nous nous réjouissons du travail qui y est accompli, par nous ou par d’autres, que ce travail soit sur des sujets essentiels comme l‘identité de genre des personnes autistes ou la transition de genre, ou sur des histoires oubliées comme la biographie de Mademoiselle Raucourt, lesbienne du XVIIIème siècle.

Il est difficile d’exprimer l’amour que je porte à Wikipédia – et donc à sa communauté.

Évidemment qu’on va continuer. Évidemment que c’est important. Évidemment que j’aime ce projet immense et que je veux y apporter tout ce que je peux. Évidemment que je veux accompagner les nouvelles personnes qui s’y intéressent.

Évidemment.

(Et évidemment, aussi, que chaque personne qui lira cet article en sélectionnera son passage préféré : les deux paragraphes du haut de cette page, ce sont les miens.)