Swordfish in Sicilia

23rd May 2015

Well, I do declare . . . It had to happen. We’ve broken all our taboos. Three or four coffees a day now, pastries, gelati, granitas – Oh dear, who knows where this will end . . . . . .

Who cares eh 🙂

The Beautiful Swordfish (Espada)
Most fresh fish outlets in Sicily will sell at least one swordfish per day, piece by piece, until it is finished: its availability at the shop or stall is announced by its spectacular head.

On the Luck of Random Travel
Booking into random, unknown, un-researched (and often un-researchable) towns can sometimes be a real mistake, if not a total disaster. But it can also turn out to be a wonderful experience. So far it has been thus for us.

Our choice of Messina turned out to be such a one; a very interesting city. The train from Napoli took us onto the ferry and off into Messina’s central station, very near to our ‘random’ accommodation. A major ferry port for the Messina Straits with crossings to and from mainland Italy and to parts beyond, it is also one of the entry points and a holding pen for the thousands of refugees rescued at sea.

Migrant Rescue
Italy’s ‘Mare Nostrum’ was a one-year-long programme established on October 18, 2013 to tackle the dramatic increase of migratory flows. Its brief was to rescue migrants at sea during their attempts at making the crossing from North Africa to the European coast. It cost Italy about €9m a month, and they successfully carried out search and rescue missions over a 27,000 square-mile area. Though thousands of migrants drowned in their attempts, Mare Nostrum’s vessels were able to save many thousands more and to bring them safely to Italy. Italy’s complaints to the European Union about the unfairness of this financial and immigrant burden finally resulted in Mare Nostrum being replaced by a European Union-backed ‘Triton’ mission. However, Triton’s budget is only €2.9m a month and they only patrol waters within 30 miles of the Italian coast. But with the recent Western nations’ intervention in Syria creating a flood of refugees looking to escape their bomb-ravaged land, the whole world is now aware of, and becoming more deeply involved in what was, until now, just Italy’s problem.

Because of our hotel’s proximity to the central rail and bus station we daily encountered multiple groups of black Africans, the majority of whom I took to be either Ethiopian or Somalian by their distinct, finer features. However, I was to have it confirmed that my knowledge of African affairs is woefully lacking – the majority were Eritreans, with a smattering of Somalis, Gambians and, doubtless, other African ethnicities among them. Curiously (to me), they remained in quite separate ethnic groups, not mixing. There were also (but in those days only a trickle) Syrians whose lives had been turned upside down by their own civil war. The dimly-lit road underpass not 200 metres from our hotel (our short-cut to the station) also provided a ‘platform’ for some very colourful and interesting looking hookers, too.

Driven by my curiosity we spent a good part of one evening at the bus terminal in Messina talking with English-speaking non-denominational religious volunteer helpers, a travel agent organising bus tickets, an Italian woman with an African boyfriend who spent her evenings trying to help new migrants and, latterly, some of the migrants themselves. It transpired that they were all waiting to be put on buses and transported to Naples and/or Rome, but those we spoke with held Germany to be their ultimate goal. In a journey that had already involved several separate stages, often with long waits in unfriendly countries, this bus trip north was but another leg.

It was during this evening that I realised, regretfully, that I did not have the skills of the trained journalist – the ability to ask pertinent, key questions – those which could elicit responses which would enable us to formulate and present a more informative article on this matter. Here we were, at the ‘coal face’ of Italy’s (make that EUROPE’s) current major immigration PROBLEM, bursting with curiosity, and all I could come up with was lame, ‘sociable’ questions such as ‘Why?’, ‘How was it?’, ‘What do you think of . . . ?’, or ‘Where to?’. Under the circumstances, I felt woefully inadequate.

Rachel’s enquiries revealed that these black-skinned people have – before arriving here – been on amazing treks and experienced terrific hardships, usually funnelling through currently unstable Libya. They are mostly very young – from 14 to 19 years old and they are their family’s hope for the future. In their minds, Europe (often Germany) offers the solution to all their problems. But having seen the plight of their compatriots in other Italian cities like Bologna, Napoli and even where I write this in Syracuse, they are in for one very hard ride and will be starting at the very, very bottom of the barrel.

There are other problems looming for them also: according to the TV (and our interpretation of the news) Italy is receiving an uninterrupted flow of these migrants, and resentment amongst Italians who would normally be the comparative most tolerant, charitable and accepting of races, are now beginning to question this acceptance – largely on (personal) economic grounds as their economy is currently suffering a severe decline.

But, reassuringly, we still see no overt or blatant signs of racism towards the many migrants on their streets. The Italian people’s (I cannot comment upon the government’s) humanitarianism and generosity is inspiring and should be a lesson for countries such as Australia. But I suspect, under the overwhelming load, their acceptance is wearing thin as, for one thing, the migrants get instant government financial assistance, but the Italian unemployed apparently do not, and we were told (tongue in cheek, I think) that some Italians (well, Sicilians anyway) consider going out to sea and coming back in an old boat and being rescued so they can get the financial benefits that are a migrant’s right.

Another Good Find
We took the train over to Milazzo on the north eastern coast of Sicily for the day. It’s another major ferry port, this time for the Eolien Islands just to the north – including Vulcano, Lipari and Stromboli. The journey of half an hour was mostly through tunnels at incredible speed – great tunnelers these Italians. At the easternmost end of Milazzo’s large bay is heavy industry including one of Sicily’s 3 oil refineries, then the ferry terminals, yacht marinas and finally, the town proper.

At the westernmost end of this bay there is a beach where local fishermen daily haul-out their small craft. On the afternoon we visited, the fishermen were mending their nets, playing cards near their boats or standing around chatting and gesticulating dramatically in what we now see as a normal Italian manner. Having taken our fill of these heart-warming sights we headed into the back streets to find a bar at which to gather intelligence of a local nature while wetting our tongues (we’ll have to knock this midday-ish drinking on the head when we return to Perth:). We found the perfect place and the barman there gave us an excellent steer to a nearby restaurant that specialised in seafood. His suggestion was ‘La Casa Linga’, and he emphasised his approval by pressing his index finger to the side of his mouth and rotating it while saying ‘Buono, buono’ – a typical Italian gesture signifying approval – usually of food. Of course I instantly registered this gesture and adopted it for my Italianate image :-).

We have eaten locally caught swordfish several times since our arrival but Rachel’s charcoal-grilled version in La Casa Linga took the prize. It was superb, and my mixed seafood spaghetti dish was outstanding (I still don’t know why I eat shellfish like mussels over here, but not at home – I may work on that aversion when I get back). Anyway, at 38 Euros for the two dishes, including ¾ litre of local white wine in carafes, amongst clearly local regular diners (they don’t kiss both cheeks of strangers) it wasn’t a bad deal in our opinion. I must tell you though that most Italians do tend to eat more dishes off the menus than us for lunch (their main meal of the day), we are not big eaters by any means.

 
Mine’s Bigger Than Yours
After lunch we wandered west along Milazzo’s coast in the vague direction of a hilltop castle with the intention of visiting it, but got distracted by what is the fanciest Cemetery we have ever come across – mausoleums that in size and architectural style would fetch very good money as houses (with views to die for I tell you). But, judging by the number of caskets some of them hold (stacked to the rafters on 2, 3 and in some cases 4 levels) they probably make more money for the cemetery’s owners in their current use. Splendid buildings anyway, but the grandiosity of it all seems . . . well, a bit pointless to me.

 
Holed-up in Giarre Riposto
We made a move south; another random choice and this time at the foot of the active Mount Etna. Outside (and as far-reaching as Taormina to the north and Catania to the south), coarse, black ash lies in pockets large and small – everywhere; a legacy of Etna’s eruption last year which distributed it far and wide over this end of Sicily. In fact, this Mt Etna is one of the largest and highest in all of Europe. We’re staying a hundred metres from the sea in a B&B that would once have been someone’s comfortable apartment: very spacious high-ceilinged rooms still with well-appointed furnishings: clean, tidy and secure . . . perfect! Our host, Elena, is a gracious and obliging young lady and when the weekend arrived, on Saturday volunteered to take us up Mt Etna (this sort of thing would be unlikely to happen when staying in a hotel of any type). We equivocated for about a second before accepting – we were getting on well and she clearly enjoys the interaction with her guests.

Mt Etna is vast, with multiple fumaroles and snow still on its upper slopes. We didn’t go higher than 2000 metres and it was very cold – the rim of its uppermost crater is much higher. Elena has trekked, with guide, to Etna’s uppermost point, staying overnight in a refuge on its slopes, though that refuge has since been abandoned and is now buried with ash. She mentioned she got no sleep that night as the mountain was rumbling. Travel on the mountain is much more regulated nowadays because not so long ago a German was leaning over one of its cauldrons (to get a better photograph?) and fell . . . into the molten lava. Wow – what a way to go, eh!

Forget boring-and-small Vesuvius; this is a seriously large and still active volcanic mammoth mountain. Sensibly, the black volcanic basalt stone has been used since even Roman times as building blocks and to surface roads.

 
Those Damned Fireworks
We were resting at mid-day at a seaside kiosk in Giarre Riposto with a flute of excellent spumante when the church bell chimed: this was followed shortly thereafter by a series of rockets exploding a few blocks away up in the clear sky. They would have looked better at night as they were the star-bursting type and, for now, this ‘thing’ the southern Italians have with exploding fireworks remains a mystery – maybe it was just another coded signal.

Aha. Mystery solved. The fireworks were in celebration of Santa Rita: a local saint – in fact, so local that that night, on the terrace of our B&B with Elena, supping her family’s excellent Inzolia white wine (complementary, along with generous and varied breakfasts) we were treated to a magnificent finale of fireworks above, and music (mostly brass and wind instruments) below in the neighbouring street as Santa Rita’s image was carried along and back into the nearby church. What a treat!

It got better: on Sunday Elena took us north to Taormina where, after an excellent but rather expensive light lunch, we walked up a very steep track to its castle. We arrived via neighbouring Giardini Naxos, a very attractive fishing village-come-ancient-Greek-city-now-tourist-trap and now sporting broad, people-friendly promenades. After Taormina she drove us down and then up and up to a much higher mountain village named Castelmola. Here we parked and walked right up to its castle some distance above. We later refreshed ourselves in one of its piazzas – what a fabulous, architecturally interesting place. Historically-strategic (originally for defence) it has stunning 360 degree views including over the neighbouring Ionian Sea.

Elena also gave us good a good tip for an economic restaurant (opposite a more expensive version) which we fortunately utilised. Fantastic: and all for 20 Euros. Certainly not ‘up-market’ – plastic plates – but we were lucky we arrived early as it became incredibly busy by the time we’d finished eating (yes, the price included the ½ litre carafe of local wine too).

And at another – a little more expensive – restaurant in Taormina 🙂 swordfish again